What to do BEFORE Spring Break as a Teacher
Spring break is (almost) here! The two sweetest words to any teacher!
I love spring break more than the other breaks. It signals the beginning of the end. After this break, because it’s the last one before summer, we are officially on the summer countdown.
Here in Nashville, things start to warm up around this time of year (mid-March). I can spend spring break taking my own children to the park, to the zoo, shopping for Easter clothes. It’s a wonderful week full of great memories every year.
But the only way I can really enjoy it is if I tie up all of my loose ends at school before this week begins. Today, I want to share my pre-spring break to-do list with you all! By this coming Friday, I want to have all five of these things done. If I can do it, I will have a super relaxing spring break where I won’t have to think about school AT ALL.
Small Group Materials Pulled/Plans Written
Ok, so this is more like two items in one. But, a big part of the small group planning process is also making sure that all of the materials I need are copied and ready to grab after the break!
I plan to do a hybrid of Women’s History passages and Basketball passages. I have already written lesson plans for these, and they are included in the PDFs when you download them! Before I leave on Friday, I will sketch out how I plan to teach these passages using a planning template from my small group planner. Then, I will copy the passages, questions, and graphic organizers that I need. I will put them in plastic sleeves in my small group cart so they are ready to grab and go throughout the week!
Center Materials Copied
Did you know that I send out a FREE planning guide every month? In this guide, I share my center plan for my literacy block for every week of the month! You can check out my March plan by clicking below, or check out my center planning blog post to get an idea of how I structure this and what I plan to do each week.
Classroom Reset
This one is mostly done by my students, specifically with my end-of-day jobs. But, I will take it a step further and ALSO ask my students to clean out their desks this week. I want folders emptied. I want things sanitized. I want pencils sharpened. I want dried out dry erase markers to be officially trashed and replaced with fresh ones. I want a clean learning environment when we return!
Enter Grades
Do you have report cards coming due at the end of this quarter? Our grading period ends the Friday before Spring Break…and then report cards will be due when we return. I’d rather have all of my grades entered, my comments written, and things submitted before I walk away for the break! I will chipping away at this throughout the week in batches during my planning time. Check out my grading routines blog post to see how I work in grading throughout the week so I don’t have to take things home very often!
Schedule Emails
I will schedule an email this week to go out at the end of the week as my weekly newsletter. This will preview what units we just wrapped up and what we will start studying after the break. I will also include important dates for the last quarter of the year.
I will also go ahead and schedule an email to go out the Sunday before we return with some friendly reminders for the week ahead. I will include some notes about settling outstanding balances with the cafeteria or working on finding lost library books now, rather than waiting until the last week of school to do so. Now that we are entering the last quarter, it’s time to start tying up some loose ends!
And that’s it! My pre-spring-break-list. I will be using some before school prep time, my planning time, and the occasional testing time to get this all knocked out before I walk away on Friday afternoon! Wish me luck, friends!