10 Eco-Friendly Classroom Ideas to Reduce Paper Waste

Elementary classroom teacher looking for earth day activities and clasroom ideas to reduce reuse and recycle? These tips and tricks to a more paperless classroom are perfect for Earth Day and conservation!

Hey Friends! I am thrilled to share with you how my class attempts to fall on the greener side of classrooms. I love using technology to ease the paper count, so let’s dive on in! 🙂

Do you give spelling tests each week?

I feel like I am wasting class time giving test and grading them.

I put all of the lists on {Spelling City}, and the kids take the test on Friday’s. They screen shot their score and upload it to Edmodo or {SeeSaw} depending on how I am feeling that day 😉

*Option*

1. When I was a first year teacher, I only had 5 iPads, so that Friday I had the kids take their test throughout the day.

2. If you don’t have access to {Seesaw} or Edmodo, you can simply have the kids show you there score and record it in the grade book 🙂

Have you heard of {Dry Erase Pockets} ?

Get these pockets {HERE}.

These things are a life saver!

Check out all the ways that I use these amazing babies by

{CLICKING HERE}

{Google Forms} are the bees knees.

You can create sign ups, checklists, and more without writing anything down.

I lose absolutely anything that is in a paper form because I am an irresponsible millenial #OwnIt

I absolutely LOVE that Lisa is using my no homework and restroom pass QR documentation FREE template! I’ve shared how with visuals in the temp link in my profile! 🙂

A photo posted by PeppyZestyTeacherista (@peppyzestyteacherista) on Feb 22, 2016 at 3:54pm PST

To check out my No Homework Documentation

{Click Here}

To snag the FREE download for the restroom pass:

{Click Here}

Do you have a recycling bin in your classroom? Every classroom in my school has a bin because every two weeks we have our student government kids come by to pick it up.

I created “Recycler” as a {classroom job} to help encourage others in our classroom to recycle.

To read about our classroom economy

{CLICK HERE}

This is the first year that I have been able to send a newsletter out in a timely manner.

I LOVE to blog, so why not create a blog for my classroom?

Each week, I posted updates and parent tips to keep parents in the loop.

One of the BIGGEST lifesavers to this idea, was embedding a Google Calendar on the blog.

Every important date that I receive immediately gets put on the Google Calendar. Parents have a hub to check everything, and they can even sync the dates to their iPhone!

This has made managing information so much easier on my life! ha!

To read more about it {CLICK HERE}

Do you have animals at your school?

We have a TON of different animals in our science lab and it can be expensive to feed them all!

We have a garden are outside and each grade level gets a bed to plant vegetables.

Some of our grown food is used to feed the science lab animals.

This picture shows a group of my kids planting a tomato plant since it is in their standard to learn the process 🙂

Our science lab teacher also shredded paper that we have recycled as bedding for the guinea pigs and other animals.

I repeat, I LOSE EVERYTHING THAT IS PAPER.

It is seriously my downfall and I admit it. However, it is one of the reasons I am probably so tech savvy, ha! I use an external hard drive to house all of my resources that I use throughout the year.

If I reformat something differently, I just scan it to myself and them place it in the correct folder.

If you want to see visuals with how I organize all my files:

{Click Here}

Those fluorescent lights, well, they suck. They just do.

For some reason the bright lights rile up my kids also.

In the afternoon (especially after lunch) I turn off the lights and open the big window.

It calms the room and reduced the amount of electricity that we use.

This seems pretty much like, DUH…but it must be said! 😉

Using task card recording sheets? They just need to put the numbers in, so print those sheet two per 1 page. Long passages? Print two per page!

I am sure that you try to make a positive contact with parents weekly, but most of the time we are stuck in meetings, doing a zillion and one things, and herding a cattle of kids. It is difficult to actually sit down and write that positive note then remember to send it out. & What if I do all of that and the kids forget the note or loses it on the bus?

With Class Dojo, I can quickly message parents with positive remarks, send pictures of their hard working kids, all while immediately documenting the kids behavior.

I would love for you to read more about how I utilize this FREE program.

{CLICK HERE} to read more.

WOAH. This post was only meant to be 5 tips but it quickly spurred into more!

I hope you enjoyed and possibly picked up some tips along the way!

Want more technology tips and classroom ideas?

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Written by

Amber Calderon

Amber is veteran teacher that built a successful TPT business before being recruited to lead social media and content marketing strategy for two Ed-Tech brands. She loves using her unique knowledge of the teacher marketing space to help teachers grow and scale their business with the right digital marketing strategies.