I’m always looking for a new teacher hack that can help me. And today I’m excited to share my SAVE ME tray teacher hack that I can 10000% promise you is going to change your life. This is probably the best thing that I have ever implemented into the classroom to help save my own sanity.
What Is It?
Whenever I start to tell people about my ‘SAVE ME’ teacher tray, they always give me a funny side-eye look. Probably wondering what I’m talking about or who I’m asking to save me! The reality is, is that it’s just a classroom tray with an ‘EXCITING GOODIES’ label on it. This is to make it exciting for my students. But for me, I just refer to it as my SAVE ME tray. Because it really does save me.
Inside the tray are a bunch of no prep worksheets and activities.
How Do I Use It?
So, you know those days where you have a spare 5-10 minutes free with your students and you just don’t know how to fill it? Maybe you’ve already done some brain breaks.. and conversation starters.. And you’re just looking for something different to keep your students focused for 5-10 minutes while you do what you need to get done.
Right now, while I’m writing this blog post it’s October. Which means coming up soon is the Halloween party.. which means Halloween costumes. And while me and my team are helping some students get into their costumes, other students are going to be hanging around, waiting, and looking a bit lost. And usually, for me, that’s when chaos erupts! So I need something to keep my students focused for 5-10 minutes while I help other students.
That’s a perfect time for me to send my students to the ‘EXCITING GOODIES’ tray to choose something that they want to work on.
How Do I Set It Up?
I usually go through this tray at the start of every month. I might take out seasonal worksheets that didn’t get used (and store them in a zip folder to put back into the tray next year!) And then I put in some new worksheets. It could be to match an upcoming holiday, season or just some skills that I think my students could work on a little more.
Then, when I need that 5-10 minutes, I will either send students one by one to the tray to choose a worksheet of their choice. Or I’ll have students sit down and I’ll carry the tray around with me and pass around a worksheet to each student. This is more helpful if you have students who maybe can’t decide what they want to work on and are stood by the tray for too long trying to decide.
What Type of Things Do I Include?
Honestly, it does depend on the current ground of students I have. What skills do they really need to work on right now? What activities do they like to do? What themes are we currently working on etc. But, as a rough guide. I’ve included my top 10 worksheets that I like to put in my ‘SAVE ME’ tray and that are usually the most popular with my students;
- Christmas Mazes
- Alphabet Worksheets
- Community Helper Worksheets
- Halloween Worksheets
- Autumn / Fall Writing Prompt Worksheets
- CVC Words Word Searches
- Animal Facts Comprehension
- CVC Read and Highlight
- 3 Little Pigs Fine Motor Worksheets
- Cutting Santa’s Beard Fine Motor Skills
I hope you found this SAVE ME tray teacher hack helpful! It’s definitely been a game changer for me and my students, and I hope it is for you too!
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Nikki
