Teaching Hacks: How to Prep Once & Forget

I am all about saving time and honestly who isn’t?! I love keeping things simple but engaging in my room and if it’s something I can prep once and be set for the unit/month/semester I am here for it! I’m rounding up my best teaching hacks for helping you achieve that ever-illusive prep and forget (in a good way!) peace.

Reinventing the wheel each and every day can be exhausting but with routines in place, your classroom can practically run on its own! I’m always trying to get ahead in preparing for lessons days and weeks in advance. If you want to know more about how I batch prep for an entire unit in 7 easy steps, be sure to grab my batch prepping guide for free! I walk you through step-by-step to save yourself time and stress. What sounds better than gaining time back into your busy day?

Teacher Routines and Procedures

The key to being able to prepare for lessons well in advance is by having a solid set of teacher routines and procedures. These habits work for you as the teacher but also help your students. Students thrive on routine so creating a set of routines and procedures will help your classroom run smoothly. Turns out, those same routines help you as the teacher plan more effectively and prep in advance. Look at you killing two birds with one stone!

In my 5th and 6th grade math classroom, I have a few teacher routines and procedures that really help me prep once and forget. What I mean by forgetting is that certain things in my room become so ingrained, so second nature to me and my students that I don’t even have to think about it. I just know to plan for these routines. Some of these procedures are set up at the beginning of the year or quarter and I don’t even have to think about them again. They run in the background like clockwork!

 

Bellwork Made Easy

This is something I do in my math classes and something that totally saves me in a bind. I have these handy bell-work packets that are easy to copy and have ready to go for each month! There is space for each day of the week and a blank box for students to show their work in. I pop up a bell work problem on the projector and kids can fill in the box. They have a routine, I only have to make copies every few weeks. I print double-sided and 2 pages per packet for 4 weeks, you could totally add more pages for more weeks prepped!

I also prep a slide show full of bell-work problems that are spiral reviews for my students. All I have to do is change the date and it’s already prepped FOR THE WHOLE YEAR! Was this a big undertaking during the summer, yes! Is it worth it to have a slide for each day and buys me an extra 5 minutes to get things organized, yes!

I use a slightly different bellwork set up for my 5th grade math class but it is still prepped and ready to go ahead of time. I use my Number of the Day resource to help build number sense and spiral review. Students get a sheet to use for the week, numbers are along the top and prompts are along the side. Students work with that days’ number and complete the prompts. I love spiraling through whole numbers, decimals, and fractions throughout the school year.

Homework Packets Teacher Hacked

This tip is coming at you from my elementary days but I think it could totally work in a middle school too! (Side Note: I had to give homework and there was no way around it). I would prep 1 homework packet for the week and hand them out each Monday, due Friday morning. They had a little bit of everything: spelling practice, math spiral practice, and a reading article with questions.

To make this easy on myself, I had a spelling page that stayed the same every week and a math spiral page. Then I would grab a ReadWorks article with questions. I would prep these for the QUARTER and send them off to my district’s print service. I’d get them back and organize them in the bottom of my file cabinet by week. That way I could pull out the stack Monday morning, kiddos could write their spelling words on the front. And it took no weekly prep from me. Ultimate teacher hack-being prepared for an entire quarter for some area of teaching!

I think that this would also work in a middle school! Prep a packet for the week and hand it out on Monday, due Friday. Kiddos can work at their own pace and know exactly what they would have to do for the week, helping their time management (or at least trying to!). I’d prep this as I prep the unit (click here for my unit batch planning tips).

Stations/ Rotations

I use math learning centers each week in my classroom but this part of my week is loaded with teaching hacks! I keep my rotation options pretty steady all year. There is a technology station, independent practice, partner games, and extension. The station I feel the most prepped for is the partner games! I pull out my tic tac toe games as a review of a past topic to keep kiddos spiraling and getting in some on-topic socialization. I keep these math games that are fun in a binder and pull out what topic I want to use for the week. Each board is stored in a page protector so all I do is pull them out of the binder and put them in the bins. Kiddos grab an expo marker and can play over and over again!

Another station I leave pretty steady is the technology station. It is either Prodigy or a Khan Academy lesson. For Khan, I have a note catcher sheet that students use with space for the video example and space for the 4 exercise problems I assign. This holds students accountable and is a copy I can make a bunch of and always have on hand. This also works great for quick sub plans! If you want to grab the note catcher sheet freebie, click over here!

Bathroom Passes

Another option on my list of teaching hacks is bathroom passes. This tip is also a routine in my room but routines make your classroom run without you so I thought I’d include it here! I print out passes for the YEAR and kiddos punch them into their pronged folder for math. Each kid gets 5 passes for the quarter (20 for the year) and when they need to go to the bathroom I simply sign their pass slot and away they go. This is something that I loved having in place for the year, although I have also done the quarter. I use this free download if you want to grab it here.

Time Saver for Teachers: Notes Packets

This probably my favorite tip that saves me so much time is creating notes packets for an entire unit. I already know what I’m teaching and the order I’m teaching it in thanks to my scope and sequence (which if you want to know more about check out this post). It doesn’t take me too long to pull together the notes that I’m going to use in the unit. So I simply create a packet for each student with all the notes pages. Students are then ready on note-taking days with the supplies they need, and I’m not racing to the copier 5 minutes before the bell rings!

This tip leads to how I prep an entire unit ahead of time. I love batch prepping and this step-by-step guide walks you through how to be fully prepared for a unit before it even starts! Grab the free guide here and save yourself time and stress. It’s the best of all teaching hacks!

Task Cards

If you are looking for something to do during the summer I highly recommend this to your list of teaching hacks! Put on that Netflix show you are binge-watching and start to print, laminate, and cut out sets of task cards. I know that during the school year it is so easy to reach for a set of task cards and teach! How to use task cards you ask? Be sure to check out all the ways I use them in my blog post here.

If you don’t want to prep these out during the summer, I totally get that! This is also a nice task to do for the upcoming quarter over a break. Bonus points if you can enlist some family members to help!

Timesavers for Teachers: I Can Statements

Another thing I love to prep once and forget is I Can Statements. I usually take the easy way out and find a set on TPT that fits with my grade level and subject. Then, I can print them all out at the beginning of the year so I’m ready! I keep the pages in a binder with page protectors so all I have to do is pull out the standard I need for the week and hang it on my board. It’s such an easy teaching hack that makes it look like I have life together (even when I can’t tell you what day that assembly is on!). 

Looking for more teaching hacks?

I love a good round-up of how other teachers are doing things! Below are some of my favorite blog posts about routines and procedures that other teachers have set up in their classrooms. Work smarter, not harder is my life mantra so let’s get your time back, shall we?

• 13 Teaching Hacks: Tips to Make a Teacher’s Life Easier (I love #8 for teaching small groups)
• 65 Instagram-Worthy Teacher Hacks to Tryp in Your Classroom (#7 would have been great for virtual learning)
• 20 Brilliant Teacher Hacks (#13 has totally saved me more times than I can count)

What are some of your best teaching hacks? Be sure to leave a comment down below with all your awesome tips and tricks! If you are looking for more ways to save yourself time, the ultimate teaching hack is batch prepping. Get more information inside the Batch Prepping Step-by-Step Guide here!