Let’s go through the 5 types of resources all new upper elementary teachers should have as they head into their first school year.

Being a first-year teacher is really hard as there are so many things you have to think about.
You have to figure out how you’re going to fit so many desks into such a small classroom, and you have to decide how you’re going to methodically use the two bulletin boards in your classroom. Will they be used to display student work, or do you need to save them for content?
You will also spend at least one full day filling out paperwork, which is something that nobody ever tells you, and you’ll spend some of that valuable back-to-school time that you’d rather use in your classroom in meetings about insurance, student accommodations, and writing your personal mission statement.
But what about the content?
How do you know what to plan for the year? What types of resources should you have on hand just in case or to help supplement some of your more challenging units?
That’s our focus today!
Today, we are talking about resources because the resources you have on hand will help to make you feel more confident as you start putting together lesson plans for that first week.
5 Types of Resources All New Upper Elementary Teachers Should Have
As we go through the five types of resources all new elementary teachers should have ready to go at the beginning of the year, we will also include some suggestions from our store.
There are lots of great stores selling to upper elementary teachers, but we pride ourselves on having strong, quality resources that teachers can use as they begin developing consistency within their classrooms.
#1 | Process-Creating Resources
How do you define a process-creating resources?
These are the resources that help you to create processes within your classroom. The types of resources that you plan to use daily or weekly that students can quickly become accustomed to.
Resources like our Close Reads with Mystery Pictures or our Holiday of the Day Writing Prompts work really well to build processes around.
The Close Reads with Mystery Pictures could be used as a transition activity as students come back from lunch, recess, or specials. They are also great to use as an activity at the end of the day before students get ready to get on a bus or get picked up from school.
The Holiday of the Day Writing Prompts are great for morning meetings.
The Holiday of the Day Writing Prompts are based on both familiar and obscure holidays for each day of the year, which means that the Holiday of the Day Writing Prompt that you are using for October 4th was specifically chosen for October 4th.
By incorporating these Holiday of the Day Writing Prompts into your classroom every single day of the school year, you are able to create systems and processes around that resource even though the resource itself is changing to accommodate the day.
To read more about our Holiday of the Day resources, click on the images below.



#2 | Center Resources
Centers and stations are an important part of the upper elementary school day.
When choosing resources for centers or stations, it is essential that the resources work on the specific skills that each student or group of students needs to work on.
You are looking for resources that are self-checking or that students will be able to check on their own or within their small group.
Since the teacher is often busy working with individual students or small groups during stations or centers, you will want the resources to be easily set up. Students should be able to get them out or set them up on their own with little to no instruction.
You will also want a few digital options that you can rotate in to reduce the amount of movement in the classroom. Digital resources are also really helpful for the self-checking part of this equation.
Two common places we typically see centers or stations being used is during the ELA or math blocks.
We have written blog posts specifically dedicated to how we set up these blocks, including the resources that are most helpful for each.
Check out our blog posts about our ELA block and our math block below.


#3 | Transition Resources
Transition resources are tools for helping students move from one part of their day to the next.
This may be the time right before recess or lunch or the time right after.
It could also include the time of day that occurs right before the morning meeting or right before students leave to go home.
Having good transition activities in your resource toolbox is essential because these are often the times that students find themselves doing things that they should not be doing.
Resources that work well as transition resources are things like digital activities that students can quickly access on their computers, task card activities that they can pick up on their way back into the classroom, or daily activities like the Holiday of the Day Writing Prompts we mentioned before that can be used every single day of the year.
#4 | Celebration Resources
Our next of the five types of resources all new upper elementary teachers should have are celebration resources.
These are resources that can be used during or around holidays.
These activities are typically supplemental but still have skills built in that you need students to work on as they continue to work towards meeting the standards for the year.
Our store has several holiday-themed resources that you can use to fill in around different holidays.
In addition to the resources in the store, we have also laid out resources that you may want to use during and around holidays in our blog post series, which is all about how to plan for each month of the school year.
Click on the blog post below to learn more about how to plan for each month of the school year and the holidays that fall within those months.

#5 | Quick Sub Plan Resources
Lastly, let’s talk about the 5th of the five types of resources all-new upper elementary teachers should have.
Resources to help make quick sub plans!
Sub-plans are a part of teaching that we all have to get used to, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be prepared or set ourselves up to succeed when we need to create a sub-plan.
Before we get too far into this topic, I want to suggest that you read through this blog post, where we provide 15 sub-plan suggestions from an actual upper elementary sub.
Like with everything, our audience should be at the forefront of our minds when writing anything. This means that our subs should be at the front of our minds when creating sub-plans. In that blog post, a friend of Fun in 5th Grade, who also happens to be a sub in upper elementary, provides her suggestions for creating sub plans that are actually helpful to Subs when they come into your classroom.
Now, let’s talk about sub-plan resources.
Sub-plan resources should be things that are easy for the sub to implement.
Unless you are going to be gone for several days, it is often unnecessary for you to leave plans for subs that require the sub to teach new content; therefore, the sub-plan resources that you have on hand should allow students to practice or review topics that you have already studied in class.
It would be helpful if these resources were available to you to assign to the students yourself. For example, digital resources like these Digital Puzzles or these Digi Games which can be assigned to students through Google Classroom or Canvas.
You can also leave whole-group games, like these Game Shows, that your subs can work through with the whole class.
The benefit of all of these digital games is that they are self-checking and do not require the sub to know the content in order to work through and review it with students.
Having good, quick resources that you can leave for subs will save you a lot of time when you are not feeling well and have to put a quick sub-plan together.
New teachers have a lot of things they need to focus on at the beginning of the year, and often, having good resources to help save them time is not something that they think about. That is why we decided to talk about these five types of resources all new upper elementary teachers should have.
We know the beginning of the school year can be overwhelming, and if we can give you ideas and suggestions to make it easier, we want to do that!
We hope that you have found the suggestions in this post helpful, and we strongly suggest that you take a look at some of our other posts for first-year teachers by clicking on the links below.



As always all of the resources mentioned in this post can be purchased right here on the Fun in 5th Grade website store, or, if you prefer, we also have our resources available on Tpt!