As the school year comes to an end, there is always so much to do. There are end of the year celebrations to plan, grades to input, awards to write out, and so much more. It can be so tempting to throw everything in a closet and deal with it later. Having taught for over 20 years now, I came to realize that including back to school preparation as part of your end of the year activities was a wise decision.
Don’t get me wrong, my classroom was not all set up for day one, but doing a few tasks in May and June made prepping in the fall so much easier. Here are a few tips to help ease your transition from summer break to back to school season.
“Do something today that your future self will thank you for.”
-Sean Patrick Flanery
1. Parent Communication Log
One of the easiest things for a student to help you with, which can be time consuming to do on your own, is to clean out and set up your parent contact log. I remove all the parent conference notes and place them in a small disposable box. I keep everything in alphabetical order, so it is easy to find if I need anything at the start of the year. After a few weeks into the new school year, I get rid of that box.
After I have removed all the private information, I have a student place the new communication logs in the binder.
Now, the parent contact log is ready for the first week of school.
2. Declutter BEFORE Back to School Season
Have students help organize and declutter. I actually take turns assigning different students to different tasks on different days, so it isn’t complete chaos.
Some of the things we do are:
- Go through our construction paper and recycle any pages that are cut
- Organize the classroom library (make sure students are bringing back books from their homes)
- Clean out our supply bins: glue sticks, scissors, dry erase markers, crayons, etc
- Recycle (or take home to recycle) any work that did not graded and will not be graded
- Collect textbooks and place them on a shelf in numerical order
- Place homemade notes and cards from students into a memory box
- Bring down work from bulletin boards and have a student file them into work folders
3. Classroom Supply Inventory
Taking inventory of your supplies should be a priority when it comes to your back to school preparation. At the end of the year, it seems we start to run low on things like tape, staples, and dry eraser markers.
Nothing is worse than coming back to school ready to put up those bulletin boards only to find that you don’t have staples. Or coming in ready to clean and not having surface cleaner and paper towels.
Use the list provided for you here (or create your own) and check off what you have enough of. Then, take a photo of what you need or add it to your Notes app on your phone. This will make it easy to refer to when you are at the stores during the summer or as you create your wishlist.
If there are any supplies you can grab from your school supply closet or request, do it now before you leave for summer. That will be a few less supplies you will need to hunt down.
Another suggestion for getting supplies you want such as a personal laminator or personal paper cutter is to request them as an end of the year gift from the room mom. Sometimes parents want to come together to get you an end of the year gift, but they don’t know what you want. Instead of flowers or mugs, provide a few suggestions.
4. Make Your Copies
There are certain things you know you will be distributing the first day or week of school. Make those copies now. At the start of the school year there are long lines at the copying machine. The machine gets overused and breaks down. It can be a nightmare.
Some of the First Week of School copies you can make now are:
- Transportation Log (so important for the first week of school)
- Getting to Know You activities such as Find Someone Who and Math About Me
- Parent Letter
- Supply List
- Classroom Library Books Request Form
5. Efficient Packing
There are two boxes you are going to want to label well and keep at the front of the closet or the top of the stack. That is your Teacher Supply Box that contains most if not all of the supplies previously mentioned and the First Week of School Box.
Your First Week of School Box should contain the things you will need and have prepared for the first week of school.
Some of these First Week of School items are:
- Your grade’s pacing guide for the year
- Copy of your state standards
- The first week of school read alouds you plan to share with your students
- First week lesson plans or a list of ideas
- Copies of your first day of school activity and nonperishable supplies (such as Play-Doh)
- Copies needed for the first day of school (ex. parent letter, transportation log, supply list)
- Curriculum binders you will use daily or weekly from the start (ex. Grammar Print & Fold, Daily Sentence Editing, Exit Tickets, Grammar Assessments)
6. Quick Jot Down Session
May and June are the best time to write down what worked, what didn’t work, and what you want to try as part of your back to school preparation. Think about how things ran in your classroom this year and identify areas that could be improved.
For example, in 2015, I realized that reading logs were not working out for my students and me. Students were not enjoying reading, reading logs were coming back empty, and I was getting frustrated. I decided to try out a new system. It worked fairly well. The following year, I analyzed it further and came up with a nontraditional reading log system that gave me great insight to what students were actually reading, and students could easily keep track of what their current read and previous reads.
Just taking a little time at the end of the year to analyze what worked and what needed improvement helped me set up the following year for success.
I hope that this post has given you some ideas on how to make back to school preparation part of your end of the year activities, so you can truly disconnect and enjoy your summer knowing you are all set.
