I’ve never taught summer school before, so when I took it on this summer, it was a shocker!!! I’ve taught intersession before at my own school and had the ability to stay in my classroom to teach, so it was no big deal, but I can tell you right now that I was not prepared at all for summer school! I was going through the long list of items I wished I had today (my second day) and decided to go and pick my stuff up from my home school. I came up with some essential items that I need to bring along with me if I decide to teach summer school again.
I did learn that a teacher will teach with anything she has on hand. It just makes it very difficult to teach with a pack of unsharpened pencils, tables, chairs and some blank paper! So here are the materials I wills always take with me when I teach summer school:
Here is an explanation of each item, most are self explanatory 🙂
1. Behavior clip chart: I didn’t realize how much I count on this until it wasn’t there. I wanted to reinforce good behaviors and I didn’t have anything to do that with. It’s classroom management on the go! I’m just going to hang it up tomorrow with the clips and it’s all good! You can click here to learn a bit more about my clip chart! I love it! Thanks Jennifer for introducing me to it:)
2. Pencil sharpener: What good are pencils without a sharpener? The rooms we are in are barebones! There is nothing! So one person had a sharpener and we were all desperately trying to get ahold of it.
3. Tape: We created some charts and I wanted to tape them to the board and there was no tape around! Yikes!
4. Morning Work: Our whole team uses the morning work I created, it’s easy to customize to the kids’ needs. The kids walked in, saw their morning work and got right to work while I figured out busing situations, spoke with parents and got other duties taken care of. Not to toot my own horn here, but my morning work was a perfect way to assess what skills they were missing or had forgotten. By the way, how do kids forget how to count by 5’s in ONE week???
5. Stapler: I wanted to hang some stuff up and there was no stapler. Enough said.
6. Scissors: I’m not sure how many things we had to chew open on the first day, but it was a lot of stuff.
7. Magnets: I use magnets all the time to hang things up on my board, hang reminders on my door and so forth. Tape will do, but magnets are super nice to have around! I especially like these hook ones from Staples.
8. Sanitizer {AKA Hanitizer}: I have a bathroom in my classroom so I’m not used to kids having to leave the room for that. Many times the kids came back without washing their hands…I wanted to run for the sanitizer and there was none around! It’s also a pain having to have the kids run to the bathroom to wash their hands after they blew their noses. Sanitizer is so much easier!
9. Stickies: I use stickies for everything apparently. I use it to create charts with the kids, to write notes to parents and so forth.
10. Staple Remover: This is not my classroom, so I need to be able to remove stuff when we are through with the room.
11. Markers: Any and all kinds of markers! I don’t have a projector/doc camera here so I’m reliying on markers to write on the white board and to create anchor charts. I didn’t have any for half the day!
12. Pens: You just need pens! Love these flair ones especially.
13. Push pins: I like to pin my charts on the walls so I can move them around easily. Push pins are a must.
14. Teacher toolbox: If you have a teacher tool, you are so lucky! (I’m planning on making one this summer). I have a fake teacher toolbox. It’s from the container store. It has 4 drawers. Definitely not enough drawers but it does the job for now. I keep all those little things like push pins, paperclips, markers, pens, and stickies in there. It was nice picking this up from my room knowing I had all these necessities ready to go.
15. Whiteboards: We have a limited supply to paper, so white boards are necessary. Plus they add so much engagement with the kids. Don’t forget to pack plenty of dry erase markers.
16. Boxes: I have desks in my own classroom and we use boxes to keep everything organized. I’m working with tables this summer and I have to admit that the tables and I are struggling to get along. These boxes I picked up a couple of years ago at Walmart are saving us!
There’s tons more stuff I could add to this but I can’t take my whole classroom, so these are the tools that are going to help me get through this summer.
Is anyone else in the same situation? What did you take with you to help you and your kids?