How to Organize Early Finishers for Elementary
What do you do when a student finishes their work early? Having early finishers ready at hand for your elementary students will make your life as an elementary teacher so much more easy. It's good to establish the routine at the start of the school year and have early finishers ready for your elementary students. There are many different ways to organize your early finishers for your students and in this blog post I will be giving you tips for using early finishers with your elementary students as well as sharing some of my favourite early finisher activities to use with my students in my classroom.
Early Finishers
Early finishers are students who complete classroom tasks or assignments more quickly than their peers. These students often find themselves with extra time while others are still working.
Purpose of Early Finisher Activities in the Classroom
Maximize Learning Time
Instead of sitting idle, early finishers can engage in meaningful, enriching tasks that continue their learning without disrupting others.
Encourage Independent Thinking
Early finisher activities give students a chance to explore topics independently, solve problems creatively, or apply skills in new ways.
Prevent Disruptions
When students have structured options for what to do next, they're less likely to distract classmates who are still working.
Challenge Advanced Learners
These activities can be designed to extend learning, offering more complexity or depth for students who need additional challenges.
Promote Student Choice
A menu of early finisher options allows students to choose tasks that interest them, building autonomy and engagement. It’s good to a have a variety of early finishers for students to choose from. This will allow them to be engaged and not bored.
Reinforce Key Skills
You can use this time to reinforce concepts, practice skills, or integrate cross-curricular connections in a low-pressure way.
Ways to Organize Early Finishers in Your Classroom
Have a Menu
This is something very easy you can make. You can also switch your early finisher menu every week or every month just to keep the early finisher activities fresh for your students so that they don't get bored.
Your menu can be like a visual bingo for younger students that might include pictures of different activities they could do for example coloring, drawing building with Lego math, worksheets, reading, a book, etc.
The activities should be simple for students to do and they should be able to complete the activity without interrupting you. This allows you to have more one-on-one time with students who need help and it gives students who finish early a sense of independence and choice.
Have Student Folders
You can create folders or duotangs, even binders. Each student can have their own folder, and you can put in different early finisher activities in their folder. This is great for older students as well as younger students because it allows the students to work on skills that need practice or reinforcement. It also allows you to individualize early finisher activities for your elementary students.
If one student needs more practice with writing, they can have extra writing worksheets in their early finisher folder and if one student needs more math practice, they might have extra math worksheets in there.
What's great about the early finisher folders is it allows you to have control and you can incorporate extra worksheets and practices related to the units that students are working on whether they are working on fractions for money you can tailor the specific math unit for that student.
Not only can you use these folders when a student has finished their work early, but you could choose to use these folders as a warning routine and have students work on pages in these folders when they first arrive and they are waiting to start their day. This is also a really handy routine to have in place when you are absent and students have a sub.
Have a Bin
Similar to a folder, you might have a bin of different activities. You can use different hanging file folders and have your early finishers organized in the hanging files. There might be some early finishers that are more fun like drawing and art based early finishers and then there might be other early finishers that are geared towards math, reading, writing, science, etc..
This gives students choice and you might say certain days of the week they need to select an early finisher from a particular folder in the bin. For example, on Mondays, they do math early finishers, on Tuesdays they do science early finishers, on Wednesdays, they do writing early finishers, on Thursdays they do reading early finishers, and Friday is fun Friday where they do an art early finisher activity.
Early Finishers I Like Using With My Students
Symmetry Drawing
I love symmetry drawing because it incorporates both math and art to allow students to practice their drawing skills and improve their observational drawing. Plus I have created lots of themes, which makes it very fun to engage students. Click on the buttons to save 30% off of my symmetry drawing bundles.
Silent Reading
Students spend a lot of time on the screen and I really believe it's important for students to foster a love of reading and read actual books. Incorporating silent reading is really important and also just creates a nice quiet and calm classroom so having a variety of books in your classroom is really key and having time during the day for students to read and allowing them to read in different spaces around the classroom and not just at their desk so that they are feeling like some company is also great for this.
Math Worksheets
I like having different math work sheets printed out for students to practice their skills. You can also do lots of different math games. There's lots of games available online that use decks of cards or dice.
Creative Writing
I love giving students the freedom to do creative writing whether they want to write their own short story, or do some poetry. They can do this in a writing book and older kids can use a computer if they have access to that.
Typing Practice for Grades 4 and Up
Typing is a very important skill in today's society and often there is not time to properly teach students how to type. There are lots of different free, typing games or free, typing websites online and having this time for students to practice their typing and Bill typing skills is really important.
If you have younger students, you could also use early finisher time to practice printing, or for students to learn how to hand write, as there is often not time in the curriculum for this.
Spelling Practice
Elementary students need time to practice their spelling words. I like having weekly spelling words, and having different students working on different words based on their reading and writing skills, and where they are at spelling. I have created some spelling art work sheets that make practising spelling words more fun for students in grades 2 to 5. You can click here to check them out.
Art Activities
Art activities are a fun early finisher to do especially when it's near the holidays or if you want to incorporate a fun Friday into your weekly classroom routine.
Here are some of my favourites:
FREE Symmetry Drawing for Grades 4+
Conclusion:
As you can see, there are lots of different early finisher options to use with your elementary students in your classroom. There are also lots of different ways to organize early finishers. Make sure you are choosing a way that suits your classroom needs best as well as your teaching style. If you have any questions about early finishers, just comment below on this blog post!
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