Teacher Tips Link Up

Welcome to our Monthly Link Up ! 

Every 26th of the month we will post one of our Teacher Tips and encourage others to link up and share their tips.  Make sure you add a link to your blog post at the bottom of this post!

Stephanie from Fishing for Education here to bring you my Teacher Tip of the month!

Teacher, I'm done!
Now what do I do?

This month I'm focusing on what to do when your student is done early, those early finishers who don't know what to do!  In my class I always had a variety of choices for my students to choose to do when they finish.  I would focus the first half of the day on Reading & Writing activities, then the last half of the day focus on Maths activities.  It is up to you how you want to structure it.

I like to allow the students to have some choice in this as they enjoyed it more. Since it was things they wanted to do and understand the expectations I had less behavioural issues overall.

Students Know Expectations!

(Poster from The Teacher Wife)

I'm my class we would have a routine when it came to our work, but we made sure to emphasise what was expected of their work.  I had maybe 2-3 weeks of fast finishers who didn't finish their work with best effort.  (I had them redo the work during the class activity time, if I catch it, or during some class fun time.)  Eventually the students quite rushing through work.  Just keep on them in the beginning.

My students knew the expectations during "I'm Done! Activities" as well. Most of my activities were geared towards independent study, buddy work, or small group games with the "No more than 4" rule.  We also discussed not excluding others if we had room.  This made sure there were less behavioural issues.

Education Games

I always made and had some easy to play education games in the classroom.  I would make sure to introduce the game once and model how to play, and make sure to keep it simple.  Easiest game was to have a deck of cards (or number cards) and play Addition, Subtraction or Multiplication Top It!  I know it's old (from Everyday Math), but my students loved it and it kept their fluency up! Above is a picture of the "I CAN..." activity games for Math from One Stop Teacher Shop.

List of Activities

I would also list activity ideas on the board for students to choose from.  I made sure my lessons allowed 5-10 minutes of finishing up time for those with unfinished work or who need extra time.  I made a ring of cards that had specific activities in my classroom that students to choose from.  My students LOVED that! (It's on TPT for $1 if you'd like it.)  This is where my independent study would come into play.  Sometimes my students enjoyed some time creating their own work.  They loved writing their own stories and making their own comic strips!  (I would integrate Story Elements as well!)

What's your Teacher Tip this month?

An InLinkz Link-up