A Challenging Week | Teacher Vlog

SuperDuper bad anxiety is like rising to my chest right now awful and maybe a stressful week but I am like handling it like a boss we are blind if we believe that every single child in our room is going to be on task all the time how many times do we as like as adults sit in a meeting and we check our email or we start talking to somebody or we get distracted with um having testing done and they came back with me having Hashimoto's this week is gonna be one of those weeks where I am just gonna be flippin exhausted every single day and it's gonna I'm just gonna have to look through it um this week is a very very busy week for me just to kind of give you guys to run down I have a meeting tonight with parents we're kind of inviting parents out to be able to come and have us kind of walk through our individualized schedules that we've started since January walk through Schoology explain through them the process of everything and how it actually works so that they can kind of get a better idea of what are their kids doing throughout the day we're also doing this before conferences because we don't want Schoology or schedules to take up the entire conversation so tonight is gonna be a late night for me tomorrow night is also our community book read so my district has been reading freedom to learn I was like a book read and so they all get together and they have like a conversation about it so that's tomorrow night I also have an observation I have a meeting for CIA which is curriculum instruction and assessment that I have to go to tomorrow morning let's see so observation conferences dra czar do writing assessments or do report cards or do did I say conferences on Friday conferences are on Friday well at least this the first set of conferences are on Friday so there's a lot going on a lot going on this week I kind of knew coming into it that it was just gonna be a really busy week but I do kind of feel my anxiety just stress level just kind of rising this morning like I've just kind of been on edge so I'm gonna have to try to slow it down and try to relax a little bit so that I'm not stressing myself out to the point of no return so really quick before I jump into the day I wanted to show you guys this bag um accompanying it very generously sent this to me they did not pay me to like speak highly of it so this is not an ad but they did send me the product just so that I can kind of give my point of view I guess like what I thought about it on my channel the company is called the Kooten cute and coo cute and cuba and i will go ahead and say that this is a diaper bag however I felt like diaper bags are really make really really great teacher bags there are incredibly easy they're durable they're like easy to clean they have tons of pockets like it's everything that a teacher could have possibly like one in a bag but what I love about it the most is number one it's a backpack I am very very fond of my backpacks for teacher bags I just like them I like that I can just kind of put them on my back and I can just go so this one is a backpack which I really liked but it also has handles up here at the top so that you can carry it like a bag if you don't want to walk into a meeting like I'm about to do tomorrow with a backpack on your shoulder you can at least kind of have it in your hand but what's also really great about it is that it fits so much stuff like it's huge it's huge whereas like my little black one that my mom gave me which I totally love um but you can only fit like a computer and maybe a notebook or a planner or something to in there I can fit all of my stuff in here which is pretty amazing between computer planner books that I'm reading on my iPad that I have but what else can I put in there I'm thinking like papers that I have to grade all of those things can fit inside of this bag which I find like really nice I liked a little pocket up here to be able to put my keys and my phone in there when I'm storing it while I'm in the classroom and then down here at the bottom it has like another little pocket for you to put like a harddrive and pens and pencils like I have in there but I've been using it for about two weeks now and I do really really love it I went with the beige color because I wanted something I guess a little bit more light for spring good but they do have some really nice colors and a really cute pattern it's like a French stripe I think is what they call it but it's really really nice I hope that you guys go and check them out I will leave a link down in the description box so that you guys can go and look at their product and see what you think and maybe you need to kind of refresh your wardrobe or your bag system before spring comes that you can feel renewed and fresh but so it is our uh I guess you would call her an assistant she's our assistant that kind of helps us in our classroom she works a lot with our kids she's a lot for us she is constantly like making sure our babies are like all on top of it and doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing but it was her birthday yesterday so the teachers like everybody in part of the Mac team kind of got together and said well let's do something for her birthday because she does do so much for us so here is my contribution to kind of the big gift that everybody we're all kind of saying it's from us but here's what I decided to with my partners to get okay it definitely doesn't come with a computer or all the stuff that's in here but I went on ahead and I got her the cart from Target so I got her a great cart from Target because she tends to go like from room to room and she doesn't really have anywhere to put her belongings so we thought that this would be a really cute idea to be able to stick her stuff inside of so that she can just take it wherever she needs to go I like it so that's what I got I also did go to Walmart this morning and picked up some containers to like to store little bits and bobs inside of it so that she can have kind of a nice little storage system going on in here instead of everything just kind of being thrown around so I'm trying to get everything out so I can show it to you but I went to Walmart mm-hmm and then I just found these seemed like the same idea from like the Dollar Tree and five below like I think these were about like four bucks or something to that extent but I thought that they would be really nice I'm going to kind of set him up set him up arranged him right here down in the middle so that she could store some dry-erase items and other like pins and things that a few of the other teachers got to be able to contribute and add to the cart we also got her some flowers so hopefully she'll be surprised and know how much we do truly truly appreciate her so I'm gonna get these together and then I can start unloading all my other madness okay so there you go that's what we have um like I said my partner's kind of got some things to be able to put inside of it some dry erase boards some Expo markers love other little bits and bobs but that's kind of it for the most part she's gonna be able to arrange it the way that she wanted but we just wanted it to look nice for her I feel like it is something very very simple but I hope that she really likes it so now that she has like whenever she's working with kids if sometimes she wants to work in the hallway or wherever she wants to go she can just kind of will her little cart out there and she hasn't it looks nice so I don't know if you guys have seen but mr. G my cousin and I did a kind of Q&A teacher talk style video where we kind of sat down together and we just talked about some questions that you guys had that were on Instagram you haven't checked it out definitely go and check it out we have some really good insight and my cousin and I are just silly sometimes so you'll probably get a good laugh out of us but I'm mentioning this because in one of the questions someone mentions like how do you deal with like hardships when you're going through like a struggle I feel like this week might be one of those types of hardships for me not personally but just like in work in general because it is gonna be such a crazy crazy busy week and I can already feel it so instead of me actually taking the time to I don't know like clean off my table and I don't know like move all the mess that I have I am choosing to pull out a gluten-free doughnut that way partner got me and I just need to take a minute and I'm just gonna pay attention to myself for a little bit because I can feel the stress coming in y'all I'm serious like super duper about anxiety is like rising to my chest right now awful uh and I don't even have bad anxiety like I feel bad for people who really do have like legit hardcore I'm like leaning trying to get my doughnut I'm sorry there's my doughnut um I feel super bad with people who are straight-up like have a true bad like panic attack anxiety like I've never experienced that type of anxiety and I don't want to ever experience it but Lord Almighty I am like take a deep breath because I'm struggling my little heart can't handle it today hey I got my donut my gluten free donut yeah okay so again I'm moving away from school because this is the last thing I should really be thinking about school but I really don't want to think about school at the moment so this weekend we had a friend of the family who came into town he's a friend of my husband's side of the family and I've like we've known him since I've known him since I've gotten married to my husband obviously and on Sunday my mother-in-law was like well why don't you guys come over for dinner I just you know it's chocolate it's Chuck's last night let's kind of you know all hang out together so it's like absolutely and I had mentioned to her on Saturday that I was removed from glutens I couldn't eat gluten and so my freaking amazing mother-in-law made everything last night gluten free every food she made two different desserts she had like three for dishes going on everything was gluten-free and I just felt so loved and appreciated I was like you really didn't have to do all that for me but thank you for doing that for me because that means that I can just eat everything and not be okay and not be afraid of like eating anything on another note gluten-free people did not realize I have to be careful well I mean I should have realized that I should be careful with candies but my mom sent a package this weekend for the boys and like us for Valentine's Day and so we opened it when I got here because I mean how do you not open up a package that comes in the mail that you're super excited about it and inside of it my mom had a huge tin of just like chocolates it was like they're like the little shaped heart-shaped um Reese's Peanut brother like Reese's peanut butter cups and then a bunch of Hershey kisses okay yeah I did not look and this is my fault I did not look to see if Reese's Cups were gluten-free apparently the ones that are like the holiday ones that are like molded by a certain shape are not gluten free I had probably I don't know like 20 of them it was awful it was awful so I regretted that immediately but I'll do better today I am gonna do better today all right I need to sit down with my planner think about what it is that I need to get done today and plan everything out once I have it done I am gonna show you guys how I go through the process of like planing things okay so here is the first thing that I do with my planner wants I'm just ready to start kind of planning out my day I use stickers sometimes I use them sometimes I don't it just depends right now I bought a little book and let me see if I can find it here it is I found this little book of stickers from Michaels and it has it's all productivity so it's like create 365 but its productivity so it has like a lot of those little list stickers which I like to use so I place one for my projects for the week and then every day I do a top three so I kind of just rotate them out and then I put it on any meetings or anything that I need to know about the day then that way I can start looking and creating my top three list and then any other to-do list I just kind of add towards the very bottom so I was here pretty late last night I think I got home around like 8:15 we decided only a couple weeks ago that we were gonna hold almost like a tech night for our families just on Schoology on our individualized schedules how everything is going what their kids are doing throughout the day I feel like there's a huge disconnect once you get from the lower elementary grade levels from like k3 to going into like your intermediate your middle school they just don't know what's going on as much and it's harder when you have multiple teachers because and then everybody's on a different you know everybody's learning different things but it's a little bit harder that way so we decided that we wanted to hold I was putting my lights on you I'm sorry but we decided that we wanted to hold this like tech night for our families we had a really good turnout which I'm very very excited about we had a great feedback from families they were really really appreciative of the time that we were giving them to be able to sit down with their kids their kids were walking them through Schoology showing them how they 7 assignments showing them how they get to their learner tasks figuring out what it is it that they are they're expected to do on a day to day basis how did they reach their material um and I don't know it was really really good I love my families I love them so much so this morning I have a meeting at our district office I'm part of the CIA which is the curriculum instruction and assessment committee for the district like district-wide so we get together once every other month to discuss curriculum instruction assessment and then how could we better ourselves in those areas um so that means I'm gonna be out for half of the day I did go sub early this morning I did not know if I was gonna find a sub at all I feel like subs are very like scarce these days um but I did it was able to get us up this morning she just kind of she just like picked it up someone just picked it up for me so I got my plans together so I ended up not vlogging for the rest of the night yesterday just because I was rushing to try to get ready for that I was trying to shove food down my throat before that meeting actually began I was able to run off some copies of certain things like we what we wanted to do is give them a rundown an explanation of each of the rotations so like what does WPW mean what are they doing during WPW what does SSR mean what does what are they doing during their independent readings and math times what is it that they're doing during stem so I kind of did like a little explanation page for them that just kind of listed each of them out yet it was not fancy at all it was like a it was not cute in any way shape or form but I was able to get that done and then I kind of create a little evening work for them so that they came in we gave them about 10 or 15 minutes to be able to and I can show that to you but we gave them 15 minutes to be able to just kind of talk with their kids look through the folders so you can kind of see this here so we had questions comments and kudos that parents were able to kind of leave inside of our box we had a welcome Mack families so this right here just told them to locate their child's work-in-progress folder which were these back here it also had them going through and looking at their schedules taking a gallery walk to looking at some of the posters and then feel free to like take any questions down that they had while they had like those first 15 minutes to be able to write anything down so in the beginning we had during our content and what is it called my content time we had the kids kind of brainstorm and come up with different charts for their families so we talked to them about what are some of the different things that your families are going to know want to know about we first approached it with all right how many of you have have your parents ever said hey what did you do at school today of course all the little hands shoot up and then I was like how many of you say oh no it was fine and of course some of their hands shot up so this was also that purpose of trying to opening up that conversation of hey I was able to look at your learner TAS today you're working on theme what did you guys do so on so forth because they can identify it they can find that very easily in school as you know so the kids got together and we separated them into their houses and each house had three posters that they were responsible for but they had to kind of write down everything that they thought their parents would want to know about each of those different areas so what did they want to know about how the Schoology layout is what is it that you do during small groups so I can show you a couple of these posters so this was the small group math and reading poster that they came up with the words their way poster I really like that here they kind of wrote out what it was that they were expected to do on each of the days which made my little heart happy um so there's that one they also complained it sorry this has tape on it though they also created a frequently asked question so what do you do when you're done what do you do when you do not finish your work what do you do what are our work-in-progress folders for it just made me happy to be able to see what they wrote them for independent reading they kind of wrote down thoughts - I really liked what the student said let's see you can sometimes be in a group or a partner or it will be independent for a group activity so I like that they put for a activity but you're independent for a group activity here I'm going to work on that um organization so they talked about what is it that they have in their work in progress folder their mailboxes Schoology Tash sheets etc so it was just a really great way we had these all laid out inside of the library because that's where we were all set up so I just kind of put them around the perimeter of the library and for those first 15 minutes as parents kind of were walking in and getting themselves situated and settled they were looking at that little you know evening work and it said for them to kind of take a gallery walk to kind of discuss what each of the areas were so the kids were invited to come with them with their iPads and they were able to kind of walk them through each of the posters we had that discussion during our content time and I feel like it was a really really powerful way to kind of start the conversations with their kids which is what they need it they needed someone to kind of help start those conversations so either way it was a really good night but by the time it was all over and I was like a frantic hot mess I had to go home and finish up my pre observation form for my observation tomorrow I am just like all over the place this week it's going to be an insane week for me or it is or it is just an insane way for me um so I went home last night I just like quickly got myself my stuff together right after the meeting with parents and I was able to go home and fill out my pre observation forms and get my lesson plans finished up and tweaked so that I can submit that to my assistant principal I have my pre observation meeting with him at 2:30 today so that's during my special break and we're gonna sit down we're gonna go over what is it that he's gonna observe so he's coming in to observe two different rotations he will see my cp/m group and then my algebra group so I'm excited to do that CPM is just starting some a new unit and then my algebra group is working on order of operations which I really really like so I enjoy both of those like lessons and themselves but oh I feel like there's a lot going on so I'm gonna get my lesson plans printed get everything together for her she only has a few rotations one of my partners is gonna take my CPM group so that I'm not behind with them for yes for tomorrow because I would really suck it Ari was like behind the other one is just kind of doing some review she's not gonna teach them the new content so I can keep that for myself for tomorrow for my observation and nothing kind of gets like bunched up there um but that's really about it that's all I have going on I have like 45 minutes okay I am gonna go print out my lesson plan get everything together and then try to clean up my room a little bit because it's a little bit of a mess so I'm not sure if I've told you guys but I ended up um getting mine yeah this this little small filing cabinet that I had in kindergarten I ended up placing it back here I just like it a little bit better it looks a little bit more clean and neat a lot of this stuff I'm gonna end up eventually tried to like move into those two cabinets because I do just typically try to keep this one cabinet door open and I can access all of my materials from there so I'm not really sure what I want to do with it yet I just I wanted it to look a little bit more clean and less cluttered and messy if that makes sense um so I have my folder system in here and I have some theme stuff that they're gonna be doing today so I think that was all I had whoa my coloring looks really weird right and I don't think I have anything else you know ok so this is for one group I have my lesson so a company sent me actually scholastic the authors themselves were kind of promoting this text and they sent me this book to be able to use inside of the classroom and they sent me a couple of like extra copies to be able to give to my library and use at home with my own children and I thought it was a really really great book for me to be able to use within a small group setting especially for my lower leveled readers so this book is called meet the Bob's and tweets it has a very like a dr. Seuss feel just because of the rhyming words and the illustrations themselves mimic a lot what kind of doctor Seuss did but I really liked this text it is about a family of Bob's who are slobs as you can see and the family of tweets who are very very neat well the family of Bob's they move to a street where the tweets live and it's about this little friendship that starts to kind of grow between two family members and I think it's really cute just to kind of discuss character treats and what do we know about characters and kind of inferring different pieces throughout the text so I'm doing this with my my lowered little leveled group that I have in the mornings they are a about a 1st grade reading level and they're really enjoying this book so far I really like it I like and something that like this is probably really weird but I really like the texture of the cover like it has that very soft feel to it I don't know it's like very velvety feel I love it like I could just oh I like this book but yeah I just wanted to share that with you guys because I think it's a really great text to use especially if you're not wanting to do dr. Seuss but you want to kind of stick with that whole rhyming feel there you go okay I am heading out the door just wanted to show you guys what it is that I have kind of set up for them my sub is only gonna be teaching three different groups I have the first one with some words that they're going to be practicing and writing the book that they are reading that I showed you guys just a little bit go and then my algebra group is gonna be practicing some order of operations I just put them on cards for her with the answers on the back of the cards and then my one reading group that she's going to be instructing is going to be working on themes so I have them kind of having a discussion there and then completing a sort together so that's all I have for them I'm gonna go ahead and head out I have ten minutes before I need to be there so I'm going to rush out the door and get there as soon as possible hopefully I'll talk to you guys afterwards so I just got out of the meeting not that long ago it is my lunch time and I didn't have anything to for lunch so I was not about to go out and try to figure if I can eat something out and about so he stopped home to get some cereal and I've been spending than last like ten minutes or so just working on report cards and getting some of those things done and then I should be heading back to the school very very soon it was a good meeting we talked about e-portfolios today we continue to talk about common assessment student mastery that type of thing that's all part of the CIA like plan what were you what we were there to do but I am very excited to see like eportfolio start to starting to roll out and more information that we're gonna get on that which i think is gonna be really really exciting um I had cereal for lunch because that's all I had I really need to make food but I wasn't home last night and I'm not gonna be home tonight because we are doing the community book read so I don't know what I'm gonna cook up I don't know if I'm ever gonna cook again um busy day I like this lighting busy busy day um so I have almost all of my BRE s finished up I was able to go in and put it my math comments in for my report cards and I got my uh my grades put in for my math area so now all I have to do is just my reading and my writing and then I should be done for that those are due tomorrow by 4 o'clock ah so I'm gonna get them done luckily I am gonna have some time before the community book read to be able to just kind of sit and focus on getting some of those all of all the rest of that finished my hope is to be able to get that done before the community book reads so then I don't have to worry about it that means on Wednesday morning all I have to worry about is just getting done with my my observation and then Thursday I have data meetings so I need to make sure that I have all of that information entered in but I don't have to worry about it until Wednesday so I'm just not gonna worry about it into Wednesday I'm gonna focus on getting report cards finished up um hopefully I'll see you guys whenever you know back at school maybe during my break oh no I can't see you there my break um so during my break that I have when my kids go to special once I get back to school I have to go and have my pre observation meeting with my assistant principal and yeah that's really about it I just wanted to update you guys I might go get some more chocolates and I'm gonna continue working on your report card school has been over for quite some time is a little bit past six o'clock 6:30 is my community book read for my district they can bike parents out principals like everybody in the community is able and welcome to read like the book selection selection for this year we've been reading freedom to learn it's a great book it's by well Richardson and it's just talking about how our schools have been kind of failing us without progressing with our times so for instance if you think about technology and how far technology has come our world around us is moving them like a hundred miles a minute and it seems like schools kind of dragged their feet to move and he kind of goes into reasons why schools are failing us and then you know what are some ways that we can start changing this within the public school system and it was interesting it's a really good read it's a very easy read it's not very very long I think it's like you see like you can read it in a day if you had like a snow day you can get it done but yes so we're gonna go do the I'm going with Katie to the middle school we're gonna kind of sit in and just kind of talk about what we run today or what we've read for this community book read I have my observation in the morning I ended up changing out my learning target I got a few things ready for math I did need to pull out some of my pattern block so I'm about to go and grab those and then I have to do some report card stuff tonight when I get home but here is kind of what everything looks like so here are my learning targets I ended up moving my little basketball hoop down just a little bit just because it was way too high but now I have it to where I can like it's very big and the kids can kind of see what their targets are instead of struggling to read it my table is pretty much emptied out except for the folders that need to go out in the morning I have one of the measuring tools that I'm supposed to use for one of my math groups and I need to grab pattern blocks which I'm pretty sure that I have some I do have a a few I feel like I don't have enough of my yellow sheets okay so it looks like that's all I have I may be able to get away with that I'm not really sure we'll see if not I can probably make copies of some so this little bag is falling apart so I have three I think in there I need to make sure at least every student has a yellow it's gonna be my goal one oh my goodness two three now I've just made a mess or okay so I just need to borrow one yellow and I think I'm good for all the rest of the colors so I'm gonna need those because they're going to be finding the area tomorrow so we're gonna talk about area to create like if this is a unit so how many units would be for the area for this hexagon and then we also are going to look like look at if this was one unit then how much would one of the triangles be so they would have to say oh it's 1/3 so 1/3 but yeah so that's gonna be what we're doing for one of my math groups tomorrow during my observation a lot of exploratory learning which i think is going to be really really good and then my second one we're going to continue working with parentheses brackets and braces that is pretty much it that's all I have going on for today I am very very excited to talk to you guys about my PBL because my kids did such a great job today I continued letting them look into kind of research and figuring out where it was that they were going so so my kids and I have to figure out a better way of kind of setting this up but my researchers were in charge of getting the interview with mrs. B which they did to do today and they were so cute they did like a little video and everything I loved it but now they're gonna have to kind of transcribe that video they're creating a survey they actually decided to do a google survey and they showed me something that they came up with and then I kind of had them go back and kind of think of a few of their items like having maybe vegetables because they said it was only one question they would only see like the one answer so I said try to see if you can figure out how to make it as a select three and then having two different questions one for vegetables one for fruit so that they can send it out to the entire school and then collect the data from that my researchers were able to look at the Penn State website for seeds versus seed things they collected a lot of great data and were able to share it today so they have havin an idea of where they want to go for tomorrow it was so funny like my farmers who were looking at the cost of seeds first the seedlings they couldn't quite get a ton of so tomorrow they said that they were just gonna make phone calls out to different companies to look at the seedlings to kind of get an idea of how much they would cost I was so incredibly proud of them they were they are very very engaged they're taking it extremely seriously which I love that they are so into it I need to go to the bathroom and like you really wanted to know that and then I'm going to be heading out pretty soon yeah I'm doing it I'm kicking butt this week it may be a stressful week but I am like handling it like a boss telling you okay gotta go bye y'all finally made it to school this morning I went back to my house twice um funny story because the first time that I went back I went back because one of my students is looking for a book and I was like I am NOT gonna go to school until I go and look for that book so I was like halfway here which I don't like live far like I live probably I don't know five eight minutes from my house like I would live like five eight minutes from here from work so I go back half way here I go back to the house to go and look for the book can't find the book there was no like um I'm like adamant I'm gonna just go and probably get during my lunch break at the bookstore so that he can have it cuz bless his little heart he needs that dag on book um anyways so then I left after looking for the book get all the way here and wouldn't you know it I forgot my badge so I had to drive all the way back home to get my stinking badge so that I could get into the school um I'm here I'm here probably about 30-40 minutes later than what I wanted to be here I have observation this morning I have a data meeting this morning so what I'm gonna do is go print off the things for my data meeting and then quickly look over my plans for my groups this morning make sure that I have everything ready to go and then I will catch up with you guys once I have that I just got back from my dad a meeting everything went really well I was glad that my other two partners were there with me to kind of talk through some of the things that were noticing just about our kids and how we can better help them I am frantically nervously getting everything ready for my observation today so my morning group is pretty much taken care of I have my book the words that we're going to be practicing we're going to continue working on that and then for my C p.m. group they're gonna come in and it's kind of a fun lesson like I really really like it they're gonna come down and I'm gonna give them the scenario that we're gonna get a new table because my assistant principal is so nice because he's the one that's observing but he is so nice and he is going to offer to get us a new table for our room and they're going to I'm just gonna tell them to measure so they're gonna have to come up with using the tools that I provide them paper clips index cards post-it notes rulers you know yard sticks papers like anything that they I have kind of out they can use it as a measuring tool then we're gonna talk about the different ways to be able to measure what we can measure height width length we can measure the inner area so we're gonna eventually get to that point where we're measuring the area I'm gonna end up modeling that for them and then we're gonna be using these pattern blocks to be able to talk a little bit more in depth about area and discussing you know it's one unit if one shape is one unit that how many units would this other shape be and we're also going to look at it as whole numbers and then going into fractions as well so that's kind of our investigation for today for CPM and then for my algebra group we're talking about parentheses brackets and braces I'm going to give them a problem for them to kind of explore within the very beginning to try and solve it and then I'm gonna present them with the information that they'll need to know for parentheses brackets and braces and which to solve first and have them go through we're going to discuss what is it that they noticed that came out differently about it and why they believe that they need to understand that you have kind of a kind of an order to completing some of these multiple multiple grouping symbols so we're gonna discuss that I'm gonna give them some problems to practice and then I'm going to give them an error analysis to be able to go back out and work with with a partner they're gonna complete a discussion board in Schoology and then they're finally gonna be given kind of like a tricky one where I'm going to remove the brackets braces and parenthesis and they're gonna see if they're gonna try to fit they're going to have to try to figure it out we'll give them the answer so they're gonna have to kind of figure out the grouping and weigh the grouping symbols need to go in order to achieve that number it's kind of a tricky one but I thought it would be fun because the error analysis shouldn't take them too long um so yeah that's kind of where we are at I'm gonna finish getting everything together and then hi it's the end of the day and I had my observation this morning I don't feel incredibly confident about my observation I feel like I'm having a really off teaching day I'm making very silly mistakes that I shouldn't be making just as far as like mathematically grammatically like anything that you can think of I'm kind of making some of those mistakes and I think somebody's gonna walk into my room I may not be able to answer this so I feel like I'm making a ton of silly mistakes and so here's kind of how it went he walks in and I am conferring with students helping students with some of the problems that they're having and going through kind of some of the questions that they have right my CPM groom group starts well I normally have five kids there but one was sick another was absent so I only had three of the three I did have one behavior issue that I had to take care of sorry Kim's coming here oh okay sorry about that um I had my partner's ended up walking into my room and then my assistant principal ended up walking in my room they're all gone now so for my observation I was working with a couple of students just on a math problem that they weren't understanding so we were kind of walking through it and my assistant principal kind of takes a seat and then like probably two minutes later it's time for my first rotation to happen it's my CPM group so during my CPM group I would try to make things a little bit fun for them and I want to kind of make it I don't know I just like fun and interactive things and I like things that are almost like that novelty feel I loved it in kindergarten I love it here and with March Madness coming up I have like a little basketball hoop so I figured you know what the kids are gonna too and I had papers like this that all crumbled up now but it had something for them to review from the day before so for instance my CPM group was working on mental math strategies so I gave them our problems to solve on their people they had to eat paper they had to give you the answer and they had to tell me what strategy they used to help them solve this so they put it in and they kind of rolled it up and they threw it they tried to throw it into the hoop and then we moved on with our lesson the lesson itself was really really good it was extremely engaging we didn't get through a lot of what I wanted them to get through but that's okay because I had them go back out as a group and start kind of exploring and working through it and then we're just going to discuss it tomorrow here's the bad part so during that so one of my kids just hiked that he's gonna be funny and the paper that I was using to show them the surface area of like how to find the surface area of this table he ends up taking it balling it up and starts trying to throw it into the hoop so I get upset at him so I pretty much tell him that is enough you need to sit down and so he goes and he said soon so that was one thing that ended up happening the second part that ended up happening and I didn't even realize this until the very very end of it and this goes to show you that every single teacher will make a mistake and that it's going to be okay was that I did my fraction incorrectly when I was teaching them how to find the surface area so like if I was to put out my papers we like one paper stood for one unit so a paper like this today stood for a unit so we were trying to figure out how many units of area the table was so I had I think it was 13 full sheets of paper 7 half sheets and then there was one section where if it was as a hat I had to been put it into thirds to be able to say that it was this much like this is how big it was well I ended up not thinking about hey this is a full unit I was making this a full unit and I said that it was 2/3 versus actually being one-third I had anything about that into the very very end of it of the whole thing so um it was funny because he came in this afternoon to talk to us about another student that we have and we just kind of started laughing about it and he goes it's gonna happen mistakes you know it's not a big deal so it's not again it's not that big of a deal I'm gonna just pull my kids back we're gonna discuss it I'm gonna turn it into a teaching moment and I'm just gonna be okay with it so that was the second thing to happen the third thing that happened is during my CPM grip one of my sweet boys decides that he's gonna bring the ev3 and he's gonna drive the ev3 in during my lesson and it's good like making noise and it ends up saying good morning all I do is just point and I send him back out oh all right so that was the third thing that happened then we start switch okay so my cp/m group goes back and they're working actually really really rural back there and I'm very excited about the girl that wasn't that group did not want to work with the boys and that is okay I kind of left it as it is and you know I talked with her afterward and everything is fine so they're working back there in the back onto some of the lessons that I had them doing my algebra group comes up they have the exact same thing where I give them a problem for order of operations without any like grouping symbols and they have to solve it and they had to throw it in and they did a really good job with that so then that was done and I get them talking about parentheses brackets and braces I give them a problem to try to solve and so they tried to solve the problem with a partner and they're kind of having discussion on it and so I see another friend over there that's very very very much so off task so I had to go over there get her situated pull out her materials to make sure that she was kind of on top of things so she was good to go then he ended up informing me just a little bit later that during that exact same group that I had one young man who was on email meal but it was fine the entire thing he thought that it was a really good lesson obviously there I'm not a perfect teacher I don't expect to be a perfect teacher I try to do my very best every single day days where I was just not completely perfect um so my observation is done I feel really good about look at that my hair is just a hot mess I feel really good at the fact that I was able to kind of talk to him after this afternoon because typically you don't talk to your principal or your assistant principal that comes in and does the observation you don't talk to them until you sit down with them that day for like your post observation you know whatever um I felt better kind of talking to him I didn't mention that I was like okay I'm gonna tell you I'm gonna throw myself under the bus because I just need to like get it out and so he did say that he noticed that I did the fraction incorrectly and I told him I was like it you know we're just gonna kind of talk about it and have like that's gonna be a discussion point for tomorrow and that's how we're I'm gonna open up the conversation and that's what he ended up mentioning the other boy who was on you know the iPad and he was on something that he should not have been on but he also said that he did notice some really great things and there were some really great things that was happening in our room and he made a really really good point at that you know we are blind if we believe that every single child in our room is going to be on task all the time how many times do we as like as adults sit in a meeting and we check our email or we start talking to somebody or we get distracted with something else and it's so true because we do and we need to remember that we can't expect our kids to be perfect especially when we don't do those things ourselves so other than that it was a pretty good day in the afternoon I was able to get all of my reading comments done for my report card so my report cards are done all I have to do now is my post observation I have do my scoring and then I have to fill out my value my reflection piece to it so I need to do that tonight and then I also have to do my DRA s and score my writing assessments and get those in and I think that's it I don't have to do data meetings format for tomorrow so I got I'm done I don't have to deal with that so I'm very very thankful for that piece but all in all it was a pretty good day I have a hot mess the kids kind of passed out some Valentines we had a special snack at the end of the day for read aloud but we didn't make a huge fuss of it so um but yeah it was good so I'm gonna go home now I wanted to tell you guys about my awful observation that I had and just know that you know sometimes it happens I am gonna say that I'm very excited about tomorrow because tomorrow is Jump Rope for Heart and that means that I get to dress very casual athletic wear which I'm excited about all right I'm gonna catch you guys later on tomorrow morning to be precise and I hope you guys had a really great Valentine's Day um I want you to know that I'm sending you all a piece of my heart because I love you all very much thank you for always supporting my channel and for supporting me and being so positive and doing the absolute best that you can do for your kids out there and for being committed to them because they truly do deserve it so alright that's it I'm gonna end it there I'll catch you guys in the morning [Music] today is Jump Rope for Heart Day that means a couple of different things one I could address a very casual today so I have my Jump Rope for Heart on my t-shirt it's monsters I couldn't find my little gray jacket so I stole my husband's like Li jacket and that makes me really really happy that I get to dress like this today um second thing means that we will lose our special and then third means that I am gonna go kick butt jump roping with my students just gonna throw that out there I am an awesome jump Roper I am feeling so much better about my observation yesterday I know it didn't go as great is what I was hoping it was gonna go but especially after talking with my assistant principal um he made me feel better so I'm just not gonna worry about it I'm just gonna keep checking on with what I got to do uh today I don't really know what I have going on today I'm sitting on the floor I don't really quite know what I have going on today map that's gonna be normal today lunch is gonna be normal today let's see the afternoon I have my kids working on a main idea and keyd tells passage so they're reading a passage from Scholastic and then they are working on identifying the main idea and key details from it so from there they are pretty much all working independently because I want that done by tomorrow morning so that I can kind of assess where they are as far as inverse some of the informational standards that we have they are also building a summary from it and what I like about how scholastic does it what story works is that they really do walk them through it it's very scaffolded so they kind of give them guiding questions to ask them walk them through it and I have an example here so I can actually show it to you so like here's the main ID and key details here they give them some of the main ideas in this area and then they give them some of the key details and then they kind of ask them guiding questions to help help them understand what is it that they're looking for in the section and then afterwards they release all of the responsibility to the students so then the students have to identify the main ideas for the other sections in the story and then they also have to identify the key ideas that's gonna support the main ideas from there they have to develop a summary and it's a very guided summary which I like so this is kind of what the summary link is like so it's a guided summary they're completing it they're kind of answering those pieces to it to help them you know complete a summary for an informational text so I just want to see what my students can be able to do so a lot of them are working independently that's gonna allow me to be able to pull up conferences but really kind of touch base on kids as far as some of the literature standards that we've done and then some of the other informational pieces that I've gotten back from them so it's a good opportunity for me to kind of touch base on their book but then I also kind of pull out things to this extent that I will give them and I'm like hey so here's kind of what I've noticed that you're doing let me show you how we can go through and fix that so I'm gonna pull conferences all afternoon and not pull groups for a reading which is pretty easy peasy I'm really hoping that we're gonna meet with our PBL kids today yesterday we did not mean with our PBL kids um we had to have like a little sit-down I feel like every couple of months we need to sit down with our kids and we need to remind them hey you're not supposed to be talking in the hallway hey you're talking back whenever I ask you to do something you say yes mrs. Bachmann and you do it so we're kinda we had to have those conversations with our kiddos yesterday today we're hoping to get to our PBL kids that means that my researchers need to finish up with their survey and designing that so that we can start getting that out I'm gonna go over there interview that they conducted with one of the teachers in the building regarding our pantry that we have for our community and then see if we can I'm gonna teach them how to create like an actual email with maybe some follow-up questions that they can do because they didn't do so much of the follow-up questions they were asking the questions they were listening and then they would just go on to the next question without thinking of another question to kind of come back with so I need to go over follow-up questions with them how to write an appropriate email and then check on their survey to make sure that it looks good the farmers are doing a couple of different things I have two groups they're going to start researching on how to actually start the planting process what are the materials that they're going to need for the planting process etc etc the second group is working on cost so they're gonna call make phone calls to different companies in the area to determine the cost of seedlings so we have an idea of seeds and how much those are gonna end up costing us but we don't really know what the cost is going to be for seedlings so um I've given them the job of making phone calls so I need to go over how do we make phone calls you know what are you gonna ask what is the information that you need to make sure you're having so we're gonna set up kind of a chart with them so that they know exactly what they're supposed to be doing so much good times so much good fun by the way I started j8 next week and so our schedules gonna end up changing but I'm not gonna bother you guys with that this weekend I'll tell you all about that next week okay I am headed off to go to my collab this morning I have everything ready for my two math groups and my one reading group that I need to worry about like before lunch so let me show you guys what I have typically what I try to do is keep out my CPM plans here because they are my third rotation I have all of the papers that I'm gonna need for that I also have a CPM book that's opened up for the kids then I have my Bob's in the tweets I have their letters here that we're gonna practice with words and then I actually have their list right here they see it so I have their word list here that we will practice using some words I also have the pattern blocks from yesterday CPM group we're gonna just kind of quickly review it and I figured out it go ahead and pull that out so I am ready to go for this morning and now I'm just gonna head off to club so I'm thinking that the struggle of this week has finally like hit me yeah I have been so so tired for the past like two hours I just want to go to bed it was a really good afternoon there wasn't much to it we did lose our special but it wasn't a big deal we went and saw the kids do jump rope I danced because they had music on and I'm like oh yeah alright and then I attempted to do some jump roping and I realized that I am out of shape but it was a really good day I have to UM enter in my writing scores in my dear a score so I need to take this home I'm probably gonna sit on the couch I need to go home and check on my husband because he's not feeling well and then were freed and he might have the flu again so I think I'm gonna head home pretty quickly today and I'm not I'm just gonna leave it tomorrow we have a half day with the second half of it being dedicated to conferences so I'm gonna have my first round of conferences we don't have a lot going on but I do need to create like a sign-out sheet and I need to get some lemonade and some sprite that I usually use to create like a drink for parents because we always have like treats and stuff out for them so I think I'm gonna go and do that as well so I'm gonna just leave you guys I'm sorry I'm not showing you guys much today but I'm just tired so hopefully I'll have a little bit more energy tomorrow so that I can show you guys some of the things that we're doing and kind of talk to you a little bit more about our ppl sorry I gotta go to bed bye I have been having kind of odd symptoms just being very very tired all the time when I'm getting plenty of sleep because I do sleep pretty well for the most part so being tired a lot my hands for like the past year are extremely swollen and my joints hurt really really bad I had like mood swings going up and down I've had just like a number of different things that are going on so I've been going to see a doctor for it's like the beginning of the year having testing done and they came back with me having Hashimoto's so Hashimoto's is like a thyroid issue it's an autoimmune thyroid issue that I have so my doctor right now because my my TSH my T Ford my t3 are all coming back normal she wants to try a gluten-free diet so gluten there have been like studies out there saying that gluten is like a direct it connects to having thyroid issues so she wants to put me on a gluten-free diet she's put me on the highest dosage for vitamin D and then of course like drinking water exercising which I told her she was asking for too much there but so I have been trying to go gung-ho on this whole like gluten free diets I just yesterday filmed a what I eat in a workday video for like gluten free version of how I'm kind of managing this I've been doing it for a week and a half now and I am very much with someone who is used to going and getting Inga a breakfast sandwich at least once a week from either like it's sunken Jonas McDonald somewhere right now I can't have it um because the bread so I went and just bought myself patty sausage patties because what I found on limes said that sausage patties didn't have gluten I don't know if that's true or not but we're gonna find out um so that's kind of the gist of it I'm not gonna make a big issue of it but that kind of hopefully explains to you guys why sometimes like I don't vlog or I think it really like I talked about being tired a lot that's because of that so I'm working on getting myself healthy and getting myself back to normal um today is a half day so the kids are gonna be here for half a day we have conferences in the afternoon and I went out and bought all of my ingredients at Walmart in order to make my lemonade pineapple lemonade sparkling it's called sparkling pineapple lemonade it's like a punch thing and I love love love it so delicious so I have that to make for this afternoon for our conferences because we always make like a goodie table but other than that that's really about it I'm gonna figure out what we're doing today I think I'm gonna have fourth grade because typically on these half days we have to be structured by grade level so we can't just have like our normal kids so we are planning on beginning J a biz town next week so J is gonna come and it's going to interfere a little bit with what our PBL is so we've structured a schedule for the next six weeks so that we can teach J a every single day and kind of continue with the curriculum that we have for that so that the kids are ready for biz town in April and then on Thursdays and Fridays the kids are gonna have an opportunity in the afternoon to work on their PBL's so and they'll be able to do it like throughout the the week like they can work on it during you know independent reading independent writing those types of things so they'll have opportunities to be able to work on it so we have also decided that on Thursdays and Fridays we are going to so that we can kind of have this normal schedule do an isolated math unit so geometry and measurement can tend to be a little bit more isolated where some of the other units you have to have some previous skills in order to be able to kind of master that unit so we are going to give our kids the geometry and measurement for the pre-assessment today so that way we can kind of sort them and group them and put them into the rooms that they need to be in and then we're gonna start planning some of that curriculum but I am gonna eat my sausage patties but not on camera and I don't know figure out what it is that we're doing - I'm gonna get all my things together so that's all that's all I had to tell you this morning oh goodness I really like this shirt by the way you see it it's pretty it's from loft it's really cute however it's kind of cold right now it gets like on-and-off cold all day long so I figured I'm gonna just put a sweater over it so I'm just a hot plenty of opportunity to wear it in spring so I just have like a nice chunky sweater I do have a question for you guys I want to know are you someone who for your like parent conferences do you dress fancier than what you would on a normal workday or do you dress the same that you always dress I am someone that dresses the same that I always does dress I don't believe that I'm gonna come rolling up in here with a really cute little dress and you know high heels and a you know a blazer I'm not doing that sometimes I wear Blazers sometimes I don't but I am more of just some money I'm just getting dressed the way that I normally dress because you know that they're not gonna roll up in here with the suit so why am I gonna try it anywho um so I'm curious to know what that which you guys think I would love to know that leave it down in the comments I'm always curious a lot of people in my building here are they dressed up and I'm not one to dress up alright I'm gonna stop talking I'm gonna eat my patties bye I did want to show you guys my planner for this week I'm sorry that I didn't do like a day by day of this but here's kind of what it ended up looking like in the very end normally I have more projects on here but because my week was going to be so jam-packed I did not post my part my projects up here because it just was not gonna be priority this week and then for my top three on Monday I had like my sub plans I needed to finish math comments my Mac night which we did have and it was very very successful report cards were going to be due the next day my dad a meeting my community book read and that's kind of what I did at the very end so we also had a I had a CIA meeting in the morning on Wednesday my report cards I kept focusing on that I did do some of it here but I had to finish it here so it was taking me forever but I did just keep that as one of my only priorities for that day because that was the only thing that was truly worried about I also did write down here that I needed to do the word study word search in notebook pages which I did get done got my d rays uploaded last night I did not get my writing uploaded and then my observation I did half of it and then I fell asleep so I have to finish the other half today I got all the drinks for my lemonade today I need to finish up the word city check test check and then I need to finish checking off for cycle four and this is kind of what I have down today I'm going to go turn in a paper that I can get checked off my list but it is a priority for me today I have my conferences in the afternoon and then I need to do a word city video which we ended up deciding to do and just teach it in person this week but I still would like to do the video and get it uploaded so I don't have to worry about it next year I need to run my report card so I'm gonna go double check on that while I go drop that off I'm gonna give the assessments for a map today send home the new J schedule parent conference times in folders is what I need to get together for this afternoon and that's really gonna be about it so I have an AV o'clock meeting this morning and I'm done I feel like some of the times when I am a little bit like flustered having my planner having things written out just does make me feel so much better I have a second question for you guys I'm sorry I have like so many questions should I my beings are SuperDuper long right now and I have not been cutting them should I cut my bangs keep them or let them grow out so they're really long right now so I've been kind of just like pushing them off to the side like that like sighs sweepings so should I keep them or should I let them grow back out you guys let me know I don't know I like both of them and I miss like I when I don't have my bangs I miss my bangs and when I do have my bangs I miss not having my being I don't know I kind of go back and forth so I'm gonna let you guys end up deciding whether or not I should keep my bangs or not I'm gonna go drop off that paperwork and then get my report cards and then I'm going to start trying to get some other things checked off my list [Music]

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 9,667

Rating: 4.9115043 out of 5

Keywords: The Lettered Classroom, teacher vlogs, Bridget Spackman, a teacher's life, A day in the life of a teacher, Classroom Tour, education, elementary school, lesson plan, new teacher, how to become a teacher, how to teach, math, reading, writing, education videos, teacher, 4th grade, tour, common core, elementary teacher, middle school, tips, teaching, classroom, multiage classroom, project based learning, classroom vlogs

Id: -hRD9riuKOw

Length: 67min 18sec (4038 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2018