Teacher Guide - Classroom Set Up and Clean Up

Summary

This resource outlines how classrooms can be affected by Breakfast After the Bell, and shares best practices on how to create a plan for classroom set-up and clean up where breakfast is served or eaten.

If your school has chosen to implement Breakfast After the Bell, you may be wondering how that will affect your classroom. Breakfast After the Bell usually involves students eating breakfast in the classroom during instructional time. Teachers find that they can easily incorporate Breakfast After the Bell into their existing morning routines with planning. This resource shares best practices from teachers that have already implemented Breakfast After the Bell in their classrooms.

Breakfast Set Up
Each classroom will have a different set up, depending on the classroom layout, teacher, and period that breakfast is served. Building administration, food service staff, and teachers work together to devise a breakfast delivery plan to best meets the community’s needs. Breakfast may be delivered as a prepackaged meal or students may have to opportunity to choose certain food items. Food service staff provide instruction on how to do this. If breakfast is served in the classroom, teachers and students may help record who receives breakfast each morning. Food Service Staff provides a roster and teachers and/or students note who takes a meal. This roster is returned to the Food Service Staff who then charge the students’ meal accounts. Teachers begin the instructional day with activities such as attendance, class/school announcements, homework review, or read alouds.

Breakfast Clean Up
School administration, custodial staff, and teachers work together to create a clean-up plan that is quick and easy. Students are provided supplies to clean both their desks and hands after eating, which facilitates student involvement and ownership of the program. Clean up ideas include, but are not limited to:

1. Using separate trashcans and heavier trash bags specifically for breakfast waste,
2. Using buckets or classroom sinks to collect any liquid waste, and
3. Disposing of breakfast waste, immediately after eating, in a central location such as a rolling garbage can placed in the corridor. Central trash locations ease the burden on custodial staff.