How do you learn your students' names quickly? (Also how long does it take and how many students!)

As a support teacher, this is so hard for me! I know everything (and in some cases TMI) about the students on my ESL caseload, but in my co-taught classes it is really hard to remember the 3 Matts who all play on the soccer team or Kaitlin and Caitlynn who have the exact same balayage ‘do. We have a student management system that has last year’s school pictures on each kid’s profile, but even those don’t work when the kid has transformed over the summer.

In addition to what has already been said, my co-teachers and I usually have kids pick their seats the first day and make the seating chart off of that (depending on your students’ age/behavior, you could set the chart for them). Then when I am at the gym, or cleaning, or doing some kind of mindless task at home, I try to go through a seating chart for one of my classes to see if I can remember the order of the kids. I ran a marathon in early September last year, and it was a great way to kill the last 6 miles!

/r/Teachers Thread