A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A 2ND GRADE TEACHER | A Classroom Diva

[Music] [Music] [Music] good morning everyone so today's video is all about what we actually do as teachers and so today I will be showing you what a day in the life of a second-grade teacher is really like if this is your first time to my channel welcome I am currently in my fifth year of teaching and we are in the month of May so it is the end of the school year and before I pack up and move to Florida I wanted to show you guys what a typical day looks like for me in the classroom I did a video like this last year when I taught third grade and I will link that down in the description box below if you haven't seen that video this year I am in second grade at a new school so this video is going to be a little bit different and it will just kind of give you a picture of what teaching is really like I honestly don't think a lot of people understand what goes into being a teacher it is an absolutely amazing job but it is hard work one thing that I want a lot of people to know is that teachers don't just work their Duty day hours so we work before school after school we stay late a lot of days we even bring stuff home and we work on stuff over the weekend so this is pretty much like a 24/7 job and you know you really have to find that work-life balance but you know when my husband is doing other things for his work or if he's on xbox or something I do bring papers home to grade because you know I mean we're doing our own thing now that's not every night but it is occasional and most nights I don't honestly get to it or I just don't bring it home because I want to have a life outside of the classroom but there are nights when I do bring things home so last night I brought home a lot of cans that my students had brought into the classroom we are using these for Mother's Day gifts so as you can see I spray-painted the cans and my sweet husband helped me he is the best but as you can see we put a lot of time and effort into the things that we do for our students outside of the classroom and during our free time our home time so again I absolutely love what I do but it is a lot of extra work and so I don't think people realize how much we actually do at home for our kids so if you have a child in school please thank your child's teacher because I guarantee that he or she is doing things at home or on the weekends or even before or after school outside of the typical or normal work time to help your child learn and grow so definitely give your teacher a big thank you all right so now I am going to head to work and show you what a typical day in the life of a second-grade teacher is like let's go [Music] okay so the first thing that I usually do in the morning is I come in I set up my trash cans because those are typically outside of my classroom door we put them out every day I have students put them out at the end of the school day and then in the morning I usually just bring them in so that they are ready for the day then I usually take my lunch down to the teachers lounge to put in the refrigerator so I have my lunch here and then I make any copies that I need for the day so here are the copies that I need I try to get down there early before everyone gets here just because then you're standing in line waiting for the copier and I just like to get whatever I need done for the day that way I'm not wasting any time just standing around so I have some assessments that I have to copy this morning so right now I'm gonna head down to the teachers lounge [Music] ok so I have my copies basically I am just going to assess the kids on a couple of things just to check and make sure they are getting it before I do report cards and then last night I did bring it home my turnin basket so then I have some other stuff on top but I did great put some papers last night and I need to go ahead and file this morning I tried to get those done as fast as I can because if not they will pile up and to be honest they usually do so I don't know I'd see all these papers from like this week oh my gosh I'm so behind but I'm gonna go ahead and file these now so I probably won't get through all of these but today is Wednesday so I have a little bit and honestly I have not sent home student work in a long time which is why their mailboxes are so full right now but I was out for quite a while with just some things going on and if you want to know a little bit more about what's been going on in my personal life then you go check out the niccola's nook that is our personal or family channel so I explain a little bit more on there or I guess maybe I haven't even posted it yet if you're watching this but pretty soon I will be posting kind of what's been going on in our life recently and why I've been out a little bit you guys will kind of understand why I have been out of school for a few days and that's why my stock is so huge too but let's be real no matter what grade you teach I'm sure the stock just gets astray normos if you don't stay on top of it so that is one of my struggles as a teacher is staying on top of papers so anyway I'm gonna go ahead and finish this and then I am gonna turn on my computer and get ready for the day [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so over here at my teacher table this is where I typically do my guided reading lessons today is a little bit different actually so we are going to go to an assembly we are at the end of the school year so a typical day towards the end of the year is where we have some different events and assemblies and things going on but I am going to show you very quickly what my guided reading cart looks like for when I do guided reading with my kids so this is my guided reading cart I got this from Amazon and as you can see I have some leveled readers in here for my groups I have all kinds of reading materials and I am missing some things because I've been doing some running records with my kids but I just take this cart and I wheel it over to my teacher table and then wheel it back maybe when I'm done and then any extra guided reading materials and word work items are over here in these Rainbow drawers that I got from Michaels so when I post my classroom tour video I go into a little bit more detail on these and then if you still have questions I will definitely be able to answer those over the summer so over here on my teacher table for today since we have an assembly instead of doing guided reading I am going to do our Mother's Day gifts with the kids so here are the cans that we spray-painted at home last night and the kids are going to paint them and decorate them for Mother's Day so what's gonna go in here our little flower pots that the kids have already made which are over here and I do need to go ahead and water these but I'm not gonna do this until the afternoon because I did have a student water them yesterday and I think they're pretty yeah they're pretty moist still so I am gonna go ahead and wait a little bit on those another thing that I do in the mornings is I check on our caterpillars you can see that this one has formed its chrysalis this one oh now that one has been crawling in circles for days so I'm not really sure what's going on with that one I don't know if he's looking for food or I don't know love to ask but you can see that a couple of these caterpillars have started to form their chrysalis and yeah I'm not really sure I need to very carefully transplant them over into or transport transplant transport them over to our butterfly garden so we are going to have some butterflies here pretty soon hopefully if the caterpillars survive alright so over here on my desk I have some materials for today this little stack is where I keep all of the papers that I'm going to do with the kids today I usually have a basket up here but I don't know it's just kind of easier to stack it right there I don't know I was using the basket for something else and then we have field trip reminder notes these are little forms for next year and so that we can group the kids based on you know boy-girl ability level if they are on an IEP or in RTI so we're going to go ahead and group the students for next year into their third grade classes based on these forms I have some things that need to go home in Friday folders so this is like if kids are absent and we have assessments to do or things like that I keep it in here so that I can just pull the folder and then pull the kids back to my teacher table to finish up some work I do have these mustaches right here these are teen prizes for Team let's see team Chu won this week so I have some mustaches for them just for something fun a little bit different and then I need to turn this in this is from let's see Samantha Henry I will link this down below this is a second grade memory book and so I just printed off the pages that I wanted my kids to do and I'm gonna put these pages inside of our target books I have been holding onto those blank target books for a long time and so as soon as I saw this I was like yes I have something to finally use those for I have to turn this in today but I'm not gonna worry about it now I just usually worry about the things that I need for the day and then anything that I need to send off to print in bulk I usually do around lunchtime or during our recess time unless I have extra time in the morning and then here are the copies that I made this morning and then I have a couple of things I need to file for today oh I had to stop for a moment because our school is serving breakfast this morning Oh YUM so it is actually teacher appreciation week when I'm filming this you guys might not see this until next weekend or this upcoming weekend but yes so today they're serving breakfast for teacher appreciation week and one other thing that I forgot that I do every morning is I have to put on my microphone I do have a student who is hard of hearing and so every morning I put this on I put it around my neck and then I have a speaker in the back where it comes out at and so that way all of the students can hear what I have to say and my student who has heard of hearing is able to hear very clearly and he's just able to hear me better so anyway I am gonna go ahead and put this on eat my breakfast check my email and then the kids will be here in about 15 minutes [Music] so sunset is the end of the school year we are doing an end-of-the-year countdown I got this from a first grade teacher here at my school but it is such an awesome idea I don't know if they came up with it on their own as a first grade team and then shared or if they got this idea from somewhere else but regardless it is awesome so today is May 9th and it is nickname day so we're gonna make some nickname signs today and the kids can put them on their desks oh my gosh they're so excited about this day yesterday was movie day and basically it goes through the alphabet from A to Z for the last 26 days of school and letter Z is fun it's zip and zoom day today we will zip our backpacks and zoom out of school so that is what we are doing over these next few weeks to finish out the school year so here are my plans for the day and I know it looks really crazy mine is not super pretty like a lot of teachers or but I just I don't have time I don't have time to make it all pretty I mean just I just need to get the job done so basically what I like to do is just this is kind of like my week at a glance I can kind of look on here and see what we're doing throughout the week and it just helps my brain kind of get started for the morning good morning good morning you got your d r please we'll get your deal mountain lions go okay so the kids are at recess right now and I don't have duty today so I'm in the classroom we just had our assembly and we watched the middle school jazz band perform we do have a middle school attached to our school so those kiddos came over and performed for us today so it was awesome during this time if I don't have recess duty I usually go to the bathroom again because it's really the only time that I have between my morning with the kids and lunch so I am gonna go do that and then I usually get stuff ready for writing time today for writing we are working on Mother's Day booklets so oh and we did not get a chance to do our math assessments today so I'm just gonna do those during math time but we are doing these Mother's Day pages this is going to be part of our writing today so usually we do writing right after recess and then we have lunch during lunch time I usually eat in the teachers lounge this year I never really ate in the teachers lounge up until this year just because I don't know I guess I think of my lunch time as my me time that's the only time that I really get some peace and quiet it's not that I don't like my teammates that is not the reason I adore them and every year I have seems to have really great team members but I did start eating with my teacher friends this year just because I don't know they're just really chill and you know we just get along really great and they're just really easy to talk to and it's it doesn't feel like I am exerting too much energy or anything I'm just having lunch with some friends so I do eat with my teacher friends most days but I'll probably come back into the classroom to show you kind of what I do to get ready for math in the afternoon because if I have to make an anchor chart or you know get math materials ready I usually do that during lunch time so as you can see today is nikneim day and so all of the kids have their nicknames Honda desks here so we love to do fun things like that in second grade not just for the end of the year but just throughout the school year it just makes it more fun and the kids love it so they are engaged more when you kind of just make it a little bit more exciting so if I'm calling on a child I am using their nickname instead of their actual name today just to make it a little bit more fun all right so I'm gonna go run to the restroom check my box and I will see you guys soon so during reading time I typically do guided reading groups but I am still working on some running records and you can see that this is what happens sometimes in the primary grades we have things that are spilled so I have this lovely coffee stain from my iced coffee this morning that has spilled on to a student's running record a benchmark test rather and yeah but he did pass he passed a cue this morning which is awesome that is where kids should be at the end of fourth grade and he is at the end of second so he passed with a 99.5% his words per minute are a little bit lower than I would be hoping but his phrasing is really good he does have all of the other components of fluency but it's not excellent so he's out of to his comprehension was an 8 out of 10 but yes I just wanted to show you that this is a typical day in second grade also before I pick up the kids I wanted to show you what I do to keep everything for field trips organized I just use a regular folder and just right field trip folder on it and basically it cover some stuff up but I just keep a list as students bring in permission slips again it's not anything fancy but it's just a checklist to see if they brought in their permission slip if they need a school lunch if their parent is volunteering to be a chaperone and then I keep their permission slips over here now when we actually go on a field trip I make sure to have actually I think it's in here this list back here is an emergency contact list so I take that with and then any money that we have for our trip I just keep in this little pocket so those have been coming in throughout the week we did our spelling this morning and we do have a spelling test every Friday and then I got this sweet sweet sweet teacher gift from one of my students oh my gosh she knows me so well I love love love it oh my gosh she also got these sweet cards that were in my mailbox from some of my students let's see oh I'm so beautiful let's see what he said thank you for all of your hard work you've been a very good teacher you will be the best teacher I will ever have if anyone asks if one day I hope I have a teacher like mrs. Nicholls you are the best of the best oh I hope you can be a teacher for a long time for other kids oh I love it that's so so sweet by the way I did teach them the difference between your and your I actually got this idea offline I don't remember where I saw it I think it was just on Google or Pinterest but I made my own anchor chart that was very similar to another one and basically it was teaching them the difference between your and your with the contraction and then why oh you are so we have your pizza the pizza is yours it belongs to you and then if we use your with an apostrophe re that means you are you are literally pizza so that's just a fun way to remember or to remind kids you know the difference between those two words but apparently we need to revisit it a little bit okay so the kids are at lunch and I just actually ate lunch with my second grade team but I came back a little bit early just so I can get some stuff done here in the classroom and talk to you guys and today I am not mrs. Nicholas I am Galaxy Nichols that's what the kids voted on for me today that is my nickname for a nickname day is Galaxy Nichols so it's pretty fun because you know as the kids come up to me or if they have a question they'll say Galaxy Nichols can I go to the bathroom and I'll say y-yes cool guy or whatever their nickname is it's pretty fun so anyway I think our math lesson is really short today we are finishing up a unit and so it is just kind of a review day let me show you guys what we have typically for math so these are the math pages and we just have all of our math pages in a binder each of the students has a mouth binder you can see that we are very close to being done with this unit we use math investigations so here is my teachers manual this is I believe the second to last lesson so today we are supposed to have a quiz but I will probably give that to them on Friday just because I like to let them have a little bit X review time before I quiz them so that is the lesson for today we are working on subtracting in parts subtracting three-digit numbers so that is kind of what we're working on so I need to go ahead and review this and make sure that you know everything is ready to go for that which honestly it looks like I'm not gonna do the quiz today I know I'm not following it exactly but that's kind of how you have to be as a teacher you have to know your kids and I like to give my kids like I said a little bit of extra practice and review before I actually quiz them or give them any kind of assessment so it just gives me a better idea as to where they are at I don't know I don't do that all the time but a lot of the times I do and then we still haven't painted our cans but we are gonna go ahead and do that after math today so I just have some different acrylic paint and that way now that one is white but you have some pinks and I have a purple so those would be pretty for Mother's Day this teal is a really beautiful color as well so kids will be able to choose from some different paint colors and paint their cans so that they can put their little plant inside so that is pretty much what I do during my lunch break is I go ahead and eat and then sometimes I will have the kids in here for a lunch bunch they can either spend Viking vouchers if they want to come in and eat lunch in the classroom or sometimes for good behavior or just as kind of like a little motivational thing I will do a Lunch Bunch with a group of students if I notice a group of students is doing just a really nice job in the classroom sometimes I sporadically just say hey you can pick two friends to come and join us for lunch bunch today and they really really love that so I don't have any kids in here today but I will have a group in here on Friday typically I don't do anything with lunch bunches except for on Fridays but occasionally we will have a lunch bunch in the classroom and basically all that means is the kids will come in here to eat their lunch also you can see that I have a lot of stuff kind of messy in the classroom and I do not clean up after my students that is their responsibility I clean up the stuff that I bring out and that I have for the class for the day but I do not clean up any of their mess that is their responsibility so if you see stuff over here like this in particular that does not fly with me and it's okay for now but they will eventually have to clean that up before we go home today anything that they just bring out they are responsible to pick up like we have a marker on the floor here you know you can see stuff all over the table that they didn't finish which is fine but again before we go home today or before we you know go to specials we always have some kind of cleanup procedure I do have classroom helpers so those kids have special jobs but then the rest of the kids if they don't have a job this week they still have to usually find three to five items to fix or pick up or throw away in the classroom just to be helpful this is also a way that my students earn their team points we check which team has the cleanest tabletop which team has the cleanest floor and which team has the most organized caddies on the top of their desks so they have to work as a team in order to earn points that way I am gonna go ahead and clean up now clean up my desk and then just make sure I have everything set up for math I don't have any anchor charts to make today because this is something that we have been working on so and like I said this is at the end of the unit so I don't have any other new concepts that I'm necessarily teaching so I don't need a new anchor chart if this was a new unit or a new concept or skill I would absolutely make a new anchor chart and I would hang it back here on my math bulletin board so let's go ahead and clean up a little bit and I'll see you guys soon [Music] yes thank you for your clay our hands down for just a moment may need your bottom on your six got your eyes are on me your hands on your lap alright today we have another math assessment that we need to collect it and get done the first one is a review of time so while we are thinking about time let's go ahead and take a look at our clock here's my clock I am going to give you in time I want you to tell me what time it is flight hands-only here we go let's see you guys ready for the challenge yet even see just putting in six a lock correct yeah yeah no mixing thank you 1005 is he correct yeah I'm going to do something a little bit different tell me what the nearest five minutes is what is the time to the nearest five minutes that means the one that's closest to it so when we're counting let's count my fights really quick five ten fifteen so where is the closest one thank you great so we have it's easier to use any fight right well it is closer to thirty and I'll show you why actually can you clean got some wrong paper it's only 1/2 away from 30 n is 1 2 3 away from 35 you're going to be measuring to the nearest 5 minutes and then you're also going to tell me if the clap is showing a.m. or p.m. and what does a M stand for again morning that's how we can remember it if mom is reading you a story before you go to bed is that a.m. or p.m. yes if you are walking home from school is that km so my kids are at specials right now and today we have IMS which is basically library and they do iPads and they learn computer stuff in there as well it encompasses all of those things so we do have that today and then on some other days we have PE music and Learning Lab we don't actually have an art class at this school which makes me really sad because I think kids really need that so I wish and I don't know if it's a district-wide thing but the last school that I taught at last year in this district they did not have an art class either so I'm not sure if that is district-wide or what but there definitely isn't the push for art and I wish there was but anyway we do it in the classroom anyway and I know it's a little dark in here right now because the lights are off but the mothersday cans are turning out really really cute I love them some of the kids are getting really creative so I love how they're turning out we still have a few more to go but overall they are looking really really sweet so I love it so basically during this time when my kids are at specials I either file papers high grade papers and I basically just clean up my stuff for the next day and just kind of get things ready for the next day now tomorrow is actually our field trip so basically I just have a little bit to plan for before our field trip and then when we come back from our field trip and when we come back we have double specials which means I have my kids go to PE and then straight to Learning Lab and we have our team meeting so and thence the end of the day so I really don't have a whole lot to plan for tomorrow but normally during this time that is what I would be doing I do have some things that I need to clean up obviously on my desk and I do have some kids that have to finish their painting over here at the teacher table when they come back from specials before they go home just because I know tomorrow is gonna be you know it's a field trip day they're gonna be tired when they come back and you know first thing in the morning we're probably gonna finish up our Mother's Day booklets that way I can go ahead and send home everything for Mother's Day on Friday hmm we're getting all kinds of goodies this week for Teacher Appreciation I am feeling so unhealthy this week I never ever like really am a sweets person I'm a salty girl all the way but I also never drink pop ever I think I've had one maybe in this whole past year and that was when I took my little one maybe just subway or something after gymnastics over the summer and I don't know I had gotten like Diet Coke or dr. pepper or something I never drink soda at all and so um so yeah that's strange but I don't know why I'm feeling that way I don't know I guess I'm just in like an end-of-the-year everything happening at once kind of mode I'm in survival mode which is typically what it's like at the end of the year no matter what grade you teach I know I hit this point year at the end of the school year where I am just in survival mode the movers come on Friday so that means the movers come in two days today is Wednesday and my husband Chaz is leaving next Wednesday for Florida so I am gonna be here by myself living out of a suitcase for the next couple of weeks so yes survival mode all the way I do have Diet Coke and a cupcake and I'm just trying to get through the last few weeks of the year before I clean up for the end of the year though don't worry I will be posting a classroom tour so you can see what my classroom was like this year so anyway right now I'm gonna just clean up my desk and I honestly don't feel like doing anything I just like having my legs up right now I don't feel like doing anything sometimes I don't do anything during specials honestly he's got bad is that terrible I don't know this is supposed to be my planning time so I'm supposed to be planning and sometimes it's nice just to not have to talk or do anything which I'm talking to you guys right now but that's different it just it's nice to have a just take a breather just to have a moment to yourself so I have about 15 minutes and I think I'm just gonna enter some stuff on the computer and clean up and call it good all right guys so wow the lighting is really interesting right now we have a skylight here in our classroom so anyway I we had a staff meeting after school today and then I went ahead and started helping one of my little caterpillars because I thought he was gonna die can you guys see him he's going up the popsicle stick he has been trying to get up on top of that can of the little jar to create his chrysalis for like two days and poor little he was just going around in circles for two days and I'm like this caterpillar is gonna die so I needed to do something to help him out he also had a lot of like silk attached to his back end and was dragging it around so now he is figuring out how to climb the popsicle stick so that he can get to the top some of them like you saw this morning I've started to create their chrysalis and then after school a little bit ago I know of one of them into our butterfly house here so we at least will hopefully have one butterfly but anyway I'm just happy that I got that popsicle stick in there and that caterpillar is finally moving up the popsicle stick I was really worried he was gonna die in there and so yeah it was so sad just watching him go around and around and around and around for two days so I decided to do something about it today hoping that it will help so this is what it typically looks like if he entered a school day painting or not there's always something on my teacher table just because that's just how we roll in second grade so as you can see I have started to wash off my paintbrushes over here this is acrylic paint so I want to make sure that everything is nice and clean so that it doesn't harden on those paintbrushes [Music] so funny story tomorrow as you guys know we have a field trip and on my day we had a field trip as well which I was out and so I I wasn't there with my kids one of my students my runner one of my runners he actually took off they were out on a hike in the hills and he took off through the woods across the main street down there down that's like next to where my kids were and three teachers were chasing him one of them for an hour and a half he got so far that she didn't know where they ended up at and so she had to call the cops to come find them and to locate them via her phone that apparently was very interesting you just I don't know I don't think people really understand what teachers do and what we go through and we love love love your children we do but oh my gosh some days there is just you know there's never a dull moment in teaching let's just put it at that we'll just we'll leave it at that there is never a dull moment in teaching so yes this particular child he just would I guess he just took off through the forest and just would not stop wouldn't talk to the teacher who was following him and then of course when I found out that night was just like oh my gosh I couldn't do anything I wasn't there and this poor teacher had to chase this kid and they don't even know why he ran he was just he just didn't wanna be there I guess and this little one doesn't do particularly well with me being out so he's one of those kids where once you learn how to interact or communicate with them he's fine and I know how he responds and I know how to talk to him so when he's feeling frustrated or wants to be in control or manipulate a certain situation I know how I can see it I know how to kind of calm him down and how to talk him down from that before something happens I've kind of learned that after you know him running this year out of the classroom and so I've had a little bit of experience with that however because I wasn't there that happened so oh my gosh I just I felt so bad but anyway that little one is obviously not allowed to go on our next field trip which is tomorrow so I do have to prepare some ISS work for him because he's got us to here at this school and do work so yeah I kind of feel bad but that is a safety issue and if that was my child I would not want him or her to be going on a field trip where they might take off and go somewhere that is unsafe and unsupervised so it is for safety reasons that he's unable to go but it's kind of sad because I really do adore him and I wish he could go with us but he just can't he just can't so I have to get some work ready for him tomorrow and then I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up here by grading some papers and finishing up some paint brushes and then I'm gonna be done for the day so I hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did please give it a big thumbs up don't forget to click Subscribe and the little bell for notifications so that you know when I post a new video thanks so much for watching and I'll see you guys next time bye

Channel: A Classroom Diva

Views: 1,976,474

Rating: 4.8623414 out of 5

Keywords: day in the life, a day in the life, a week in the life, day in the life of a teacher, day in the life of a second grade teacher, day in the life of a 2nd grade teacher, a classroom diva, classroom diva, classroom, teacher, teacher tips, teacher vlog, vlogger, education, class, day in the life 2018, teaching, teacher youtuber, teaching channel, teacher channel, 2nd grade, second grade, elementary, elementary school, school teacher, jessica nichols, 2nd grade teacher

Id: va25aciCD3E

Length: 37min 27sec (2247 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2018