A Facelift For The Classroom
As things are winding down at the end of the year, I always made a list of things that needed to be done “cleaning” wise, then I enlisted my students' help.
Get your students involved in this cleaning binge the last week of school.
My Y5’s LOVED helping out. One of their favorite things to do was to help me clean the desks and chairs.
A fun way to do this is to give each student a dollop of shaving cream. Have them smear it into a “whiteboard” and write their name, draw shapes, letters, numbers etc. on it.
It’s an easy way to whole-group assess as well.
When the shaving cream is almost gone, and the “board” has disappeared, squirt the desks with Lysol or whatever other cleaning solution that you use, and give your students paper towels to wipe them off.
The shaving cream has removed sticky residue, crayon marks, and glue stick messes + your room smells wonderful.
Buy a package of Mr. Clean Erasers. Cut them in 1/3rds and give each student a mini sponge to get permanent ink and colored marker mess off walls, desks, chairs, and your board.
Students also enjoy pushing around a portable vacuum. I brought mine from home.
I also gave a manipulative tub to each child to dump out. They sorted it to make sure only that particular object was in the tub.
Anything that did not belong was put into a “dump” tub to be sorted and put away later. When “later” came, each child took a bowl full of “stuff” and 1 piece by 1 piece put those items away in their specific tub.
My grandmother always said: “Many hands make light work!” It really applied here, as this would have taken me hours, and the children, working as a team, made short work of it.
We also checked markers and tossed out ones that didn't work well, and sorted the crayon tubs, tossing broken ones in a tub to be melted into crayon cakes.
While spring-cleaning add zip to your room with some fresh posters and center signs.
Replacing dog-eared or torn center signs will really make things look sharp.
Click on the link to view/download center signs
Adding a few new posters will not only give your room a fresh look, but be extremely helpful to students as anchor charts.
Click on the link to viewa selection of anchor charts. Scroll down until you find the ones you want to print.
One of my favorites is "Give Me Five". It's a terrific behavior management technique. Teacher says: "Give me five." Students raise their hand and do all five of the things listed on the poster.
PIN away if you see anything you think others may find helpful.
