Cleaning Squads

I believe every child (and teacher!) should participate in keeping the classroom running successfully. In our classroom, that means that periodically we take time to organize and straighten up the room. I call this time a "power clean". When I was younger, I worked as a nanny for a wonderful family who "power cleaned" every Saturday morning. As I spent time in their home with their 4 young chlidren, I realized that the children took ownership in their home and their things and it gave them pride to help take care of them. I adapted the power clean philosophy for our classroom by assigning rotating jobs to the students for our weekly clean up. I've used cleaning squads in my room for several years and I've noticed that our room actually stays cleaner throughout the week when students know they will later be responsible for organizing our things! They take pride in having the cleanest and most organized classroom in Gator Country!

Our cleaning squads work board shows which squad the children are assigned to for that week. We have 8 squads (although only 5 are pictured here) and 3-4 children work together on their assigned task.

One of the favorite jobs is organizing the word wall. The kids not only straighten the magnetic words, but they also put them in alphabetical order!

(I think one of their favorite parts of this job is standing up on a miniature stool!)

Kids use "sweepers" to bless our custodial staff by picking up larger pieces of trash that will clog their vacuum cleaners. It is also a favorite cleaning squad!

Our classroom library is organized by genre and theme, but often books get "lost" and need to be placed back with their genre families. One of our cleaning squads helps the books find their homes again. I'm so blessed to have students who are willing helpers and eager to keep our classroom neat and tidy!