Today Angela Watson @angela_watson teaches us a stress-free plan for closing out your classroom. See also her 5 Summer Secrets for a Stress free Fall video series.
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In today's show, Angela Watson talks about the best way to close down your classroom at the end of the school year:
- Why taking things down too soon can cause behavior problems
- How to have students help without chaos
- A simple system for getting the work done
- Ending the school year with less stress
- What you should have students do
I hope you enjoy this episode with Angela Watson!
Want to hear another episode onย how to thrive at the end of the school year? Listen to me talk about How to make it to the end of the school year.
Selected Links from this Episode
- Twitter handle: @angela_watson
- Blog: https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/
- Summer Secrets for a Stress Free Fall [Free Series mentioned in the show]
- We mention the 40 hour workweek club, take this quiz to see if this is right for you.
- Information on the 40-hour workweek club
Some of the links are affiliate links.ย
Full Bio As Submitted
Angela Watson
Angela Watson is National Board Certified Teacher currently working as an instructional coach and educational consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. She has published four booksย for teachers and has maintained The Cornerstone For Teachers blogย since 2003.
Angela is the creator of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club an online professional development program that has supported teachers with productivity in over 10,000 schools. Her Sunday podcast called Angela Watson's Truth for Teachersย is entering its 6th season, providing motivation and encouragement to teachers on a weekly basis.
Transcript for this episode
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[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, weโre running a giveaway. https://www.coolcatteacher.com/help-kids-learn-code-dash-dot-wonder-workshop/ ย The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
Todayโs guest is Angela Watson. Check out her free video series, Five Summer Secrets for a Stress-Free Fall. Just go to cctea.ch/40hw-summer and enter your email to get this spring series. While youโre there, take a look at the 40-hour work week club. This club has personally helped me a better teacher while working less hours. Yes, it is possible. Now, onto episode 78; A Stress-Free Plan for Closing out Your Classroom with Angela Watson.
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day youโll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI:ย ย Happy wonderful classroom Wednesday. Today weโre talking to one of my favorite productivity teaching โ just expert at everything, Angela Watson. @angela_watson
And weโre going to talk about a stress-free plan for closing out our classroom. Now, Angela, I have to admit, Iโm not very good at this, I end up with a complete disaster in my room and sometimes even during pre-planning Iโm cleaning out the mess that I left at the end of the year. Help me please.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย I think a lot of teachers can relate to that. Itโs really a struggle and a lot of teachers havenโt been taught a system for it. So, Iโm looking forward to kind of breaking that down with you today.
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Letโs do it.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย Okay. So, the first thing that I want you to understand is that thereโs a difference between deconstructing the room and closing out your classroom. So taking things off the walls and storing these materials away in boxes or covering your shelves make a huge difference visually in your classroom.
[00:02:00]
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย And it makes it feel like youโve made a lot progress towards closing things out for the end of the year. But really, itโs the easiest thing to do. And itโs not really moving you forward. Itโs so quick that I actually recommend that you donโt even start it until the second to last day of school. So, hear me out on this because I know a lot of people listening are going to be like, โNo, way, I could never wait that long.โ Hereโs the thing, Iโve seen teachers close up their classroom libraries, their centers and pull all these materials away like a full month in advance.
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Oh, my goodness.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย Because they donโt want to feel overwhelmed, right? They donโt want to leave all that cleaning and organization and packing up for that last week of school. But what happens is โ and you probably know what happens. What happens to the kids when you do that?
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Yeah. They misbehave, donโt do it, like youโre asking for trouble. Never, never. I never take my stuff down until school is out, I just canโt.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย Good for you. So, youโre kind of the opposite then. Thatโs exactly right, it will throw up all your daily routines if theyโre put away. And it just ramps kidโs excitement levels up and it just create behavioral issues. So, Iโve experimented with a lot of difference approaches and I can tell you without a doubt that itโs best to have kids help deconstruct the classroom starting from that second to last day.
So, in the weeks leading up to the last day, thatโs when youโre going to complete your end-of-year paper work โ all those closing out tasks. So you can return materials, you can start de-cluttering, those sorts of things. You do want to get that stuff done in advance but you want to keep the classroom looking exactly the same for as long as possible so that you can keep your regular routines in place. And then on that second to last day of school you can turn your full attention to overseeing the classroom deconstruction. If you try to do it sooner or you try to spread out the task over a week or two it will be very difficult for the kids to concentrate on the academic work because the room is screaming, โweโre done here.โ
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย I do have to admit, I may be biased because I have been doing your 40-hour work week https://40htw.com/join/club/ref/coolcat/
and I know you cover that in there. So this is just important advice for closing out right and not being done till youโre done, you know.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย Yes.
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Okay, whatโs next?
[00:04:00]
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย So, hereโs what youโre going to do when youโre ready to deconstruct. You could just wait until school is over and the kids are gone and just do it on your own like youโve been doing. But the thing with that is that then youโre doing all the work. So if you can involve students in it, thereโs a way to do that that is not too chaotic. So, hereโs what I recommend. I recommend you keep the class engaged in meaningful tasks while a handful of students help deconstruct. So problems with end-of-year close out tasks arrives when the teacher has things to do but the kids donโt have anything to do because kids are really perceptive, they know when we give them busy work, they know when weโre just trying to get them out of hair until we end up spending the whole day trying to keep them on task and then we donโt get out own stuff done.
So what you do instead is keep the class engaged in a really worthwhile learning activity. Something that they enjoy, something thatโs going to be fun for them, something that theyโre going to stay engaged with naturally. And then while the kids work, you can periodically circulate throughout the room to make sure everyone knows what theyโre doing and spend the rest of your time overseeing the students who are sustained with your end-of-year task. So your full attention is with the kids, youโre watching the ones who are at work, youโre watching the ones who are deconstructing youโre not off trying to do your own thing because thatโs when it gets chaotic, when they know that you are not present there with them.
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Yeah. Because you can be in the room and not really there.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย Exactly. So youโre going to make a list of all the jobs that you can assign to your students, do that in advance. They can take down bulletin boards, pack up books, record text book numbers, label things with your name, make a list of all those things that you need done. I usually had a list about 40 things and I found that my 3rd graders were able to complete every task on the list usually in less than two hours using this process Iโm about to explain.
We would start around 10am, weโd be done by noon. Just a handful of things may be done in the afternoon. So, once you know what needs to be done you have this pass listed out, now youโre going to do the final step which is to create an efficient system in which you assign task to pairs of students so youโre going to pair your kids up. I like to think about it in advance, some people just kind of do it just pair the moment and youโre just thinking about studentโs personalities, right?
[00:06:00]
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Because you want to match up kids who get along well so they can get the task done and theyโre not going to be interrupting you constantly to settle arguments between them. So, pair up kids who have similar strengths, maybe your most organized students can do the task like filing and library organization. Pair up the kids who are really active so that they can move the furniture and they can run errands around the school.
If you are the secondary level of you see multiple classes each day, break down the jobs into tasks that can be completed within a single class period. So you may want to consider chunking the job so that each class participates to some degree and the classes with your more responsible students get the most important tasks. So figure out how youโre going to pair your kids up, get the whole class working on that meaningful engaging independent activity. And then youโre just going to call a pair of students over to your desk and youโre going to explain the task that you want them to do. Remember, this is on the second to last day of school now.
So youโre going to explain it to them, make sure theyโre confident, they understand what to do, they know what to do, they know now to be successful and then call over another pair of students and assign the next task on your list.
So I usually have about two to five pairs of students deconstructing the classroom at any given time, maybe a third of the class, the other two-thirds are working. And I things start to feel chaotic or they get difficult to manage then you just donโt call any more pairs until another pair has finished.
And then whenever theyโre done this is what you need to train them to do, have them go automatically back to completing the whole class assignment until you need them again.
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Awesome. That just sounds like a dream, itโs like, โI guess it works.โ
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย They love it, thatโs the whole thing โ when you tell them โthis is the day.โ Because theyโre going to see all the other teachers have already started, like, โWhen are we taking down this room?โ Weโre doing it today and weโre going to have a system for it. But if it gets crazy in here then youโre not going to be able to help, right?
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Yeah.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย So you having them go back to their seats when theyโre done and if theyโre not able to do the task well, if they canโt stay on task, if they canโt do it quietly, then you just donโt call them to help with anymore โ thatโs all. And then you just keep rotating through each pair of students as many times as needed until all the jobs are finished and thatโs how it works.
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย That sounds much better than how Iโve done it which is like, write the list of everything that needs to be done on the dry erase board and kids pick tasks.
[00:08:00]
And you invariably have some kids who picked the task of supervising everybody else which doesnโt work very well. Okay so what is your last piece of this that when teachers are done and the last day of school is done, where will they be with this process?
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย So, you should be able to get the deconstruction done on that second to last day of school. And you can adapt this process in any way that makes sense for you. This is just a way that I did it and I recommend other teachers do it, but you can do it however you want it. Just keep those for core elements in place because thatโs what makes it so effective. You want to have everything but your room deconstruction done in advance. So to speak to your exact question on the last day of school, almost all the tasks are done, only your last day things are left because youโve been doing the closeout task for weeks and then that second to last day you have the entire room taken down.
So follow that format, have all your jobs listed out in advance, assign your pairs of students to do each job and get the whole class engaged in a meaningful activity and call pairs of students over to do the task. I teach the members of the 40-hour teacher work week club https://40htw.com/join/club/ref/coolcat/
to do it this way, Iโve had teachers in every grade level K-12 use this system and they love it, they swear by it now. So I promise it can work in your classroom too. It really does work.
VICKI:ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย So teachers, weโll have also a link to Angelaโs video series Five Summer Secrets for a Stress Free Fall. http://cctea.ch/40HW-summer
She has so many resources. And if youโre thinking, โOh my goodness, I really want to hear more about this 40-hour work week clubโ I know sheโs going to have open cart in June and Iโll have links to all this in the show notes.
And weโre also going to have another episode in June where we talk more. So, I highly recommend following all that Angela does. I just learned so much from her on a daily basis. And Angela, I just appreciate all you do for all of us teachers because I learn a lot from you.
ANGELA:ย ย ย ย Thank you, Vicki. I appreciate that so much.
On June 16th weโll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So, celebrate, weโve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to coolcat.com/wonder and enter to win your very own Wonder pack from Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, age kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at coolcatteacher.com/podcast. Never stop learning.
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[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email lisa@coolcatteacher.com]
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