Stay on Schedule with the Time Timer
My students and I LOVE our new Time Timer! I first learned about the Time Timer on the Art of Education site. The Time Timer is a fabulous time management tool for any classroom. It comes in three sizes: 3″, 8″, and 12″. I purchased the 8″ size from Amazon.com for about $20, and it’s worth every penny!
The Time Timer can hang on the wall, stand on its collapsible legs, or just rest on your whiteboard tray as mine is doing in the picture. It runs on a single AA battery, so it’s completely portable. I like to give all my instructions, demo, etc. before setting the timer, just to make sure I’m not competing with it for my students’ attention! Then I set my Time Timer for whatever working time is left in the class period, minus the time we’ll need for clean-up. The red pie-shape gradually gets smaller to give my students (and me!) an easy visual reminder of how much time we have left to work. A quiet “beep beep” sounds (optional) when the time is up. For some reason, my students really enjoy listening for this (still a novelty, I guess!) so they even quiet down by themselves as we get close to running out of time!
The Time Timer is helping all of us to pace ourselves and manage our time better! It’s also available in iPad and iPhone apps. I chose not to get it for my iPhone, but I’d be interested in hearing if anyone out there is using that…. it just seems like it would be too small to see from across the room. When I get an iPad (one of these days!) I’m sure I’ll be purchasing the Time Timer app for that.
Special thanks to the Art of Education for first sharing this great idea! (If you aren’t already a regular visitor to the Art of Education site, you really need to check it out! Their new magazine format features helpful daily articles, tips, and videos on topics related to Art Education. Founder Jessica Balsley was even kind enough to help me with a WordPress issue I got stuck on when I converted my site over from Blogger years ago. I love our online Art Teacher community!)
What’s your favorite time management tool or technique?
At your recommendation, I bought the 12 inch with sound from Amazon. It is so effective! The kids like watching the ‘cherry pie’ wedge shrink as time goes by. A number of classroom teachers at our school use them, but I never heard about it until reading this post. Thanks!
So glad it’s working for you, Rina! My students love it, too!
I use the citrus alarm clock. I downloaded it onto my computer for $4. I have set up a schedule to go off five minutes before the class is over. It took a while to figure out, but I only had to set the schedule once. It has worked wonders for me.
Wow – only having to set it once would be great! I’ll have to check that out… thanks!!
Thanks, Cheryl for the nod. I am so happy you like the Time Timer and felt compelled to share. I agree, we have such a great group of art teacher bloggers and a network to lift each other up in this profession. Your new website looks amazing and I hope you are liking it!
Hi,
I am enjoying your site. While I have been teaching art to little kids only 3 years and only part-time, I am NOW working at giving D.B.A.E. art classes more full time. I liked the timer idea too.I was just now figuring out the timing for our 3 hour Workshop we’re about to have. I realize just how critical timing is…….really!!! You don’t want to forget anything and yet you want to NOT go overboad. I also will use your ideas. We come and go with all ages in this class (K-6th grade). Thanks again,
Miss Dee Dee from Alaska