Has anyone else thought about this? I always made a point to say "our room" instead of "my room", because even though my name was on the door, it was "our room" for that year. In my ideal classroom, students feel at home enough to do what they need to do without having to ask the teacher first. Obviously this means spending a lot of time at the beginning of the year setting expectations. In my perfect world, students would be able to perform and thrive in an atmosphere where they feel in control. A little bonus to having this type of classroom is that the teacher does not have to deal with getting asked five million questions each day. He or she might only be asked two million questions each day. :)
Here are a few things I did that made my classroom more "student-sufficient".
1) The students knew where all the supplies were in the room, and they were instructed to go get more whenever their group needed them. Yes, our supplies depleted faster this way, but I didn't have 10 children coming up to me each day saying,"We are out of glue sticks again!"
2) When students were tardy or had an excuse, they came in the room and silently placed their slip of paper into a tray at the back of the room. No longer did students have to come up while I was teaching to hand me their tardy slip. Also, I didn't end up with random pieces of paper on my desk!
3) I had student "managers" every week who were responsible for the lunch count, washing tables at lunch, passing back papers, etc. Their names were written on spiral bound notecards (one for boys and one for girls) and a student just flipped the cards over every Friday, so that we knew who the next week's managers were. I never had to think about who was supposed to be doing what all year!
4) Each student had a mailbox in the back of the room. Whenever I had graded papers, I would just put them in a tray in front of the mailboxes. The managers would stuff the graded papers into mailboxes and students would pick up their papers before they left for the day. No stuffing folders or passing back papers!
5) The students were responsible for the lunch count system. I got the pans and magnets from Dollar Tree. When students entered the room, they would move their magnets to their lunch choice. If a student's magnet was left on "absent", I would know they weren't there that day. The managers moved all the magnets back to "absent" at the end of the day. I think this idea was floating around Pinterest at one point, and if anyone knows who came up with this idea, let me know because I'd love to give them credit!
I know these are not revolutionary ideas, but they helped me tremendously in my classroom. What are some things that you do to make your classroom more "student-sufficient"?
