Building Student Responsibility: Classroom Jobs

This week has been full of meetings and I am absolutely wiped out! There is still a lot to be done in my classroom, but I am anxious to share my newest addition: Classroom Jobs (in chevron, of course!):

I am in love with these guys! This year, I am really looking forward to having each student have a job and stay responsible for it for around two weeks.

In the past, I would switch jobs every week and I felt that was a bit too fast for my students. With two weeks, there is plenty of time for them to develop the responsibility and ownership of the job and become a bit of an "expert" at it before we switch again. It was also easier for me to keep track-- with kids switching every week, I could never remember who was supposed to be doing what. I ended up calling up last week's Line Leader or even the week before's-- it was a mess ;)

In the past, I have also only had a few jobs and only a few kids helping each week. While that was easier for me to remember (can you sense I have a memory problem during the craziness of the school year!?), I really want to focus this year on including and involving all kiddos. Pairing this with the longer job time will hopefully be the perfect combination to help build leaders and further develop our 7 Habits work in class. Plus, we're becoming a Leader in Me School this year, so the more I can incorporate leadership and proactivity, the better!

Here's the finished board on the side whiteboard in my class:

You can see number magnets to represent my students. I do that every year and kids use that number on everything-- makes paperwork and fire drills, plus lining up and now classroom jobs that much easier! I picked these up from Etsy, but my friend Elizabeth in Fun in Room 4B has an easy-peasy tutorial to make your own HERE.

Now, every two weeks, I can switch magnets to their new jobs-- there are 32 possible jobs, but I am only going to be using 22, so there will be a few kids "On Vacation" each week.

Here is the list of the jobs, as well as the three choices of headers:

To see this more clearly, click the image and download the "Preview" from my TpT Store.

I am very excited about this system, which brings me to how each student will choose a job. Because we will be talking about developing leadership habits and responsibility all year long, I want them to choose a job they want, will remember to do, and I want them to mix it up throughout the year-- I don't want the same kiddo to be Technology Support all year, for example.

So, that leads me to a challenge for this year. I envision a few ways that I will have kids choose new jobs every two weeks:

• filling out a form
• speaking aloud to tell the class why he/she will be a good fit for the job
• writing a persuasive piece
• and ???

I am excited to see the different forms this will take and how it will play out-- I will certainly share along the way what worked and what didn't, especially with the leadership focus and the emphasis on everyone helping out the classroom in some way. Exciting!

If you're interested in these jobs, they are available in my TpT Store HERE or by clicking the picture below. They match the rest of my chevron decor, of course, and there's even an editable (text-only) card for you to add your own in case it's not already listed.

Thanks and happy week ahead!