Classroom Jobs

Do you have classroom jobs for your students to do? Honestly, I used to just have 1 leader of the day and a caboose. The leader would be our line leader and do all the jobs and the caboose would watch the secret walker. Easy peasy and honestly switching jobs just seemed like a waste of time. Talking with a coworker about her plants and I said that I would probably forget, and she said it is a job in her classroom. Then I realized that I had easy jobs because I didn’t want to keep training kids, but also, I had a lot of jobs I had to do during the day because of it. So, I decided to try it last year and I have loved it!

Why should you have jobs?

I have jobs that help out in my classroom. You might need different jobs depending on what you are doing in your room. I change jobs each month. Students are allowed to SAVE and not take a job, then the next month they get to pick before students that just had a job. I also do not let students pick the same job twice in a row. When we switch jobs, the student that had the job before trains the new student! That means you just need to train the first round of kids and the rest takes care of itself.

I will take away jobs if students are not doing it correctly or aren’t remembering. I will give them a warning then the second time I will have a conversation with them about the expectations and what will happen if they do not do it correctly. For my students if they get a job taken away or quit a job, they do not get to pick a job the following month.

Something else that I found on a teaching blog, is to give the jobs real names. Instead of saying water the plants, the job is botanist. The students LOVE this. Here is a list of my jobs. My classroom is lemon themed, and I made these on Canva. At the beginning of each month, I take their lemons out and pull them out one at a time for them to pick their jobs.

Jobs:

Botanist- water the plants. They stick their finger in the dirt and only water it when it is dry.

Secret Walker- They watch one student in line all day and decide if they did a good job following the hallway expectations. Recently, they can tell someone to go to the end of the line if they are talking. At the end of the day, they put up a thumbs up if they mostly did good and a thumbs down if they didn’t. If it is a thumb up they say who it is and they get 3 dojo points. If they get a thumb down we do not say the name, but they do say what the problem was.

Interrupting Chicken- When students interrupt, not blurt, we cross out a number on our chart. I have a whole lesson I do at the beginning of the year, you can check it out here. When a student interrupt I yell out interrupting chicken and that person crosses off a number. If we still have a number by the end of the week, they get Fun Friday time.

Bathroom- We take trips to the bathroom A LOT! I have a boy and a girl monitor. Their job is to check to see how many stalls are open and they let that many students in. Each time someone comes out they send another one in.

Helper- I have 2 helpers and their job is to do anything that wasn’t taken or if a student is absent, they do their job.

Security- This person is responsible for the door. I keep my door always locked. When the doorbell rings they go to the door and if it is a student in our class, they open it. If it is not a STUDENT in our class, they say NOT IN OUR CLASS and then I get up and open it.

Secretary- I have 2 people to do this job. Their job is to deliver anything I need and to pass out the papers to the groups.

IT- They are responsible for checking the computer to make sure they are plugged in each day.

Custodian- They vacuum the rug each day and take our trash to the hallway each day.

Sweeper- They sweep the tile and put our pencil cups by the sharpener.

Electrician- They turn on and off the lights.

Mailman- They file the papers in the cubbies.

Librarian- check and fix the library books each day.

Eraser- They hit the trash can button on the board to erase it.

Line Leader- Each day I do a VIP that is the line leaders, so this isn’t a job for me. Read more about VIP here.

Each year the jobs might change depending on my class and the jobs I need done. I have noticed that when students have a job for a whole month, they get good at it and take pride in contributing to our classroom. Our reading series starts with government and rules, so it is easy to add the importance of this. I will never go back, and I do not miss just 1 leader a day. You should do what works for you! Drop some of your classroom jobs below!