What do you use for time management in your classroom? Do you rely on just what is written in your lesson plans? Or maybe you just go with the flow of the day.

I have a confession…

When I first started teaching, I was awful at time management. I never seemed to get ANYTHING done in time. Or there were things I didn’t even get to because we were so busy with other stuff. When every one was done, we would finally move onto the next thing. I rarely got everything done and I was always playing catch-up. It was awful!

I asked for help with my time management

After hearing about the other teachers getting everything done, I went to my instructional coordinator and begged for help.

I had trained my students to take their time.

After talking about different options, I invested in this jumbo clock which ended up solving my problems. In my lesson plans I noted exactly what times I was teaching things. I fed off of this and set the timer for the allotted time. The kiddos and I were able to look at it and quickly know how much time was left. When the timer was up, it would let out a nice loud beep to signal the end of the lesson and start of a new one.

good time management turned into a habit

I loved that I was finally getting used to how to run my classroom in an efficient way. After a while, all this time management business became a good habit. A habit that I was getting used to and my students were good at. They also loved being involved with the timer – they were being responsible and holding me accountable as well!

what do you do with the kiddos that finish before the timer?

This is one of the tools that I love to talk about the most: EARLY FINISHER TUBS – which was by far the best purchase I ever made on TPT. I purchased a set that had monthly themes because I lovvvve good holiday themes. I love being festive and I think it adds another element of fun to any classroom.

The way it worked was at the beginning of the month, I would go over what was in our “tub.” They were all educational games and/or practice that were to be played either in a group of two or by themselves. The students loved these.

When students finish their work then they are allowed to get a tub – BUT their work must be acceptable. I made it clear that if they gave me messy work just so they could get a tub, they’d have to start over. It only took one student trying this to show my students I meant business.

There was also a rule that if I had to talk to a group of students twice about noise, they had to put the tub away and wait until the timer was up. Since my students loved these so much, they were really good about keeping the noise level down. It was heaven.

As soon as the buzzer rang, they knew to clean up the tubs and put everything away.

Another fun tip: make students play any game on a piece of cloth. The pieces don’t leave the cloth which means students have their work space and pieces are not lost.

pick a tool that works best for you

There are plenty of resources out there that help with time management. However you decide to go about, be aware of your time in general. There is so much that needs to get done these days. Don’t do what I did and let the stress get the best of you. Letting your to-do list pile up is just going to make that stress much heavier than it needs to be.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Feel free to email me or chat with the instructional coordinator in your school. You can do it. I know you can make it work for you and your students. You are awesome, you got this!!!