You may have heard of teachers doing Fun Friday in their classrooms. They plan a fun activity or lesson each Friday. I do Fun Friday in my classroom but I do it in a way that I don’t have to plan extra activities and so it helps with my classroom and behavior management. Today I’m sharing 3 Fun Friday ideas for classroom management.
Fun Friday Ideas for Classroom
But remember how I said I don’t plan extra activities? I actually have a cupboard full of toys and games I let my students play with for about 15 minutes every Friday. I found these toys, games, and activities at garage sales or thrift shops, so they didn’t cost me a ton of money. My students enjoy Lincoln Logs, K-Nex, marbles, card games, checkers, how to draw books and much more!
Save money by finding Fun Friday activities at garage sales and thrift stores.
They are excited to play these things because I only let students play them for Fun Friday. It’s like a novelty for students!
Let’s get onto how I use these Fun Friday ideas for classroom behavior management.
Fun Friday Ideas for Teachers
Use Fun Friday to help with transition time.
As teachers we know that the more students take to transition from one task to the next, the more it takes up our instructional time. I always love to see my students on task moving from one activity to the next. But sometimes students can be silly or forget expectations and it takes a lot of time to move to the next part of our lesson. That’s where Fun Friday comes into play.
Students can earn more Fun Friday time by having quick transitions and staying on task. I might say something like, “I’m giving you 30 seconds. Please get out your whiteboards and show you are ready with your markers.” You can use a stopwatch to keep track of time, or just count down with your voice. If students meet the task before zero, I will add that time to Fun Friday. I simply write a little +10 or whatever seconds are left on the whiteboard.
If students don’t accomplish the task in my given time limit, I will start counting up. I’ll say something like, “Your time 1, your time 2, your time 3…” And so on until students are ready. Whatever I count up to, I will minus those seconds from Fun Friday. I’ll simply write a -5 or whatever it is on the whiteboard.
I keep our Fun Friday time logged on the whiteboard by our Whole Class Rewards System.
On Friday, right before our scheduled Fun Friday time, I’ll add up all the time students earned throughout the week. If it is a positive number, I’ll add that time onto our normal 15 minutes of Fun Friday time. If it’s negative, I have students put their heads down on their desks for those seconds before they can get out Fun Friday toys.
Students work really hard throughout the week to earn extra Fun Friday time. It’s motivating and they encourage each other to stay on task.
I also use Fun Friday to help students work hard and finish their work.
Use Fun Friday to help students complete unfinished work.
When a student is choosing not to finish an assignment or is completely off task after being prompted to get started working again, I will have students finish that assignment during our Fun Friday time. It usually only takes one time of a student completing unfinished work during Fun Friday time that they realize they don’t want to do this again. They will work hard and finish assignments in the future.
I am sensitive to special needs and to students who I know just need a few extra minutes to complete assignments. I’ll try to remind these students to pull out unfinished work when we have fast finisher time throughout the week. Wondering what to have students do as fast finisher activities? Check out this blog post here: 12 Fast Finisher Activities That Are So Fun
Each student has a finishing folder in their desk. This is where they can put those unfinished assignments. I check students’ folders to make sure they are empty and then I excuse students one by one to go choose a Fun Friday activity. I also check that students’ desks are clean before I excuse them. Students are so fast to tidy up their desks so that they can get started on Fun Friday.
Not only does Fun Friday help with transition time and unfinished work, but it also helps build a positive classroom community.
Fun Friday helps to build a positive classroom community.
I love when I see my class making friends and working together. During Fun Friday, students are able to do just that. They work together to build a castle out of blocks. Or they sit together and learn how to draw a Pokemon together. As students spend this quality time together, they are coming closer together, building a positive classroom community. They even work together to clean up the toys when our Fun Friday is over.
I hope you have been able to see how these Fun Friday ideas for classroom management can be beneficial in your classroom. Fun Friday is just one part of my classroom management plan.
Read about my full classroom management plan here in this blog post: Meaningful Classroom Management Techniques
