As a busy educator, I’m sure you’re on the look-out for quick ways to save time in your teaching day. Read to find some time saving tips for teachers.
My mission is to help you as a teacher to live a life you love. This includes establishing what you deem as a happy balance between the time you spend at school and the time at home with your loved ones.
Predictable routines save time
Setting up predictable routines is a must for all busy teachers to make your days predictable, much like the structure that you provide for your students.
These routines will be beneficial for you to help save time in thinking and brainpower. Because the energy drain of thinking and decision making at school can be thoroughly overwhelming, as you would know.
To help with this, I’m offering some quick time saving tips for teachers that I’ve learnt and I want to share with you. These can be implemented to help with the often repetitive tasks that we perform day-in-day-out and are very time-consuming in your day.
I find that these tips help me to make some tasks much quicker to get through, and also help to be more productive, which we all need especially to help us get through our neverending to-do list.
Time saving tips for teachers
Time-Saving Tip No. 1: Don’t grade or mark everything
This is a great tip because as a new teacher I thought I needed to mark everything that I set students to complete.
I also thought I needed to collect student exercise books each and every day to mark. What I realised over time, was that in the current day of teaching, that this is an impossible task to achieve.
I suggest collecting student exercise/activity books once per week. Monitor student learning for the week and make notes using a class checklist. This way you can keep a track of student learning and revisit or re-teach concepts as needed.
Also, by regularly checking-in with students, while they are working in class, and talking with them about their work, I’m able to give them real-time constructive feedback. These quick student conferences help inform me about student process and I’m able to monitor their learning more effectively than just collecting a book.
Time-Saving Tip No. 2: Make templates for regularly used forms/emails
I really like this tip for making templates. This is a great timesaver because you can keep a file for all your regularly used forms such as letters, certificates, emails etc.
I have a hardcover of each form that I regularly use as a master so it is ready to photocopy when needed. I also keep a digital copy of these templates too, to quickly edit and change to suit where needed.
Using email templates is also an awesome tip that I learnt recently. Many of the emails that we all send, often to parents, are very similar in nature. e.g. Student is not completing homework, the return of camp form is required etc.
Practical Tip: When you’re writing an email that you use on a regular basis, remember to save it as a template. (This can be done in Microsoft Word or Google Docs). Outlook also has the template function. Simply add text into the email body and click save-as and choose Outlook Template, then save. see here for more detailed instructions.
Templates can also be saved in Gmail called ‘Canned Responses’ in the More tab.
Time-Saving Tip No. 3: Use your planning time wisely
Planning time that you are given in working hours is precious. Don’t waste it by chatting to colleagues or fiddle-faddling around with unimportant tasks. My suggestion to be productive in planning time is to have a clear agenda. To do this:
- Write a list of what you need to get done in your hour or 30 mins.
- Guard this time and don’t allow others to waste it or impede on your planning time
- Identify the most important tasks to complete in your weekly planning time and prioritise them
- Use planning for important tasks like marking, lesson preparation & planning for the new week, analysis of assessment data etc, not making coffee or social media.
Time-Saving Tip No. 4: Set up routines & systems for efficiency
To really save time in your teaching day you need to have systems and routines. This is where you can really work smart and have your day running smoothly.
What do I mean by systems?
I have predictable routines that I know won’t change. For example:
- Classroom Management system
- Classroom Jobs system that efficiently uses student helpers
- Filing systems for papers
- Morning routines
- End of day routines
- Routines for when you complete certain tasks e.g. I always mark homework on Monday afternoons
- Classroom Rules
- Parent interview procedures
- Back to school routines
You get the idea.
Time-Saving Tip No. 5: Use mini-lessons
Often as teachers, we think that we need a certain amount of time to teach a lesson – maybe 30 minutes or more. But in current this time of teaching, with its jammed-packed curriculum and often many interruptions, I think we need to learn to work smarter with the time we have with our students.
If we can cleverly slot in mini-lessons, between the interruptions, I think we can reduce the overwhelm often many of us feel. Take 15mins here and there – add to these well-planned and thought out lessons that are quick and to the point.
I find these shorter timeslots are great for explicitly teaching reading with targetted comprehension strategies. Reading Fluency is also great in these shorter timeframes that you have in the day, where students practise their fluency with a partner – this is easily achieved in 10-15 minutes.
Time-Saving Tip No. 6: Recycle curriculum & learning resources
I think many teachers think they need to reinvent the wheel for lesson resources, from one year to the next.
I have learnt over time, that it saves so much time in my day to reuse the same curriculum and lesson planning materials for subsequent years.
Usually, once I have developed learning resources that work well for a particular grade, I then take a copy of them as blackline master and file in a ring binder or plastic sleeve folder ready to reuse the next year. This saves a huge amount of preparation time. (And I’ve been pretty lucky to teach the same grade for the last 4 years.)
If needed, if and when the curriculum changes, I’ll check the current unit planning materials and tweak the resources that I already have to suit.
Creating new learning resources can be just a waste of time. Development of my own teaching practice and delivery is often the factor that helps improve student outcomes, not making better learning resources.
Work smarter and stop reinventing the wheel. Just reuse what you have and cut the teacher overwhelm!
Time-Saving Tip No. 7: Immediately document behaviour incidences
As student behaviour incidences arise, make sure you immediately document these inappropriate acts (if this is your school requirement).
This is a tip that I learned recently, that I feel makes a whole lot of sense. If you record the student misconduct straight away (onto your school system) while they are fresh in your mind, you are less likely to forget the details. The behaviour is then also documented in school hours, which is ultimately your goal to work smarter.
Work smarter with these time saving tips for teachers
I hope these tips give you something new to use to help save time in your teaching day, be more efficient and feel like you can get through more of your to-do list. Good Luck!
Remember you are worth it!
Michelle x
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