Not to be a buzzkill to your summer vibes, but if you’re like me, you’re already thinking about next school year. What can be improved? What new lessons do I want to try? What systems and routines can I implement to save me time and some of the headaches from this past year?
I spent a lot of time researching tips and strategies to help me manage a better classroom. They helped a lot and I became a better teacher. I hope the ideas in this blog post save you some of your precious time this summer break and give you a little peace of mind. These are some of my favorite strategies and lesson ideas that help me streamline my classroom and the beginning of the school year.
In this blog post I share 10 easy ideas to implement next school year to streamline your classroom and start the year off right!
Easy Teaching Strategies and Routine Assignments to Implement:
- My Go-to Lesson Structure and Classroom Routines
- Vocabulary Logs
- Check-ins
- Test and Quiz Review
- Notes
Beginning of the School Year Ideas and Lesson Plans:
- Set-up Science Notebooks
- Decorate Science Notebook Covers
- Activities for the First Day of School
- Learning Styles
- Lab Safety
Easy Teaching Strategies and Routine Assignments to Implement
Maybe you’re looking to streamline your classroom a bit more. That was always a goal of mine. How can I make things a little easier day to day? What can I do to make things more self explanatory, so I can answer more science questions and less, “What do I do now?” Here are 5 of my favorite classroom routines that are super easy to implement and don’t take a lot of extra planning time:
#1 My Go-To Lesson Structure and Classroom Routines
My go-to lesson structure and classroom routines give me so much peace of mind. They bring predictability to each day. When my students know what to expect, they have more autonomy. It frees up more of my precious teacher time and energy, so I can give even more to my students. These routines stay pretty consistent in my teaching:
- Beginning of class routine
- Warm-ups
- Vocabulary (#2 in this blog post)
- Organization systems like Science Notebooks (#’s 6 & 7 in this blog post) or binders
- Check-ins (#3 in this blog post)
- End of class routine
My lesson structure and classroom routines are some of my most important classroom management strategies. Check out my blog post My Go-To Lesson Structure and 8 Classroom Routines for Better Classroom Management to read more.
#2 Vocabulary Logs
Vocabulary Logs are my favorite system for vocabulary development. Vocab Logs are simple graphic organizers with the term, definition, an image, and a keyword. Once students know how to do them, they can complete them independently which make them a super versatile assignment to use in the classroom.
Vocabulary Logs are great after a lecture to review key concepts, during a lecture as notes (#5 in this blog post), after a lab or assignment when students finish at different rates, when there’s a substitute, and even as a quick homework assignment to reinforce new material. Check out my blog posts Vocabulary Logs and List of Vocabulary Terms for High School Biology to read more.
#3 Check-ins
Check-ins are my favorite type of formative/informal assessment, as a way to check for understanding. Oof, that’s a lot of teacher lingo! A Check-in is like a mini quiz at the end of a lesson, but with my own special twist: Students can take the assessment as many times as they like, and their highest score is recorded.
Google Forms makes is super easy to grade and get the results back to students. Check-ins are a great way to provide feedback and clear up misconceptions. Students can learn from their mistakes, and also boost their Test/Quiz average by trying again until they get 100% on every Check-in. Read my blog post How I Use “Check-ins” to Check for Understanding and Inform My Teaching to learn more about this important routine in my classroom.
#4 Test and Quiz Review
Test or quiz review comes around every couple of weeks, so it’s great to have some routines and lesson ideas that are easy to throw together. I want to help my students feel as prepared as possible, so I rely on these strategies to help them review for assessments.
My students love to play games like Kahoot!, which is why it is one of the test review teaching strategies I share in my blog post. Other ideas like, Cheat Sheets, Study Guides, and Group Practice Tests don’t take any extra planning time. As long as you already created the test, they are super easy to facilitate, which is great for busy teachers. Read more about my favorite ways to review for tests and quizzes in my blog post 7 Effective Test Review Teaching Strategies That Don’t Take Extra Planning Time!
#5 Notes
Taking Notes is another classroom staple. I can’t always find or create the perfect worksheet. With Note Outlines, 10 Facts, Fill the Page, and “I Know, I Notice, I Wonder,” notes, I love how all we need is our science notebook and a pencil. I use all of the notetaking styles during the schoolyear. Sometimes students have flexibility and choose which style they want to use. I love giving my creative students opportunities to express themselves, like with, “Fill the Page Notes.” Check out different ways to take notes in my blog post, 5 Ways to Take Notes Without a Worksheet.
Beginning of the School Year Ideas and Lesson Plans
The first week of the school year is really busy and sometimes chaotic. Thankfully, I found some beginning of the year lessons and activities that work really well for me. They make the busy first few weeks of school a little more manageable. And seriously, more fun!
#1 Set-up Science Notebooks
I spend time at the beginning of the year to set-up science notebooks so my students are ready for success. All of the notes, handouts, vocabulary, classwork, labs, quizzes, pretty much everything we complete in class, needs an organization system. Even high school students benefit from a specific organizational system and dedicated class time to do it. Check out my blog posts How to Set-up a Science Notebook, More Tips for Using Science Notebooks as an Organization System, and Science Notebooks! Or Binders! Which One? to read more about how I use science notebooks in my classroom.
#2 Decorate Science Notebook Covers
Decorating science notebook covers is a fun beginning of the year activity. You can start as early as the first day, even if they don’t have their notebooks yet. Students use magazine clippings of their favorite personal and science-related things. The notebook covers are unique, beautiful, and represent them. It’s also a way to get to become more familiar with one another at the beginning the year, without putting them on the spot with an icebreaker! Read more about how I facilitate this activity in my blog post, Beginning of Year Activity: Decorating Science Notebook Covers.
#3 Activities for the First Day of School
My ideal first day of school would include an introduction, going over the Course Syllabus, an activity like decorative name tags, and handing out everyone’s first raffle ticket. Check out my blog post, 6 of My Favorite Activity Ideas for the First Day of School and Everything You Need to Know About the First Day of School to read about some of my favorite activities for the first day of school.
#4 Learning Styles
Learning Styles is my absolute favorite lesson at the beginning of the year. Students discover some of their learning preferences, tendencies, and strategies for how they learn best. They acquire helpful tools and study skills that they can utilize throughout the school year and in their future learning to help them be successful.
Students take a survey and learn about their dominant learning style(s): Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic. They create a One Pager that is unique and makes beautiful classroom art!
Check out my blog post Learning Styles: A Valuable Beginning of the Year Activity to read more about this lesson.
#5 Lab Safety
Lab Safety is super important in a science classroom and one of the first science lessons we do at the beginning of the year. Students usually enjoy learning about lab safety, especially when I tell them the crazy stories from past years (like when students knocked a fire hydrant off the wall!)
No matter how comprehensive my lesson may be, lab safety is a topic that comes up again and again during the school year. Any time we do a lab, or use supplies or materials, we discuss how to be safe and the appropriate ways to conduct ourselves with that specific activity. Read my blog posts, How She Teaches Lab Safety and Lab Safety Teacher Script to learn more.
Enjoy Your Summer Break!
Congratulations on making it to the end of another school year. I hope you feel satisfied with the learning you and your students accomplished. I bet you’re tired. It usually takes me a few weeks of sleeping in and decompressing before I feel like a normal person again.
I always want to get a jump start on the next school year, but it doesn’t always happen that way. I try to get ahead but I’m more of a creative type and less of a Type A personality. Life derails my ambitious plans. Packing up my classroom to take a job at another school, getting married, vacations, teaching a new subject, and straight up needing chill time to recover from the year have all kept me from planning the next school year in advance. When the new school year eventually does roll around, I’m always grateful for anything that I was able to accomplish over the summer. When I manage to work ahead, I say, Future Me will thank me. And I always do.
I hope you are busy this summer with all the fun stuff. Teachers need time to relax, decompress, and regain their strength for next year. Don’t feel like you are on the clock, because you’re not. After all, we’re not paid for the summer. But if you want to change things for next year, the tips in this blog post are super easy to implement and are a great place to start.
I hope this blog post gives you some ideas for things to try in your classroom next year. What are some of your goals for next school year? Let me know by leaving a comment, I would love to hear from you! To read more about me and my classroom, and for more classroom ideas, check out my blog posts below!
https://howsheteaches.com/2022/10/21/list-of-vocabulary-terms-for-high-school-biology/
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