Do your student struggle with transitions? Or don’t have their supplies ready when they should? This one-minute hack will help your students get prepared without wasting any time. It’s the perfect gamification for elementary and middle school classrooms! Let me introduce you to the supply roundup!
Supply Roundups
What is a Supply Roundup?
A supply roundup helps transition between sections of your lesson or day if you teach elementary. This is the time where students will get out the supplies needed for the next activity or task! The structure gets it done quickly, but also gets students up and moving.
The Anatomy of the Google Slide
These are other, simplified versions, of a supply round up. The one on the left helps my student transition from using their computers to getting their textbooks. The one on the right shows what students will be doing once they log into their computers!
The ultimate goal is to get students to SEE the transition and give them something tangible. This is also why I do “Exit Directions”.
The timer also gives it urgency! Without the timer, it will be harder to get students to accomplish the task. If you use the same timer (with music), students catch on to how much time they have left.
Trust me, I’ve been doing this with 8th graders for over 4 years. It’s an essential piece to any task you give them. Always have a visible timer!
How to Implement a Supply Roundup
First, it’s important to know WHEN to do a supply roundup. For me, I use this twice a day. First when we are getting ready for our “warmup” and then second when we move into our practice time.
The very first time you do this, make sure you go over every piece of information on the slide: what to get, the FAQs, how much time they have, and the incentive of the first groups or rows ready to go!
It might sound something like this:
“Alright, we’re going to do a supply Roundup. What that means is you will have one minute to get out the two supplies that I have on the screen, which is a notebook and a pencil. If you do not have those items, I’m going to share with you what you’re going to do.
If you do not have a pencil, you’re going to go to the counter and check the pencil graveyard can. If there’s no pencils in there, you can either grab a marker or ask a friend for one two.
If you do not have your notebook, you will need to get a piece of paper from the counter.
Okay, What questions can I answer for you? [No questions] You have one minute to get your supplies and be back in your seat. Go ahead and begin!
Then I will start the timer and the upbeat music will play! Students will get up, get their supplies and come back to their seats.
Incentives
The first couple of times I do this, I like to incentivize the first 3 teams who are fully ready to go! I use what’s called praise tickets, which is my school’s currency, but you could use candy, cute erasers, classroom points, or whatever system you have for rewarding students. You can use that to incentivize your kids because you want to make the one minute timer matter.
Favorite 1-Minute Timers
Below are some of my favorite timers with upbeat music and NO annoying alarms at the end. Literally my least favorite thing about some of the YouTube timers is the blaring alarm at the end. No one needs that kind of jump scare in the morning.
Want to learn more about effective transitions?
Listen to the podcast episode to hear all of the details spelled out!
