With a new year comes new resolutions. A fresh start. A clean slate. A new beginning. January is a time for resolutions. Maybe you want to be more organized this year. Maybe you want to be more prepared for lessons. Maybe you want your classroom to run smoother. Here are some tips for resolutions in the classroom.
Change Things Up
After a much-needed break, it can be hard to get back into the same old routine. Take this opportunity to try something new. Change things up a bit. Give your classroom a make-over. It can be something small, like new posters. Or something big, like completely rearranging the desks. Try to get your students to be more productive by swapping the seating chart. Try it for a few days to see if there's any improvement. Or, change things up regularly to bring new life to your classroom and stimulate young minds.
Try Something New
Is there a new technology you've always wanted to try? Or a new method for teaching a difficult subject? Maybe you want to bring more creativity to your lessons. Or have more interaction with classroom discussions. Now's the time to try it. Don't worry if it doesn't work, there's plenty of time to test and correct any issues. Try incorporating an online-based portion to your lesson. This can be done individually as homework, or as group activities in the computer lab. Include a comprehension assignment in the form of questions, a final test, or a collaborative presentation.
Get Organized
Do you find your classroom doesn't run as smoothly as you'd like? Take this time to try some new organizational ideas. Try as many as you can to see which ones stick. Check out this list of 100 Classroom Organizing Tricks from Scholastic: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/100-classroom-organizing-tricks/
Be Hands-On
Spend some time individually with each student. A great way to do this is to have independent study time. Try to spend 5 minutes with each student. You don't need to solve anything in those 5 minutes, you just need to get a sense of where each child is at. What are their strengths? What are they struggling with? Then, take some time to yourself and come up with some strategies for helping out each student. It could be changing up your teaching method, assigning specialized homework activities, or even creating tailor-made quizzes that cater to each student's strengths. It's not how they learn, but what they learn and retain that matters.
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