Are you looking for an easier way to keep your early finishers engaged and make sure all students are supported? With the right tools, you can create a comfortable learning space that is tailored to the needs of every student in your class.
Luckily, there are several add-ons available that enhance my early finisher system and provide unique educational experiences to everyone involved. In this post, I’ll discuss how implementing these easy-to-use resources can help teachers stay organized and also help them use these task cards all day long in the classroom!
Benefits of the Early Finishers System
A great way for teachers to save time and increase student assessment effectiveness is through the use of an early finisher task card system. This system allows teachers to easily provide activities to those students who finish their work early.
Furthermore, it helps students practice skills they have already learned independently! The whole system is designed to be used independently by the students to help free up your teacher time.
While your students are engaged with the early finishers task cards system you have extra time to work with students who need the most assistance. Work with small groups or with individual students all while knowing the rest of your class is practicing and perfecting skills you’ve taught them.
If you want to learn more about the system and how I set it up in my classroom, check out the following posts:
- Early Finishers Task Cards – Setting Up for Success
- 5 Reasons Why You Need an Early Finisher System
- How to Introduce Early Finisher Task Cards
- How to Use Task Cards in Centers
Early Finishers Answer Keys
Having an answer key for each activity can be a great way to help students assess their own understanding of a given task. Not only does it give them the opportunity to practice self-assessment and make the most of their time, but it also helps streamline the teacher’s workflow.
By having an answer key readily available, teachers no longer need to reassess each student individually and can instead easily check if they have answered correctly in much less time. Ultimately, providing an answer key with each activity is a great way to ensure that students are utilizing their time correctly while not taking up more of the teacher’s valuable time.
Using answer keys with the task cards is completely optional. One of the main reasons I didn’t initially include them in the resource was that I was worried students would look at them first or worry too much about the right answer instead of just focusing on the practice of a skill.
I’ve had a lot of teachers reach out to me and request answer keys because they saw a need in their classroom (especially when using the task cards in centers).
If you use the answer keys, laminate them and either have them openly available to students or have them come and request them from you once they are done with all the task cards in that box. Totally up to you and what works best for your class!
I’ve included answer keys for activities in the kindergarten to 2nd-grade resources, but I left them out of the pre-K line because they didn’t seem developmentally appropriate for that age and the activities are a lot more hands-on for that grade.
Early Finishers Skills Overview
Have you ever felt overwhelmed with finding the right activity for your early finishers? Looking through the endless list of activities can take more time than desired. Now, with the addition of a skills overview document to my early finisher system, teachers can quickly find an appropriate activity without wasting precious time.
Searching for a particular skill or standard has never been easier! The skills overview document helps teachers easily identify and access activities that match their chosen criteria, saving them time and stress in the process. Whether you are searching for activities based on grade level standards or individual student needs, the early finisher system offers quick and easy access to activities that will engage your students and challenge them to think critically.
I’ve had many teachers reach out and tell me that they have purchased multiple grade levels of the early finishers task cards to provide differentiation for their students.
Task cards are perfect for differentiation because students have no way of knowing if a group is working on a set of activities from the Pre-K set or the 1st-grade set!
Owning that many task cards can be organizationally tricky when you are looking for the perfect activity to match your student’s needs. With this free overview tool, you can easily find the activity you need either by searching for a particular Common Core standard or by skill. Grab your free early finishers skill overview at the link below:
Early Finishers Task Cards Skills Overview
Benefits of These Early Finishers Add-Ons
With the addition of the answer keys, teachers will be able to transition from an early finishers activity to a quick assessment of student’s skills. Answer keys also make it easier to add early finishers task cards into centers where students can evaluate their progress at the end of the activity.
The skills overview allows teachers to quickly find what they are looking for to add in task cards to their small groups, and centers, or for parent volunteers to help individual students practice the exact skill they need assistance with.
If you already own the task cards, go back and re-download each month to find the answer keys! Download these handy new tools today and start seeing the benefits for your classroom tomorrow.
