Teacher Time-Savers: Planning, Grading & Managing Social Studies Efficiently

Kirsten 0:09

This is the social studies teacher podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm Kirsten at the southern teach, an educator and mom who is passionate about all things social studies. I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement. So let's dive in together.

Kirsten 0:47

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher podcast. Hopefully you had a wonderful weekend, and if you might have celebrated Easter, I hope you had a wonderful Easter or if you had a day off, hopefully you had a great Friday off. I am excited to tackle something every teacher struggles with, and that is time management. I am like going to be the first to raise my hand that I have not been the best at managing time, as far as like getting places on time and leaving on time even, it's something that is always been a struggle for me, and something I've had to really, really think a lot about, because when we think about it, between the lesson planning and the grading, managing the classroom, and actually teaching, it often feels like there just isn't enough time or hours in the day. But the good news is that there are some strategies that I've been able to use that I want to share with you to help save time without sacrificing quality instruction. So today I'm going to be sharing seven time saving tips for planning and grading and managing social studies efficiently so that you can spend less time on paperwork and more time engaging with your students.

Kirsten 2:03

All right. So we are going to start right into the seven teacher time savers. The first tip I have is to batch your lesson planning. So if you feel like you're constantly scrambling to prep for the next day's lesson, it's time to try batch planning. Instead of planning for one lesson at a time. Try planning for a full week or month or an entire unit at once, if you feel a little ambitious. Set aside one day, and I usually used the Tuesday or Wednesday - I would plan for the following week on the Tuesday or Wednesday of that week - to outline all your lessons, put it in your lesson planning place that you like to use, whether it's on paper or it's online or in a Google Doc. I would also make copies for the following week, on a Thursday or Friday. So I plan for the week. It's, let's say, this week and then next week I need to plan for whatever it is. So Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm planning that, writing it out. And by Thursday, Friday, I've already started making copies for next week. It's been super helpful. And by Friday afternoon, I'm set for next week. I don't have to worry about it. I can leave on time. Another tip I have with this is using a template for lesson plans to keep things consistent and cut down on repetitive planning. So just consistently as a template, don't try to change it up like I did, like I got bored of it and decided to change it up. I recommend sticking with it for the year. Change it during the summer if you want to do something new with it. But with this, you will have no more last minute scrambles. You can just tweak your plans as needed throughout the week, and you're good to go. So just planning for the week, or you can be a little bit more ambitious, depending on what subject you teach and do the whole month or unit, but definitely a full week ahead.

Kirsten 3:56

The second tip I have is to reuse and adapt resources. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. I recommend using digital curriculum resources such as a TPT bundle you have or Google Drive template to build a resource bank that you can reuse every year. I always had a USB drive with labeled folders of the different resources for each subject, such as social studies and reading and vocabulary and writing. And at the very beginning of my teacher career, I will say what didn't work. I tried to keep every single paper copy I could. So I always had the master copies, and I tried to put them in file folders, but that quickly got so overwhelming and I could never - I always had a stack of master copies that I had to file and never got to and then eventually, our school, a few years later, was completely totaled in the flood that we had, Hurricane Harvey, and so I couldn't even go back to it. All those paper copies were gone and I could never retrieve them. I recommend digital copies on a USB drive. And I also recommend keeping multiple USB drives with backups, just in case - you never know where a USB drive is going to go or if it gets damaged as far as like using it too much. Another thing I have with this is to modify old lessons instead of creating new ones from scratch, just updating the activities or adding fresh examples. And if you're able to try automating the handouts and slides you might have with tools like Canva or Google Slides templates to save time on recreating documents. A few minutes per lesson can add up to hours saved over the course of the school year. If you're able to digitally organize your files and reuse and adapt the resources you really loved or your students loved, maybe trash the ones you don't really like or have been outdated. And if you're looking for actual curriculum, digital curriculum resources that I think you could definitely use over and over again. You should check out my curriculum bundles for third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade.

Kirsten 6:21

Number three for teacher time savers is to use self grading quizzes. Grading stacks of quizzes by hand? No thank you - at least not all the time. Just one thing you could try to do is digitize your quizzes by using Google Forms or quizziz to create self grading assessments. You're just setting up the questions and answer choices in the answer key, and you send it to your students to complete, you know, making sure they are putting in their name and email address or whatever you're requiring. They complete the quiz online, and it will automatically score their answers with instant results, so that's always great. You can decide to show them the results, or you can decide to hide it and show it to them later. And for short answer questions, you could always set up auto feedback to guide students toward the corrections without needing to grade every response manually. So this is great, could save time, cut the late night grading sessions, and cut the time for you to have to grade things. Your quizzes will grade themselves. There's also programs, let's say, if you're on Schoology, you could create a quiz on Schoology. So maybe a platform you already have through your district, you can utilize that and just making that super easy for you and potentially your students.

Kirsten 7:45

All right. Number four, grading assignments efficiently. So there will be times where we will just have to grade things that are on paper, and that is totally normal, but I have a few tips on how to make this more efficient when we can't always have self grading quizzes, ideally, as we would like. So what you could do is number one using a simple rubric, where it helps you grade faster, give students specific feedback without writing long comments. I always loved rubrics because I could actually circle which bucket they might fit in, like, if there are three and I had a specific sentence or a couple of sentences within that, I could just circle 3 4 4 3 2 so they could read the specific feedback of you know why I might have scored them a three on organization or a two on spelling, or whatever it might be. And then, of course, if you have something with extra comments, you could always add anything you need to, but it's a lot easier than having to write long paragraphs of feedback. And then also batching your grading. So instead of switching tasks, you can try grading one page in a stack at a time. So thinking about grading all of page one on the same assessment in your pile, and maybe there's three multiple choice questions, the same three answers, and you're looking for those same three answers, ABC, ABC, ABC. And what I would do is I would write how many that person missed at the bottom of each page, then I would go on to the next page. So after I grade all of page one, I tally up how many is missed on that page, I now move the stack to page two. It actually goes faster, and it's kind of very - it's so repetitive because you remember those answers on that page for that period of time. It kind of helps, you know, really, really hyper focus on one thing, rather than to go from one to 20 and then start over at one again. So you can try that and see how it goes. Another thing you could think about is grading the same type of activity at a time, so grading all the essays in one sitting, or grading all the exit tickets another time and just keeping it compartmentalized. So that's just one way to make it a little bit more efficient. And also using verbal feedback. Instead of writing tons of comments, try using a tool like moat, which is a Google extension, it's for free, to leave quick voice notes and feedback on digital assignments. So this can shape hours of grading time every month, just by being a little bit more efficient with grading assignments that are on paper.

All right. Number five, streamlining Social Studies stations and group work. So if your social studies instruction feels chaotic or just it's just something that's like it's getting to be that time of year, you can try simplifying your classroom structure. Try setting up stations with pre planned activities like reading passages or map work, primary source analysis is another great one, and students are rotating independently while you are monitoring. You could also use student led groups with clearly defined roles, so that students are taking ownership of discussions instead of relying on you to lead everything. And another idea with this is having go to routines for stations, so maybe 10 minute rotations or exit ticket reflections to make those transitions a little bit more seamless. So you can try instead of your typical lecture with notes, maybe that's getting a little bit dull, or maybe it's just, you know, not working with your specific class for this year, you could try something where you've got social studies stations similar to ELA stations or map stations or something like that, and you can have them kind of rotate and learn about the same topic or similar topic, and they're being able to rotate and learn about that information. Or it's just something you do maybe once every couple of weeks, just to kind of help as far as maybe you need to catch up on some stuff, and you might need to re teach something to students.

All right. Number six, using AI and tech tools. So AI and Ed Tech can cut your workload in half when you use it strategically. Thinking about AI lesson planning tools like magic school AI or chatgpt, this can help create lesson plans and writing prompts and rubrics in just seconds. You put in what you need, and it'll output something that'll help you get started thinking about it. And also there's ed tech tools like Near Pod that can let you add pre made interactive lessons. It'll engage students without extra prep. And also, just thinking about utilizing Google Classroom, if that's something you use, setting up digital assignments with pre scheduled due dates, so everything is organized ahead of time. So with the use of technology and AI tools, it'll help you with less manual prep, grading and organization, and you'll be able to let technologies do some of the work for you. I have an episode, actually, last week's episode, if you want to go back to that, if you haven't listened, it's episode 96 the future of social studies, how AI and technology are changing the way we teach. It gives information on really great AI tools that you can utilize through the planning phase, teaching phase, whatever you need. I share my eight best AI tools that you can utilize for your classroom. So I highly recommend to listen to that if you haven't already.

All right, the seventh teacher time saver is to set work time limits and stick to them. So this is important. This is something I had to really work at, and still sometimes have to really work at. This is one of the biggest reasons teachers feel overwhelmed, and that's because we are always - our mind is on a motor, always thinking, and we never stop working. So just thinking about setting work hours. So for example, you could commit to stopping grading or stop planning by a certain time, like 430 or four o'clock. No more late nights. That's always a bonus, if you're able to do that. Thinking about the 80/20 rule, where you're focusing on 20% of tasks that had the biggest impact - student engagement could be one, lesson planning, whatever your 20% is, and then anything that is extra or unnecessary, that may not be required or isn't a huge priority, you can let go of. And the third thing I have for this is batching and delegating tasks. So thinking about classroom helpers, student aids that you might have. Let them organize papers, let them prep the materials, let them sort the assignments, let them pass out papers, however it might be, update classroom boards so that you don't have to. I loved having classroom helpers, and a lot of students loved to help out as well. So having those work time limits and sticking to those limits helps avoid burnout and ensures you have a better work life balance. And if you're looking for more tips, I do have a time management resource that I will make sure to link in the show notes so you can check out more of what has worked for me

All right, so let's do a quick recap. The seven time saving strategies we've covered today are batching your lesson planning, number one, plan ahead instead of day to day, number two, reuse and adapt resources, save time by modifying materials instead of making new ones from scratch, number three, using self grading quizzes, let technology to the grading for you, number four, grading assignments efficiently, use rubrics batch grading and voice comments to speed things up, number five, streamline Social Studies stations and group work, use structured stations to minimize teacher workload, number six, using AI and technology tools for social studies, you can automate tasks with AI lesson planning and auto assignments, as well as utilizing technology tools that are super helpful, like Nearpod, number seven, set work time limits and stick to them, stick to your guns, protect your personal time and avoid burnout.

The key takeaway for this episode is that you don't need to spend hours every night planning and grading. By using these time saving strategies, you can get more done in less time and actually enjoy teaching and being an educator. If today's episode has helped you, I would love to hear from you. Send me a message, leave a review or share this episode with a fellow teacher who could use a little extra work life balance or encouragement. Thanks again for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. Until next time, keep making history engaging without overworking yourself. I'll talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I can't wait for you to join me in the next episode for more teacher tips and strategies.