Whether you’re a new teacher just getting started or a veteran with years of experience in the classroom, the following pages are filled with helpful tips and advice that will make your teaching time with the kids run a lot more smoothly. You’ll find plenty of time-saving and stress-reducing wisdom that you can utilize in your own career. Enjoy!
Note to teachers: If you have a helpful teaching tip you’d like to share with others, send us an email and let us know what it is. We’ll add it to the list as soon as we can.
The Classroom Echo
Whenever I inherited any classroom, we would always have the kids vote on a special name for their class: Koalas, Explorers, and so on. It adds a more personal touch for you to refer to them by, rather than simply saying hey kids, or hey you guys, when you want to speak to the class. But you have your name, you can also teach the kids the classroom echo as a means of classroom management.
Take the name and create a sing-song way to say it as if it were a bugle call, such as “Hey-Ko-al-as.” Then sit down with the kids and teach them this call. Model it for them, and them have them mimic it. Practice it several times with you giving the call with them waiting until you’re done, then echoing in unison. It takes a week or two of conditioning before they get in the habit of this, but once you get them in the habit, its a great way to quiet the class down or get their attention without having to raise your voice or repeatedly ask them to listen. Simply give the “Koala call” or whatever name you have chosen, and the kids will stop mid conversation to echo you, giving you their full attention.
Tips for Teaching Kids
Teaching children isn’t something you do on a set schedule for 6 hours a day. Children are learning new things every hour they are awake, and some of the best opportunities come during everyday experiences. Here are some tips parents and teachers can use to facilitate this learning throughout normal day to day routines:
Help Teach kids a Foreign Language on Walks
Whenever you go on a walk with your kids, whether its a stroll around the neighborhood or a planned nature walk, take a translation book with you. You can look up the words for different thing you see, and then practice them along the way: “Oh look, I see a gato. What do you think that gato is doing?”
Motivational Tips For Teachers
Reward Metals for Good Behavior
Purchase a package of plastic gold metals from a party supply or dollar store. Keep them on hand to reward kids for good / exceptional behavior. Kids will love receiving a metal and its a great way to use positive motivation without running into the murky territory of having to bribe kids for good behavior that they are expected to have anyway. You can hand out a medallion to keep (they aren’t very expensive), or reuse them over an over again, letting children wear the medallion for the day before returning them at the end of classes.
Taking Advantage of Post-Halloween Bargains
After Halloween, most of the stores will drastically discount all of their Halloween merchandise, offering some great steals for shrewd teachers. You can always find clown supplies, pirate outfits, props of various sorts, face paint, wigs, masks, clown noses, false teeth, and a variety of other supplies.
This stuff is not only 10 or 25 cents on the dollar, but much of it can be used to assemble dramatic play prop boxes for a variety of everyday activities. Hitting the stores with $50 or less can get you enough supplies to stock several prop boxes of material full of dress-up supplies that otherwise might cost 5 or 6 times that.
If you plan ahead, this technique can also save you quite a bit of money by stocking up on supplies that can be used for your center’s Halloween party next year, or in general classroom Halloween activities the next year. Holiday cups, plates, napkins and decorations are especially a bargain, often discounted 90% or more. Just stay away from the candy corn. I suspect it’s already two years old as it is.