As teachers we all know that there is NO WAY you can get everything done within your contractual hours during the school week. Even when you think you have everything done, you quickly realize that you don’t! When I first got hired, I would get to school at 7:00am and some nights I didn’t finish my school work until 10:00pm. Obviously this is not sustainable or healthy! Now that I have been teaching for a while, and have kids of my own, I have put together a few helpful tips and tricks to *hopefully* help you take less school work home.
1. Assign Some Things Digitally
In third grade we are not one-to-one with technology, but we do have some iPads and Chromebooks that we can sign out to use as needed. I like to assign a some of the repeated or application of skills practice digitally. During the pandemic, I found out about Boom Cards and made a whole bunch for my students to practice skills with. I use these in 2 ways. I can assign them certain decks to practice, or I make choice boards for them using the “fast pin” link. You can read more about my choice boards here. Digital give them motivating practice with no correcting for you! Your finished work baskets doesn’t pile up with practice sheets!
2. Utilize Partner and Self-Correct Times
Sometime I try to have students partner correct or we correct our own papers as a class. This doesn’t work for everything, but for some things it is a win-win solution! Morning work is a good example. Every morning when my students come in, they have a reading passage with a few questions to do as morning work. We later correct this as a whole class. Students use a pen and correct as we go through it. This is a great opportunity to teach as you correct. I do many mini lessons as we are going through the corrections. It is a great way to also help the kids who just guessed or who didn’t know the skills.
3. Use The Little Time You Have Wisely
I know we don’t have a lot of time…sometimes we have no time! But if you have 10 mins, or 20 minutes, or 30 minutes, treat it like GOLD! Try not to get sucked into conversation with “Negative Nancy” at the copier. Try to use any little bit of time strategically. Send kids to run errands for you on the way to dropping them off at specials. “Johnny and Sam, please go check my mailbox and we will meet you at the music room.” This gives those kids who need a walk a special job to do, and it saves you 10 minutes round trip. Know what you are going to do during your prep before you drop the kids off.
4. Correct and Record as Kids Finish
If my students are taking a math test, I usually have a few kids sitting at a table with me. These might be the kids that need help reading the math questions etc. I have them put up a folder so they have some privacy and they get to work. As students finish their test, I start correcting them right away. Even if I correct one page of each math test while I am waiting for everyone to finish, that’s 20 pages I don’t have to correct later. If I am working with a small group, I look over each students work before they put it in the finished work basket and I jot down notes about how they did on each skills we worked on.
5. Pick ONE Day to Bring Work Home
Pick one day a week to bring work home. Leave it at school on the other days. If you know you are going to correct papers on Wednesday nights, you can leave your school papers at school the rest of the week. Then on Wednesday you can power through them. For me, this works great because I don’t feel guilty on the other days.
BONUS Tip
6. Throw Out Some of the Papers
Throw out some of the papers! Seriously! Don’t correct everything. Obviously there are important things that need to be corrected, but a lot of the practice work doesn’t need to be corrected. I will glance through the pile and see if anyone needs me to intervene. If not, I will either throw the practice into their Friday Folders, uncorrected, or I will literally throw the stack in the garbage. Don’t come for me! It is actually freeing sometimes!
~Heather
