The Brown Bag Teacher

Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change the World.

Classroom Jobs in 1st Grade

Today was a special day in Room 134 – Hiring Day! Today I hired employees of our 22 classroom jobs, and it was very exciting. Classroom jobs give every student their niche and offer a great and specific way to praise students. Plus, classroom jobs keep the classroom running smoothly and keeps the responsibility on my friends. It allows me to focus on relationships, teaching, and planning rather than sharpening pencils and charging technology. I like to wait until Week 3 to send home job applications so my friends have an opportunity to try out several jobs and see their friends in action.

I teach at a Leader in Me school, so all students are expected to fill a Leadership Job in the classroom.  Below is a look at the job descriptions I send home with students. I also carefully explain each job the afternoonI send home applications and make sure every job sounds like THE BEST one. When explaining, my goal is to ensure that every job has an application – ha!

On the back of the job descriptions, I add our job application. I do expect students to fill out the application themselves and send back any applications that are completed by parents. I keep our application very simple – Name, Preferred Job and Reason, a Second Job Choice.
This year I failed in equally pumping up each job (#fail) because I only had 8 jobs requested with Gardener and Librarian being our most-requested jobs. I still filled every job but fewer friends received their top choices this round. I sort the applications by job and the stacks with 1 application automatically receive their jobs – boom! Then, the real struggle begins – the duplicates. With duplicates, I first look at their 2nd preference. If their second preference doesn’t have any applications, they receive that choice. Outside of that, I match personalities to jobs. 

While deciding, I also take into account ‘experience’…

As well as, just-right reasons – ha! 😉

As I choose jobs, I quickly write the chosen jobs on the top of each application. This makes it really easy to announce the jobs to the class. When announcing jobs, I *REALLY* talk up the jobs that were not first-choices…like “These two friends are the ONLY friends who I will teach to sharpen pencils. They will help us learn everyday and will be in charge of collecting and sharpening our learning tools. Without these ladies, we couldn’t learn!” *insert oohhhs and ahhhs* (But really, this works like a charm and the friends who didn’t get their first choice now LOVE their jobs. Another reason, 1st grade is awesome.)

As I announce jobs, I hand applications back to students, and they put the applications in their Leadership Binders.

Over the next few days, the training takes place. Although many of the jobs have been taught before this, I do re-teach every job for the employee. I explicitly teach every procedure because classroom jobs can either be amazing or a total pain. From how many pumps of hand sanitizer, to which button turns on the light (always 3 and never anything else because the lights are WAY to high tech for us) to the stacking order of iPads, students always rise to the occasion of their job!

You can grab our classroom job application here if you’re interested in using it in your own classroom or just looking for some job ideas! (The application isn’t editable at this time  #backtoschoolisexhausting!)

How do you manage jobs in your classroom?  Does every student have a job? How often do you trade jobs? I’d love to hear about your system!

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Comments

  1. Katherine says

    I have 30 students and 8 jobs. I would love to introduce more jobs in the future, but this is what works right now! We switch jobs every Monday morning and I write down when each student has a turn to ensure that every student gets to have every job by the end of the year.
    Our jobs are: line leader, door holder, teacher's assistant, librarian, custodian, gardener, zoo keeper (feeds our class fish), and calendar helper. Zoo keeper and teacher's assistant are the favorites.
    I will probably add a tech job once we introduce iPads.

    Reply

    • Kate says

      Trading jobs every week?! Bless you! I feel like it take 2-3 weeks for a student to perfect his/her job – ha. We trade every 9 weeks. I love your title of 'Zoo Keeper', so much fun!

      Reply

    • Katherine says

      My jobs are pretty basic. If I introduced more complicated jobs such as someone to file student papers, I would definitely need to keep the jobs for longer!
      I may have to rethink this for next year though. It would be nice to have jobs that actually help me…

      Reply

  2. Brandon Reynolds says

    Thank you for sharing! I usually have about 20 – 25 jobs! I try to have 1 no more than 3 people with 2 jobs to show others that multi-tasking is possible! When someone asks can than have that second job I always ask can they handle it! Some instantly realize that they can handle such a task and others tell me that they want to try to master their primary job before they take on a second job!

    Reply

  3. Lauren says

    I love the classroom jobs. Have you done a post about how you organize leadership notebooks? My school just started using them this year and I feel like I never know what to put in them. Love you blog (:

    Reply

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