BACK TO SCHOOL Q&A | answering your questions about getting ready for school

hey everyone my name is Katie and I'm going into my sixth year of teaching I'll be teaching third grade in the State of Florida and today's video is going to be a little back to school q a session so I'm so glad you're here [Music] so I put a little question box on my Instagram page because I really wanted to do a sit down video with you guys I haven't filmed one basically the whole summer um so I wanted to do one before like the busyness of the school year starts and I was like what better topic to do than back to school q a because I know that's what's on a lot of people's minds as they start to like gear up and get ready for back to school and it's on my mind too um and you guys had some great great questions I'm hoping this video um will answer some of your questions and I'm trying to post it in a timely manner like no more than a week or two weeks after you guys asked the questions so hopefully this will be helpful for you guys as you start gearing up for back to school all of my questions are on my computer which is sitting here on my desk um I cannot answer every question that was asked because I got so many but what I did do was I went through and I um picked ones that were asked multiple times and some of them were like the same question just phrase different if that makes sense so I probably will answer your question it may just not be like the direct wording of the question that you left but I tried to pick the ones that would give the most information and that um like you guys asked the most about so without further Ado we're just gonna jump in because you guys are here for the questions and the answers and so that's what I'm gonna give you um I will say I'm in my classroom today working on classroom setup so my hair is kind of a mess I haven't worn makeup at all in the month of July I'm wearing one of my favorite teacher tees because I just needed to Hype myself up to come up to school and get some work done today so that's kind of the vibe but I do love doing sit down and Q a videos in my classroom I like doing them at home too but there's something about like a back to school one when you're in your classroom in back to school mode like boxes and books all over the place and so yeah this is like truly back to school mode all right first question when is your first day back so teachers start on I'm looking at my calendar that's up on the board August 2nd students start on August 10th so that's my first days back next question is best read-alouds with activities to go with them oof okay I know I read through these questions before but I didn't like sit down and write down my answers so this is kind of off the cuff but my favorite like back to school read-alouds I have our classes of family and that's a great one I use the book when the relatives came and I kind of compare a class family to your home family um and talk about the similarities and differences between those two and I really like that one um I've never personally used it but the name jar is a great one and I actually just got that one from my Amazon wishlist so I might use it this year as like a beginning of the school year thing first day jitters is always a good one and people do Jitter juice with that and I think that's a wonderful story and it also is a good connection to show like students might be nervous but teachers might have some nerves and some Jitters too and we're going to work it all out together another good one I'm hoping I'm giving you a long list but I'm not trying to overwhelm you another good one is I promise which is by LeBron James I'm pretty sure and I read that one before we do our classroom promises and so that's a really good one to segue in to like making a classroom promise list with your group of kiddos um as far I have one that I read when I was teaching first grade I think it was like Clark the Shark or something about Clark going to school I'm gonna look that one up um it was a Shark book and it was cute and I did it for the first day of school so I'm gonna look it up and then I'll link it over here I'm trying to think if there's any other books that I like to read as far as like novel read-alouds I teach third grade so I start the year off reading third grade angels um which is a really fun chapter book to read aloud during snack time so if you teach third grade that's a fun one there's also one called Fourth Grade Rats so if you teach fourth grade you could start with third grade angels and then Read Fourth Grade Rats or you could just read Fourth Grade Rats and that would be fine too but I do that one at the end of the year because my team teacher suggested it so I hope those are those are kind of a couple I know they're really common also pick your favorite read aloud it doesn't even have to be back to school theme but I think like picking your ultimate favorite read aloud for the beginning of the school year is kind of fun to do with your class because it gives them a glimpse into you and like what you like Beyond just like it's bad back to school it's a welcome theme it's all of the the stuff that you'll be doing all the time and it can break up like the monotony of that school if you just do one for fun so those are like read aloud suggestions for back to school um next question does your District have tenure if so how long does it take Florida does not have tenure I did in Alabama and it took three years Florida doesn't have it so that answers that question um do you buy anything special for yourself for back to school new lanyard tees pins Etc uh sometimes I do sometimes I don't I kind of just sporadically treat myself this lanyard is one of my absolute favorite things and I will link it in the description box if you're interested in it I had my eye on this ever since I was a student teacher on um I'm pretty sure you pronounced her name Alicia and so if I mispronounce it I'm so sorry but I've been like eyeing her lanyards forever and then I got it not as like a back to school gift for myself well I kind of did because I got it when I went back in January the last year I taught first grade um but if you're looking to treat yourself or something back to school this right here I love this lanyard and I wear it every day so I'm like why not get a lanyard that you love because you're gonna wear it every day right so that's one thing and also I love of having like a good tumbler cup to take to school or a coffee cup so I really like the little charvis coffee mugs I've also been eyeing I think it's is it simply modern is that what it's called the they're not Stanley's but they have the handle I've been eyeing that because I really do kind of want to cut with a handle um not just to be like oh I want a Stanley Cup but I carried somebody else's Stanley Cup in and having the handle I was able to carry so much more and I was like hmm that might be for me so I've been looking into that teacher tees are always fun but you might get one with like your team at the beginning of the year so I didn't get anything for myself this year that doesn't mean I won't I did put disco balls up in my classroom which was just a classroom decoration but I'm absolutely obsessed with them so that's kind of like a treat yourself for the beginning of the year because I didn't have to have those for my classroom Decor but I'm sitting here looking at them and I love them so very long answer for that question um next question will you be changing anything in your room this year if you're following along with my classroom setup series you'll kind of see some of the changes I'm making to answer that in a short way not really I'm kind of keeping it for the most part the same I'm changing a little thing like maybe what I display on these cabinets I'm changing and I kind of fix my cubby numbers to reflect my classroom numbers this year but not really like no major major changes as of now what are you most excited about returning to school um I really like being in routine and I love summer and I've traveled a lot this summer with my husband which has been really fun but I think I'm looking forward to the routine um I also absolutely love my co-workers and I was here yesterday and chatting with a bunch of them and it's just it fills my cup to be with them um so I'm really looking forward to getting to have that interaction with them every day and eat lunch with them every day um and I think I think I'm making myself teary just thinking about it so I think that's something that I'm most excited for I also really like fall so if you're somebody who's kind of dreading back to school but you like fall I think that I I just love that school starts in the fall season because it starts to get cooler although I live in Florida so that won't be till like literally December but you know like pumpkins and candles and sweaters and football and all those fun things and the holidays start to come towards the fall and so that's something that is always exciting about returning to school for me as well um tips for restarting the year in an already decorated slash lived-in classroom for a returning teacher this is the boat that I'm in right now and I'm really excited to be in this boat honestly I would say like keep it simple you don't have to completely redo your theme I'm not I'm keeping all of my printed things that I did last year the same literally I'm not changing my theme at all um I'm just adding some things like I added the Disco Balls I'm changing up one of my Ela walls I'm looking at what works last year what didn't work and I feel like most of my changes are going to be procedure based and less classroom setup so that's what I'm going to be focusing my time on more this week and during pre-planning I hope that answers your question um next page of questions what gets you pumped up for back to school I think I already kind of answered that one getting to see my co-workers um getting to be in routine and fall starting all gets me pumped up also coming in and working in my classroom helps get me excited um I was telling David he was like how's your day I was like it's okay yesterday and he looked at me and he was like well what'd you do and I just went and told them all about all the things that I decorated and he was like I can tell you're really excited to go back and I was like really and he was like yeah you just talked to me for like 10 minutes Non-Stop about how exciting all this was and how much you loved doing this and this and so um that's something that brings me joy is to come in and like get to work on my own time at my own pace watching whatever I want on the board listening to Taylor Swift drinking a coffee just enjoying my space so that helps get me pumped up um the next question is oops I scrolled what do you teach for the first few days of school and then another one that's like kind of following up with it is how early do you start planning lessons so I make sure that my first week of school is planned before pre-planning or during pre-planning um and then I'll start planning my lessons like content wise during that pre-planning week towards the end of it like after open house so the beginning of like teacher planning I'm in open house mode like meet the teacher we call it open house I'm in like no we call it orientation I'm in like orientation mode and like first week of school mode and then after we have a like a day or two and so that's about the time when I've had everything labeled and I've had time to process and I'll start to do my lessons like with my content I'm going to start it a little earlier this year because I don't have as much to set up in my room but that's about when as far as what I teach the first few days of school I actually have an entire video that I walked through my first three days last year and I'm doing about the same thing I'm changing a few activities up but if you want to know like what I teach I will link that video above in the cards for you please go watch it because I show you my plans and my slides for the first week oh excuse me and I think it gives a good idea of like what I teach but I'm mostly doing like team building activities and routines and procedures especially this year because we're starting with just two days that's probably all I'm gonna have time for in those first two days of school that way we can hit the ground running with content when we get started with content um the next question says what do you do to prepare for meet the teacher open house P.S you're amazing thanks for all you do oh that's sweet um as far as preparing for meet the teacher an open house I really relied on my teammates last year because it was my first year here um I my first piece of advice for getting all of that stuff together is check with your teachers who have been there in your office staff because they might have forms that you need to do that they need for you to have parents do and this has been my experience all of my years of teaching there's always like a form from the nurse a transportation form if you need to get them to do free and reduced lunch forms um there's all kinds of stuff that the school wants you to like make sure the parents don't leave until they've done this and so that's really my focus at meet the teacher in orientation shake their hand meet them greet the kiddos and say this is what I need from you for the office everything else that's like me personally I send home in a folder and I say send this with your child on the first day of school and this is for you to keep to learn about me because a lot of the time it depends on your school too but I always have families that have multiple kiddos not always but you know what I mean um and so they'll be stopping by my classroom but they also have to stop by another classroom and another classroom for their kids so they don't have all that time to dedicate to being in your room and they already have a bunch of forms from the school they have to fill out so I'm like if I can get you to do the school forms that they want me to get from you then we win and everything else can be communicated via this folder and I can send it home and you can read it on your own time sip in your coffee this weekend or I'll communicate it during the first week of school so that's kind of My Philosophy for that but I will say that's what I would recommend for paper flow but do think about what you want your students to do with their supplies and that is totally dependent on you and how you store supplies do you want them to keep it at your desk at their desk do you have places where you want them to sort the supplies so those would be the two big things to think through before orientation or meet the teacher um next page flying through these y'all these are great questions though um somebody said how do you use that wheel in your room I was thinking it was some classroom management thing the answer is yes I totally copied and pasted this from my teacher who's right back here um because I didn't know what I was gonna do for classroom management in third grade and she does the wheel of excellence and so it's a wheel that has 16 slots and what I do is when I see a student who is doing something that follows our class promises or going out of their way to be kind I tell them to go sign for the wheel um they go sign their name next to a number and once all 16 of the number slots are full we spin the wheel and I started last year just spinning it once but it you kind of have to feel out how often you have kids signed because for me I don't have them sign as often because a lot of them just do the right thing you know so it's not like every time you push in your chair you get to sign I'm a little more selective and so I started out with just spinning it once when it filled up and then I was like that's not enough for the amount that I have kids signed the board so I adjusted it and I did three times because they're in third grade and if their number is landed on they get to pay take a sticker from the sticker store they can pick a classroom coupon to save and use or they can pick something from the treasure box and they really love it and get very excited about it and it's so easy for a management because I'm just like go sign for the wheel and I only have to say like one thing I don't have to come bring them a sticker and put it on their chart or keep up with their charts or do anything later when their chart is full because they go sign the board on their own and I think it's cool for them to have like ownership of it and see their name up on the board and again I copied and pasted it from my teacher behind me because that was her idea and I was like I like that I'm stealing it that's what good teachers do right they they adopt other teacher ideas um what to do the two years left before you graduate the last two years are the fun ones where you get a lot of great experience and I won't go into detail about what I think you should do these last years because I have a whole video on it are we surprised no um I try to make a lot of videos that are helpful for you guys but I know they get buried in all of the things I post on my channel so anytime somebody asks a question and I can point you to a whole video on the subject I do not to like promote my video or anything but I feel like it gives you in depth what you need to do so I have a whole video that's tips for student teachers and I don't know if you're entering your student teaching or not but it's still good things to be thinking of um in these last two years so I will link that in the cards for you to go check out and it gives you all the tips that I wish I would have done or things that I did do that helped me in my last two years of college how do you practice procedures with your students um so I practice procedures over and over again first I teach them and I kind of show them step by step with bullet points like listed out this is how we do this procedure I model it and I'm like the corny like I'm gonna take my paper and place it in the tray and after I do that I'm gonna walk to my desk and then the first student who does it I narrate while I do it I'm like great we're gonna have so and so show us what we just learned as we all get ready to line up are you ready and they're like sure I'm like all right watch as they stand up and they push in their chair now they're going to walk around on the big circle in the room and take the next empty spot to line up to go wherever um and then I'm like all right who wants to be next and I pick somebody else and I probably narrate it like three times and then I start calling table groups um to do whatever the procedure is that in that example I'm talking about like lining up to go somewhere um but same if it was like walking in to get your snack I'm like this is what you're gonna do watch me do it all right we're gonna have this person you're gonna be the first one so let's watch and see how they follow all the steps next person and then by the time we've done it three times check um but I do remind them every time it comes up and that's something I do when I lesson plan is I have and if you watched my first week video you'll see this I have like my time ranges on the side my activities in the middle and then on the far right I'm not good at left and right and this is probably reverse but on the far right I put like any procedure that's required to do that activity so I don't forget to pre-teach it when we get there because it's easy to forget like oh yeah they don't they don't know how we line up so if you just put lineup for recess well I don't know that that's a procedure that we're going over on that day so um that's kind of how I practice them sometimes we'll make posters of it like that could be a good second week of school thing for them to make a poster for the procedure and then hang it somewhere in the room also a good collaboration activity activity um okay two more oh two more pages which is just a couple more questions I think I've got like four more and this one perfect any ideas for Cooperative group activities teaching kids expectations for group lessons so on the first day of school last year what I did was I did a group activity like on the first day just to test the waters and see how these kids work as groups um and I did posters for like what does we talked about how we want the classroom to be safe the goal is to have a safe environment so what does a safe classroom look like sound like and feel like and I did a put like three groups and I just gave them markers and let them brainstorm and that was so telling to see how well they work together you could already tell who was like the natural leader who would kind of sit back who wanted to be off task if there were any students that didn't work well together in groups so I thought that was really good um but then going forward I think it's good to kind of assign group roles to help them with Cooperative activities and um a good one would be like letting them make procedure posters the second week after we've gone over all the procedures it's a great group activity um or doing like think pair shares where they ask a question and they have to talk with their table group Partners all of those things Foster that Cooperative group activity kind of feel um and it gives you chances to teach them expectations so I know that's not like a specific example but that's kind of what I do top five procedures to teach okay in my classroom the top five procedures to teach restroom oh my goodness teach them the restroom procedure that's like number one um morning routine what they do when they come in in the mornings would be number two um I would say like all of my hand signs like getting water asking to go to the bathroom getting a pencil all those things would be number three but that's kind of a lot of procedures tucked into one is that cheating I don't know so bathroom morning routine hand signs um what else lining up because you're gonna have to line up to get places and hmm bathroom morning routine hand signs lining up okay and I think the last one for me that's kind of particular in my classroom is um getting supplies I have this thing that's called the big circle in my classroom um and it's how I like my students to flow and walk through the room mainly because of privacy walls my privacy walls are way over by like my classroom window and I've been particular about this since I started teaching because I don't want it to be a free-for-all and these privacy walls flinging everywhere so I kind of do this with picking up any kind of supplies and when we line up and when we do anything we walk around the big circle and so I teach them like what the flow of that is and basically it's like you just go on the outside of the room around the front around the side back to your seat so there's not like traffic jams so I guess like teaching them the big circle would be my my fifth one in my classroom yours might be different but I think those are like my five biggest ones I'm trying to think if there's anything else I also teach them that we do everything by like table group but that's kind of built into all of those like if we line up we line up orange table green table yellow table all of that stuff so those are my top five um best ways to deal with nerves as a first year teacher I'm so nervous yet still excited um just know that you're not the only one who's nervous and I'm going into my six year teaching and I will still be nervous on the first day of school so there's that but what helps me she now you're a first year teacher so you may not get this yet but as a veteran teacher what helps me is remembering that it's going to get easier um so like April May March I mean even before then like stinking end of September and October your kids are going to know what to do and I know how that feels to have a class that already knows what to do to be able to line up quickly and efficiently and to say this table will go around the big circle get your privacy wall have a seat and then just do it um so I would say to help you calm your nerves because this isn't something you've experienced like the kids will learn how to do it be specific and it will take time and it will feel clunky at the beginning but then your kids are going to know what to do and you will feel like you have a Groove and a rhythm going um and that helps me calm my nerves to remember like this clunky awkward feeling is not forever and we will be moving smoothly it'll just take a couple weeks um other things I do things to get myself excited like the first day of school David and I it's tradition we always go to Moe's for dinner most Southwest because that's like one of our favorite places and so I am already looking forward to the post first day of school knows dinner like I've told him that last week and we're still like three weeks out from the first day of school so that's one thing that I do every year that gets me excited for the first day of school I kind of get to sit down with David tell them have a whole day win and enjoy like one of our favorite things that's like quick and easy to go out and eat and it takes the stress of cooking off of me for the first day of school so that's one thing that I do um and it's and just know that it's okay to be nervous nerves are fine like it's okay I know it sucks um but you will be nervous and just be like all right I'm going to accept the nerves and just push forward and do the best that I can um and then the last question how do you plan for the first couple of days um I've already shared this actually when I was answering a question previously but I told you I do the time stamps the activity and any procedures or routine that's required for that and if you want to see that in detail I mentioned it earlier but go check out my first weeks of school video where I did a plan with me and I went in detail and showed you that exact outline but that's how I plan for the first couple days of school and check with your team teachers and see what are they doing say hey what are you doing can I do that too and that will help a lot all right I hope that answered you guys had great questions for back to school by the way and I hope that helped answer some of the questions um so thank you guys so much for watching if you have any lingering back to school questions that weren't covered in this video drop them in the comments and I'll try to answer it in the comments for you guys um best of luck to all of you guys going back to school if you made it to the end of this video and you have a question leave it in the comments but even if you don't have a question I would love to know how many years you've been teaching and what grade you're teaching so leave that in the comments below because I just think that's so fun to see um what you guys are teaching and some of you guys aren't teachers I get that all the time like I'm not a teacher but I love watching your stuff so if you're not a teacher tell me what you do like what's your job you stay home do you work in marketing advertising medical field tell me what you do because I think that's really interesting um I hope I didn't talk your ear off I feel like I've been talking a million miles an hour I guess I'm just getting ready for back to school and having to talk all day again um but thank you guys so much for watching give this video a thumbs up and subscribe if you liked it so you don't miss any more content from my channel follow me on Instagram because that's where I post my q a boxes most of the time I don't even think I shared this one on my YouTube Community page because I was just like let's get some quick questions um so definitely follow me on Instagram for more of those and as always I will see you guys in the next one thank you [Music] foreign

Channel: Mrs. Katie in Elementary

Views: 7,876

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Id: NQDdOCcA_rM

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 29 2023