How to Easily Free Up Your Time: Delegate These Now

I'm a firm believer in the motto, "Work Smarter, Not Harder." You can't do it all! There's a pile of marking toppling over on the desk, last month's marking is waiting to be filed, and report cards won't write themselves! To free up some time you've got to DELEGATE!

Home-School Notices

Communication between home and school can get crazy at different times throughout the year. I try my best to keep most of my communication digital using the Remind app, but there are often notices from the office, fundraisers, book orders, and other hard-copy items that need to be distributed.

I can't tell you the number of times someone has knocked on my door with a handful of papers to go home after my break has ended. Or I grab a stack of papers from my mailbox and forget them beside the photocopier. And once in a while, I'll find a notice in my classroom, one that I've left in an obvious place where there's no possible way I'll forget to hand them out and leave my students missing out on a valuable experience... with a due date already long past. Oops.

I've stopped being responsible for this.

My classroom job board is printed on heavy paper, laminated, and fixed with adhesive magnets. I rotate the jobs weekly.

One of my several regular classroom jobs belongs to two "Paper Managers" who are responsible for collecting the packets of notices from a central location and distributing them into my student mailboxes.

My mailboxes are magazine file boxes from Staples.

Student Work Return

I keep a central location for student work to be turned in to me and returned so that I don't continuously have piles on my desk. (That happens without their help, so this system helps me control it!)

When students need to hand work in, it goes straight into my "In Bin," and when I'm ready to return it, I just place it into the "Out Bin" which my Paper Managers check daily. Anything they find there is passed out to the rightful owner at an appropriate time through the day.

Grab these free bin labels right here:

Classroom Library

All of the books in my classroom library have been catalogued (by students, of course!) into the Classroom Booksource site. This allows me to track where the books are at all times since I've invested a small fortune into this part of my classroom.

My students can use the free app on one of our classroom devices to scan a bar code or use the webpage on a Chromebook to sign a book out or return it.

Managing Classroom Technology

My students also have full-control of managing our classroom technology. Once I had our tech station set up it was all out of my hands. My "Tech Team" ensures that all devices are returned to their proper location and plugged in at the end of each lesson. 

Because I've assigned students to this, we have yet to have any issues with tech batteries dying or devices going missing.

I've labeled my Chromebooks, their charging cords, and the storage rack (a dish draining rack from the dollar store!) using washi tape I purchased at Michaels.

The dish rack is even perfect for my iPads in these thick carrying cases! You can grab the iPad wallpapers from my Teachers by Teachers store by clicking the image or right here.

Delegating these simple tasks to my students has helped me better maximize my time for other classroom priorities. You know... planning great lessons, creating exciting hands-on activities, and ridding my classroom of the smell of pre-teen feet at the end of the day!

I'd love to hear what jobs you empower students in your classroom! Leave me a comment below or reach out by email.

You might also be interested in the tips I share in this blog post:

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