Wonderful Idea Wednesday

I'm linking up with the wonderful ladies at Freebielicous again for their Wonderful Idea Wednesday linky party!

Being a fairly new-ish teacher, I feel like I don't have great, tried and true tips and tricks of my own. They mostly have come from Pinterest or veteran teachers. But here are my top 5 wonderful ideas (remember how I like lists?) to help you stay sane this school year. 

1) Organizing dice and bingo chips

I saw this idea on Pinterest and implemented it in my classroom at the end of the school year. I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner! You put your dice into small plastic containers (I got a set of 10 from the dollar store) and when students need to roll the dice, they flip the container over and shake. Much quieter and no dice getting "accidentally" thrown across the room. 

With the bingo chips, I saved a TON of time passing out a container to my students (or one container for students to share) instead of handing out handfuls of chips. It also made clean up much easier for students so they weren't dropping chips from their seat to the large bucket. 

Head on over to Sunny Days in Second Grade for other great ideas!

2) Have daily file boxes (or other container)

You've probably seen it all over Pinterest: teachers having a drawer for every day of the week or some other kind of container where they put all their stuff for each day of the week. I would not survive if I didn't do this in my classroom! Every Friday, after my copies were done, I would sit down and organize them into daily file boxes. I also put in any readalouds I wanted to do or other items we needed for that day. As the week went on and I had copies made and ready for the next week, I simply put them in the "next week" file box. That way when Friday rolled around again, all the papers I needed to organize were right there.

3) Have a catch all basket

Behind my daily file boxes, I kept a basket where I threw all of my extra copies, my originals when they came back from the copy room, books that needed to be put back in the right place, etc. At least once a week (normally on Fridays during prep time) I would go through the basket and either file, put away, or trash whatever had accumulated in that basket over the week. If you were really ambitious, you could go through it every day. It didn't seem worth my time to do it every day, so once a week worked best for me.

4) Quiet Critters

I kept these little guys in a jar on my desk. And when we were having rough days with too much talking and not enough learning, I would go around and place these on desks of students who were working quietly. Or sometimes I would give one to everyone. The goal was to still have your quiet critter by the end of the day (or by lunch depending on the time of year). If you did you got a reward (in my class, normally a Skittle). You can get your quiet critter taken away for not being quiet or on task, but I always let my students earn them back if they can change their behavior. It was also a great management tool that I gave to subs when they came into my classroom.

Sadly the blog where this picture comes from is no longer up :(

5) Go Noodle

Go Noodle was by far my students' favorite thing from this last school year. They are short (or long) brain breaks, dance videos, and ways to get the wiggles out. Our favorites are the Koo Koo Kangaroo videos :) I would use these as a reward, as an Indoor Recess (they have a section that has longer videos, up to 20 minutes!), and as P.E. time when we couldn't get the gym. Best thing about it? It's totally free! There is a version that you can pay for where you can incorporate it more into your classrooms, but my little firsties are completely happy with the free version.