Efficient Tips for Effective Teachers

Teachers lack time. Once we get past the first few initial days of school, we are bombarded with meetings and requirements for the start of the year. Time and balancing all that life demands can be difficult but so necessary to make you able to tackle those to-do list items. I can’t wait to share with you efficient tips for effective teachers.

Digital To-Do Lists

Make to-do lists complete with due dates so you don’t get surprised about things you must get done. Although it can be easy to write them down on paper, paper can easily get lost. I recommend making a digital list you can keep with you that can’t get lost. I make my list on my iPhone.

Ditch the Paper Portfolio

One thing I have found is that papers tend to multiply, take up time and energy, and become too much. One thing I highly recommend to be more efficient is to stop keeping paper portfolios and files and move towards digital. You can get Seesaw for free. Class Dojo also has a free portfolio. Yes, it takes a few minutes to make a digital image of each page but once you have it stored digitally, you can access it whenever.
You can read more about Dojo portfolios here.

Pain-Free Lesson Plan

Now, I am all about lesson planning but I quickly discovered that when I wrote them out on paper, I had to write them out on paper every year. Now I make a digital lesson plan you can grab here and make your own copy to edit and use. Each I make a copy and edit it. This ensures my good ideas stand and my less-than-stellar ideas don’t return.
You can read more and grab my lesson plan template here.

Another Smart Idea- Google Keep

I recently started using Google Keep with my digital lesson plans. It is a free Google Extension I use with my lesson plans. I keep a running list of what I need to do for my lesson plans on that tab. This helps me to keep things moving instead of stopping to think about what I need to do next.
Check out more on Google Keep here.

What if you try some of these efficient tips for effective teachers and they save you time and energy? Then what if they allow you to be more efficient which in turn allows you to be more effective? And finally what if these suggestions help you to concentrate more time and energy on your learners instead of on the paperwork that tends to get in the way of the actual teaching!?