Good Things I See When Subbing

Sometimes when I am subbing, I see techniques that I think are really useful - or I even come up with things myself that prove effective. One thing that is always of interest to me is how the teachers manage attendance and lunch count - mundane, yes, but good techniques can really make the start of the day easier. Of course, they do depend on the age of the students.

One 6th grade teacher I have subbed for had a bulletin board devoted to student locations. At the beginning of the day, there were three different colored tags (with names on them) in the student's pocket, one for attendance, one for hot lunch, and a third for specials. As the student passed the bulletin board coming in the room (or as part of the getting ready routine), the student would pull his or her attendance tag and put it in a basket. If s/he was planning on getting a hot lunch, the lunch tag was also pulled out of the pocket and put in another basket. If there were two choices for lunch, there would be two baskets. When a student left the room to go to a special class - reading, band, gifted, speech, etc., the specials tag would be pulled out and placed in the appropriate out of the room envelop (also on the board). The teacher also had job assignments on the next bulletin board, so a student would take the lunch count and attendance. At the end of the day, it was the job of one of the students to return all tags to the proper pocket. As much as possible, this teacher tried to train the students to do routine chores in the class.

Other teachers have used clothes pins, magnets attached to popsicle sticks, or labels with velcro. When the child leaves the room, s/he moves his/her token and places it on/in the appropriate "gone" location.

Other things that I saw today that worked well: student desks arranged in a double horseshoe. Most of the desks were in the outer "shoe", which actually was shaped like 3 sides of a square. A smaller number of desks were in the inner rectangle. There was walking room between the two shapes. This made passing out and collecting papers very quick. And all of the students could easily see the front of the room and the teacher. Most of them could also see each other - which is nice for discussion purposes. Negatives - sometime neighbors didn't get along; and two students couldn't sit next to anyone, so had to be situated away from the group. I am not sure how to avoid this.