Teacher Approved Tips: Turn Student Desks Backward and Incorporating SEL Into Daily Routines [episode 84]

Emily
Hey, there thanks for joining us today for teacher approved tips, a special series from the teacher approved podcast. Every Thursday, we’re bringing you a weekly bonus episode highlighting new and favorite teacher approved tips from us and other amazing educators.

Heidi
Our first tip today is turn student desks backwards. Emily, can you tell us about that?

Emily
Yes, as we mentioned in Monday’s episode, we are loud and proud cheerleaders for having your students desks turned backward. But we thought it would be good to share a little more about that tip and why we think it’s so helpful.

Heidi
So if you use desks in your classroom, turning them backwards is an excellent way to save a lot of time and energy. And here’s why.

Heidi
First of all, you immediately eliminate any behavior or management problems that may come from students playing around with whatever they happen to have in their desks. Right there is a huge pro for sure. Such a help. Our best classroom management tool is always to prevent problems before they arise. And this is one way to do that.

Emily
Another way backward desks will save you time and energy is that students never have to waste any time digging through their desks to find something. You know how quickly those student desks turn into nightmares. And you don’t want half your class wasting precious minutes trying to dig out their vocabulary journals every time you need them. Those minutes add up to a lot of wasted time.

Heidi
And then the last way that backwards desk will save you time and energy so that you never have to schedule time in your busy days to clean out those messy desks. I think it’s pretty common to have desks clean out times a couple times a month to try and keep the mess in there under control and find all the stuff that’s been lost in there. You don’t have to spend any time doing that when they don’t store anything in there.

Emily
Yeah, no lost library books in there. If you’re wondering how we store supplies, we had a pencil box on each student’s desk with their crayons, pencils and glue. They kept it on the top corner of their desks so they weren’t playing with it.

Emily
If that ever became an issue. They could easily be stored on the counter. But we never really had much of an issue with that. And then all of our folders and workbooks and notebooks were kept in stacked plastic drawers.

Heidi
So each table, each cluster of desks had a set of plastic Sterilite drawers on the counter with their table number on it. So whenever we needed our writing folder, someone from the table would have the job of getting that drawer and then just bringing it to the table. Then when we were done with the notebooks or folders, they went back inside. And that table helper would just put the drawer back.

Emily
And if ever I didn’t have the kids desks arranged as tables, I still assign the kids a table number. For example, all the kids at a certain row would be assigned table one, etcetera. They were already used to the drawer system so we never had any problems doing it this way.

Heidi
Really, I mean, it worked for 12 years. So I promise it’s really doable. We highly recommend turning your desks around as a simple way to prevent a lot of headaches. And if you give it a try or you have given it a try, come share within our Facebook group because I want to hear the details.

Emily
Our second teacher approved tip today comes from Emily Upton from Teach Like a Pangolin.

Emily Upton
Hey there, I am so excited to be here to share a teacher tip today that absolutely changed my classroom. I’m Emily Upton from Teach Like a Pangolin. I’m a former upper elementary teacher turned full time mama and TPT seller.

Emily Upton
Today I want to share some tips with you to help you incorporate SEL into your daily routines without losing a ton of instructional time. As teachers we know how important social emotional learning is for the classroom culture, and our students well being inside and outside of the classroom, especially post pandemic.

Emily Upton
But sometimes it can be so hard to take away teaching time to fit in those lessons that aren’t covered in the standards. I always sucked at a traditional morning meeting because I could never make 20 to 30 minutes fit into my content blocks, especially when I was departmentalized and taught multiple groups a day.

Emily Upton
I was always trying to find little mini ways to incorporate SEL into all of my different groups of students that I saw. So I’m going to share with you four different ways to incorporate SEL into your day without taking up a bunch of time.

Emily Upton
The first way to do that is setting a weekly classical. This could be something that you need to work on as a class like too much blurting out, or it could be something related to make your school community a better place like random acts of kindness, or a strategy, like a calm down strategy for when you’re feeling angry or frustrated.

Emily Upton
So each Monday my class and I would set a goal together, and then we would check in on our progress throughout the week. Sometimes that would be a quick thumbs up or thumbs down ratings of how we were doing individually with our goal. Sometimes we would turn and talk to make a plan for a random act of kindness that day, or to share a strategy that we use when we were frustrated the previous day.

Emily Upton
This would take five minutes or less, and help us all work towards a common goal, which really fostered a sense of community. If the goal was measurable, like reducing blurts to five times a class period, we would track our progress each day. And at the end of the week, my students could earn a mini reward, like 10 minutes of computer time, or sitting next to a friend, if we met our goal.

Emily Upton
They love this. And it really helped us to focus on one specific thing that we can improve each week.

Emily Upton
Another super quick thing that you can do each day as part of a morning meeting is focus on one social emotional learning trait of the week. So for focusing on calming down, we’re feeling angry, we would quickly practice a different strategy each day.

Emily Upton
Or sometimes we would look at a famous quote that related to a trait we were focusing on. Or sometimes I chose traits based on things that we need to work on. Sometimes I let our schools SEL curriculum guide us depending on what we need to work on that week.

Emily Upton
My third tip is don’t underestimate the power of a weekly check in every Friday, my students would fill out a quick Google Form to tell me how they were doing both inside and outside of the classroom. I would ask questions like How are you feeling today? How do you think you did in math this week? Tell me something that happened outside of school this week, then they could decide if they wanted a response for me.

Emily Upton
I would type a quick note back to them, print it and have it on their desk on Monday mornings. This build a relationship between us. And it gave my students a way to reach out to me to let me know they were having a peer conflict or if something happened at home that they were embarrassed to talk about. Or if they were stressed about the math topic we were learning that week.

Emily Upton
My fourth tip and my absolute favorite way to build classroom community and work in SEL every day is by using a strategic daily question. I’ve always started my class with a quick get to know your question to build community. But I realized that I could tailor these questions to fit in a quick SEL lesson. I build these into my daily slides and as soon as my students enter the room, they were excited about reading the questions and discussing their answers.

Emily Upton
I started having us focus on whatever trait we were working on each week as well. I would incorporate questions like would you rather responding to social situations I noticed in the classroom or the playground, or debating deeper questions like Is it ever okay to lie? I found that giving my students five or 10 minutes to share about these topics each day really set the tone.

Emily Upton
In fact, I’ve created an entire year worth of daily questions to help you incorporate SEL and build community. Each week focuses on a different trait. And each day follows a different theme.

Emily Upton
Make up your mind Monday is when students take aside an SEL related situation. Tuesday is talking about traits Tuesday, where students dive deep into one of the character traits that we’re focusing on. Would you rather Wednesday is a fun would you rather question to build community? Think about it Thursday, where students apply the trade of that week. And on Friday, we had a fun fact with a fun question related to that.

Emily Upton
I found this to be the perfect mix of fun and serious questions to guide my class discussion every morning. If you want to grab two weeks free, you can head to tinyurl.com/tlapseo. You can also click the link below.

Emily Upton
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen, I hope these tips help. Feel free to follow me over on Instagram at @teachlikeapangolin for even more time saving tips for upper elementary teachers.

Emily
Thank you, Emily for sharing that tip with us. I love the idea of setting weekly class goals. That’s so great for your classroom community to all be working toward a common goal each week.

Heidi
And I love that idea of having your students complete a check in form every Friday, just to let you know how they’re feeling about things and if they have any concerns or worries that you should know about. That’s such a great way to build student relationships.

Emily
Be sure to check out more from Emily at Teach Like a Pangolin.

Heidi
That’s it for today’s episode, try turning your desk backwards. And remember Emily’s teacher approved tip to incorporate more social emotional learning into your daily routines.