Heidi: This is episode 234 of Teacher Approved.
You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping
educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I'm
Heidi.
Emily: And I'm Emily. We're the creators behind Second Story
Window, where we give research based and teacher approved
strategies that make teaching less stressful and more
effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from
each episode at secondstorywindow.net.
Heidi: We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to
the show.
Emily: Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's
episode, we're laying out a plan for how to stay on top of your
December essentials and still find time to prep for January,
and we're sharing all of our best tips for work packet
success.
Heidi: But let's start with a try it tomorrow, where we share
a quick win that you can try in your classroom right away. So
Emily, what do we have this week?
Emily: Tomorrow, invite your students to write a quick thank
you note. It can be to a classmate, another teacher, a
school staff member, or even to themselves.
Heidi: I love that. You can keep it simple. You know, just fold
up a piece of paper and let them write one or two sentences. The
act of showing appreciation helps kids slow down, reflect
and connect with others.
Emily: It's such a great way to infuse a little more gratitude
into the day. And bonus, it only takes two minutes.
Heidi: If you like this idea or anything else we share here on
the podcast, would you take a second and give us a five star
rating? Ratings and reviews are one way that new listeners find
us, so every one is actually a huge help to us.
Emily: December in the classroom is a strange mix of joy and
chaos. On one hand, there's so much to love about this time of
year, the excitement, the traditions, the sparkle in the
kids eyes. Being a teacher in December can be so much fun.
Heidi: But on the other hand, you're juggling performances,
assemblies, half days, absences, and a level of collective energy
that makes you wonder if someone filled the water fountain with
Red Bull.
Emily: In the past, maybe you've tried white knuckling your way
through lessons while half the class is absent and the other
half is bouncing off the walls, or maybe you just gave up
entirely.
Heidi: But there is a smarter way to approach December, one
that keeps students engaged, protects your sanity and
actually set you up for an easier January.
Emily: That's what we're talking about today, how to plan content
that works with the realities of teaching children in December.
Heidi: So if you joined us last week, you'll remember that we
shared the smooth December framework to help you get ready
for January. Instead of trying to prep it all, focus on four
specific things: your pockets of prep, your classroom reset plan,
your student engagement hook, and your teacher comfort plan.
Emily: If you missed that episode, definitely go back and
check it out, because it lays the groundwork for what we'll be
diving into today. Now that you've identified your pockets
of prep, we'll make a plan for using them to tackle your
December tasks.
Heidi: And planning December starts with an important
decision. When are you going to stop teaching new content? We
call this, cleverly enough, your stop new content date, and it's
basically what it sounds like. It's the last day that you'll
introduce anything new to your students before winter break.
Emily: Despite what your pacing guide may say, at some point in
December, teaching new content really just stops being
productive because kids are too distracted and the absences are
too frequent.
Heidi: And then you end up reteaching everything in January
anyway, which means you aren't actually saving time by pushing
through. You're just creating more work for yourself.
Emily: So how do you figure out when that stopping point should
be? A good rule of thumb is to plan to stop teaching new
content about two to four school days before your winter break
starts.
Heidi: Now to figure out your specific day, ask yourself a few
questions. First, what is your last full week of school? That's
probably when you want to wrap up any new units.
Emily: Second, when do interruptions start piling up?
If you've got concerts, assemblies or parties scheduled,
those are likely to eat up a lot of your instructional time.
Heidi: And third, which units absolutely must be finished
before break? You might have to teach double math lessons for a
day or two so that you're not starting January already behind,
but that is doable.
Emily: So take a look at what has to happen before the end of
the month, and work backwards from there. Then choose your
official stop teaching new content date and write it in
your planner. Circle it and make it official.
Heidi: That's the finish line. Everything before that date,
you're covering your regular content. Everything after that
date, you are in a different mode.
Emily: And that shift is where the magic happens, because once
you're past that date, your goal isn't to teach new material,
it's to reinforce, review, and reset.
Heidi: This time of year, your schedule is as full of
interruptions as Swiss cheese is full of holes, and that's why we
call these Swiss cheese weeks.
Emily: We did have a cute name for that. Those are the weeks
where there's a regular day of school planned, but the day is
anything but regular.
Heidi: And you know that makes planning really tricky. You
can't pretend it's business as usual, but you also can't just
throw everything out the window.
Emily: Because you just aren't going to have the same amount of
instructional time that you normally do, you need a clear
picture of what's essential. Take a look at your pacing
guide, your scope and sequence, and anything else that informs
your planning. What content absolutely has to be covered
before you start winter break?
Heidi: These are your must do's. This is what has to be done
before you hit your stop new content date. When time gets
short or your kids are distracted, focus on the must
do's and be flexible with everything else. Knowing what
you absolutely have to cover helps you recognize where you
can make a cut without getting completely behind.
Emily: Of course, no matter how well you plan, the day can still
go off the rails if student behavior does too. So next week
we will talk about how to keep expectations alive and your
classroom running smoothly all the way to break.
Heidi: Okay, are you with us so far? You have now identified
your stop new content date, you've got a strategy for
covering essential content. And now the big question, what do
you actually do during those last few days before break if
you're not going to teach any new content?
Emily: So those days are for review, reflection, and reset.
Plan as many independent activities as your students can
handle, and look for ways to limit how much time you have to
spend teaching whole group or small group lessons.
Heidi: Obviously, this is not a long term plan. Your students do
need lessons, but two days before a break, is another math
lesson really gonna make the difference in their achievement
this year?
Emily: No, I think not. In fact, it may make things harder,
because your class will be checked out, and trying to force
them to focus will lead to resistance and behavior problems
and resentment and reteaching later, all the stuff they didn't
absorb. So adopt a Plan B schedule and make everyone's
life happier.
Heidi: Now, to be clear, this is not about time filler. You're
not wasting learning opportunities. You're just
restructuring how that learning happens. Think review
worksheets, games, digital practice or educational videos.
This is the time to revisit everything that you have covered
in the last four months.
Emily: One of my favorite meaningful time fillers was
setting up stations and having kids rotate through all the math
games that they had learned this year. It got kids moving, it
gave them a chance to review, and I got to sneak in a little
pocket of prep for my own tasks.
Heidi: You can also use these post new content days to refresh
procedures. By December, some of your routines have probably
gotten a little sloppy. Tighten these up now so that you can hit
the ground running when you return in January.
Emily: Also consider if you want to reset your class jobs,
reorganize your classroom library, or have kids clean out
their desks, because future you will be so grateful to walk into
a tidy, organized classroom in January.
Heidi: And you know, our favorite thing is helping out a
future you. And in your planning, don't forget some
joyful structure. These are activities that feel festive and
special, but they are still structured and calm. Work
packets are one of our favorite forms of joyful structure, and
we will talk about those in our teacher approved tip, but also
consider seasonal read alouds, kindness challenges or simple
art projects.
Emily: The goal is to sprinkle in some seasonal spark while
still keeping the structure high and preventing overwhelm.
Heidi: Okay, let's pull everything together so you know
exactly what to do next. Step one, identify your stop, new
content date and put it on the calendar. That's your finish
line. Everything before that date is new learning. Everything
after that date is for review, reflection, and reset.
Emily: Step two, figure out your December must do's. These are
the lessons and assessments you absolutely need to finish before
that date.
Heidi: Inside the December teacher survival kit, there are
two pages to help you with this. One is the December content to
cover page, and that's where you list all of the lessons,
activities and assessments that you would like to teach. And
then, based on that list, you create your must do's and could
do's page.
Emily: That step alone is a game changer, because it helps you
see what really matters and what can wait until January.
Heidi: Step three is to make a list of meaningful activities
for those post content days. Think review, projects, or calm
seasonal activities that your students can do independently.
And there's a page for this in the survival kit too. It's
organized by categories like review, learning games and
videos, so that you can gather all of your ideas in one place.
Emily: In these last few days before the break, plan as many
independent activities as your students can handle. This is how
you get ahead without adding to your stress. While your students
are busy doing their independent work, you've created a little
pocket of prep time where you can tackle your independent
work, meaning all the tasks it takes to wrap up December and
plan the start of January.
Heidi: Step four is to make a master list of all of the tasks
needed to plan and prepare your December content, your
meaningful time fillers, and the first few days back in January.
The list will be long, but don't worry, our next step is our
secret weapon. Step five is to use your pockets of prep
planner.
Emily: This is the key to the whole system, and here's why.
The pockets of prep planner helps you match every task to
your situation. It's organized around where you are working:
digital tasks, classroom tasks, workroom tasks, and by how much
time and energy you have.
Heidi: Now, obviously you could do this with just a piece of
paper if you don't have the survival kit, but the survival
kit has cool drop down menus so you can quickly tag each task
based on priority and the effort that it requires to complete.
Emily: Yeah, it's a pain to fill it out, but this sheet is the
most teacher approved of all our teacher approved tips. We cannot
overstate how helpful this is. Let's say your students are
watching a short video. You've got 15 minutes, you're in your
classroom and you're running on low energy. You open your list
and see create January welcome slides. Boom, that's the perfect
15 minute low energy classroom based task for that moment.
Heidi: Without that list, you're going to be spending your
limited pocket of prep thinking, oh, what should I do now? But
this way, you can just look at your list. You can see exactly
what fits the moment. No decision fatigue, no wasted
minutes and no wondering what's important. You just pick, do,
and move on.
Emily: And truly, those small moments add up. A 10 minute
pocket here, a 15 minute pocket there, that's how you're going
to make real progress without working nights or weekends or
winter break.
Heidi: Yes. So let's recap. Step one, pick your stop new content
date. Step two, decide your December must do's. Step three,
plan meaningful time fillers. Step four, make your December to
do list. Step five, plug those tasks into your pockets of prep
planner.
Emily: Follow these steps and you will walk out in December
knowing that everything for January is ready to go, and that
winter break actually gets to be a stress free break.
Heidi: So now you've got a full plan for how to get through
December with your sanity intact. But before we wrap up,
we want to leave you with one final reminder. The reason that
all of this matters.
Emily: This isn't just about checklists and planners. It's
about protecting your future self. As you're planning your
December, keep in mind what future you needs. What would
make walking into your classroom in January feel calm instead of
chaotic?
Heidi: Maybe it's having a stack of January materials already
copied and waiting in that January ready bin that you
prepared last week. Maybe it's making sure all of the December
decorations are taken down before you leave. Or maybe it's
clearing the stack of papers on your counter so your room feels
fresh and organized.
Emily: Use those last few days strategically. While kids are
working on their goal setting activity, you're gathering books
for your next read aloud. While they're doing a work packet,
you're setting up your January math slides.
Heidi: Small bits of prep now save you so much stress later.
Future You deserves to walk into January feeling ready, not
behind.
Emily: We'd love to hear how you're preparing for teaching in
December. Come join the conversation in our Teacher
Approved Facebook group.
Now for our Teacher Approved Tip of the Week, where we share an
actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and
simplify the rest. This week's teacher approved tip is prepare
some work packets. Tell us about it, Heidi.
Heidi: A work packet is exactly what it sounds like, a
collection of worksheets stapled together, but the magic is in
how you put it together and how you present it to your class.
Emily: And look, I can hear some eye rolls out there.
Heidi: That's a skill.
Emily: This is our unpopular opinion. Work packets are not
all wrong, and they may sound like boring, busy work. But hear
us out, because when you do them right, kids genuinely love them.
Heidi: And we're not exaggerating, they do get
excited.
Emily: Yes.
Heidi: So let's start with what goes in a work packet. The focus
should be on reviewing academic content, but you want to
sprinkle in a few just for fun pages to keep the kids engaged.
A packet can be any size, but we have found that 12 page packets
are really ideal. So you would maybe have four pages of festive
math review, four pages of language arts review and four
pages of fun.
Emily: That amount of work easily keeps students busy for
90 minutes to two hours. But, and this is the important part,
don't try to do it all in one sitting. The first work session
can be longer because the interest is really high. So you
could maybe do 30 to 40 minutes in one go. But after that, 20
minute stretches are about as long as kids can manage before
they need a break.
Heidi: And the longer you're doing a packet, you might need
to, like, make those stretches a little bit shorter.
Emily: Yeah.
Heidi: So here's how this might look in your day. After your
morning routine, you introduce the work packet, and you give
kids 30 or 35 minutes to work on it, and then you know, you take
a break for recess.
Emily: When they come back, you could do another 15 minutes of
work. And then you do something different, a video, a read
aloud, a movement break, and then later in the day, you give
them another 20 minutes to keep working on their packets.
Heidi: Now let's talk about how to make your work packet feel
special instead of like a punishment. First try organizing
it around a theme. It could be something as broad as winter or
December, or something more specific, like gingerbread or
penguins.
Emily: The content on each page doesn't have to be about the
theme. You could have a page of two digit subtraction practice,
but if there's a snowman graphic on the page, it feels festive
and fun.
Heidi: Yeah, clip art makes it all exciting. Besides giving it
a theme, mix up the content. Alternate between math, language
arts and fun pages so that it doesn't feel like a workbook.
Emily: And third, leverage the power of choice. When you
introduce the packet to your class, make a big deal about
this. You get to decide what order you work in. You can start
wherever you want and do the pages in any order.
Heidi: Kids feel so much more invested when they have control
over their work. That simple choice transforms this whole
experience.
Emily: Now, if there is a specific page you need everyone
to complete, like, maybe you want to use one page for a
grade, you can include that in the directions, like everyone
needs to do the multiplication practice on page three. But
after that, you can do the pages in any order.
Heidi: And here is our copy saving tip. Reduce your master
pages to 50% and then copy two activities onto one page. Now,
if you run those copies double sided, you can fit four
activities onto a single sheet of paper.
Emily: And obviously that does reduce the amount of room for
writing, and we've done this successfully with students as
young as second grade, but if you teach first grade or
kindergarten, you might want to test out the reduced page size
first. In second grade, I feel like some of them enjoy the
challenge of having to write in these tiny little spaces.
Heidi: The beauty of work packets is that they are
engaging for students, and they give you time to work. While
your class is quietly reviewing two digit addition and solving
winter themed word searches, you can be preparing materials for
January, organizing your classroom and tackling anything
else on that pockets of prep list.
Emily: It's a total win win. Students are doing meaningful
review work, and you're getting ahead instead of falling behind.
So if you're looking for a simple, low stress way to fill
some of that post content time in December, give work packets a
try. Your students might surprise you with how much they
enjoy them.
To wrap up the show, we're sharing what we're giving extra
credit to this week. Emily, what get your extra credit?
I'm giving extra credit to the coconut milk bath soak from
Herbivore.
Heidi: Okay.
Emily: Listen, this stuff is not cheap. In fact, I've had two
jars of this for years that I've been hoarding because it's too
special. I didn't want to just use it on any old bath. But I
finally decided that was stupid, because they were literally
getting dusty. I'm like, I'm going to use them. I'm just
going to use them. And then I figured I'd use it up, and then
forget all about it. But the bad news is that it actually is
amazing, and now I want to buy more. But it smells incredible
and it makes your skin feel so soft. So put this on a splurge
list for yourself, or a really nice gift for a bath loving
friend. And I just saw it's on a lightning deal on Amazon, so I'm
gonna have to go grab a couple more jars.
Heidi: Yeah, that's a good idea. And think about how you might
want to pamper yourself during winter break. Everyone deserves
a long, luxurious bath, so might want to grab those.
Emily: That's why I'm sharing it right now. I figured it would be
good for self care or a really good gift idea.
Heidi: Perfect.
Emily: Check it out. Link's in the show notes. What are you
giving extra credit to, Heidi?
Heidi: I guess this is self care, but it's much less
exciting. I'm giving extra credit to the Nexcare max hold
waterproof bandages.
Emily: Ooh, la, la.
Heidi: And that's a mouthful to say. I will put a link to them
in the show notes. But if you are at the store and you're
looking at the all of the bandages, these ones have black
writing on the front of the box that says max hold. And they
definitely live up to the name. It says they hold for up to 48
hours, but literally, after 48 hours, I had to get out my
sharpest little craft scissors and do Band Aid surgery to get
it off. Like I just couldn't peel up any of the edges. They
were too secure. But the thing is, this hasn't given me any
kind of allergic reaction that I normally get from wearing band
aids for a long time. And I actually did try switching over
to regular band aids, and by the end of the day, half my leg was
covered in hives, so.
Emily: It's the worst.
Heidi: If you have a need for waterproof band aids, definitely
grab a box of bees. I have been very impressed.
Emily: Well, I'll have to add them to the stash.
Heidi: That is it for today's episode. Figure out your stop
new content date and work backwards from there. You have
got this.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm Heidi.
Emily: And I'm Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow
or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an
episode.
Heidi: You can connect with us and other teachers in the
Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week.
Bye for now.
Emily: Bye.