BUSY WEEK IN THE LIFE OF A TEACHER DURING VIRTUAL LEARNING

happy monday it is the third week of school but the second week of actual curriculum i wanted to vlog this week just to update you all on little changes that i've made or in my case i'm gonna call them improvements as i've been figuring things out i've started doing things differently so i just wanted to share all of those changes with you it is currently 7 50 in the morning and i work from 8 to 4. so i need to get started for the morning i need to get on the computer open up all my tabs and we do a program called second step in the morning and i have no idea what today's lesson is i have about 30 minutes until my kids will jump on so i need to look that over figure out what i'm doing and then i will catch up with you all at lunch [Music] but here is one quick thing i wanted to share my students do stay on you unless i call on them for something or they have a question but when they have a question they're supposed to raise their hand or like drop something in the chat to let me know so then i can tell them to unmute because when they just unmute randomly it ends up causing a lot of problems especially because some have a lot of like feedback with their microphones and it just messes a lot of things up so i actually read the book interrupting chicken i found this copy at goodwill but if you don't have a physical copy of the book it is on epic it's get epic.com educators can sign up for free and they have tons of virtual books and we then drew hey hey from moana this was a directed drawing on art for kids hub and my students all have their own little interrupting chickens that they have at home but i laminated mine so whenever my students interrupt me i hold this up to the camera as a reminder for them and that has been working they kind of laugh about it but it's a good cue for them to go oh yeah i need to raise my hand or i need to type it in the chat thank goodness it is lunch time because the morning was rough math went really well we started focusing on comparing numbers and actually my students for the most part all did phenomenal so that was great uh however then we got into social studies and we had some technical difficulties basically i was doing a near pod lesson which i will talk more about in a second there was a video it wasn't working for students i had posted slides on google classroom and linked the video but that wasn't working either so i ended up having to download the video add it to my google drive and then share it out with students so we're gonna have to continue social studies this afternoon during our academic flex time but it's fine because that's what that time is there for um let me talk to you quickly about nearpod so here's the deal nearpod is like a more interactive slideshow when you actually run an earpod with students and they join in you are in control of their screen so if you go to the next slide it automatically changes on their screen which i love and you can add interactive pieces this is a drawing slide so my students will be able to actually draw right on the screen or insert images or insert text boxes you can see some of their tools down here at the bottom so i love this because my students are actually solving the problems as we're going through and once they submit i can actually share out their responses with the entire class which is fantastic because it allows them to see the strategies other students are using and get ideas from that now i will do a future video all about nearpod like an in-depth tutorial because i don't have time for that right now but i do want to show you quickly how i'm actually running this so on my imac this is where i'm actually running google me with my class and this is where i can see all of their faces and whatnot then on my personal computer i have nearpod open and i'm going to go to the lesson and click live participation this is going to launch it now it gives you a code which you can enter or what i do is i just come down and copy this link and i share it in the chat but because i'm running that on this computer and then i'm doing google meet on this computer i have to get the link from one to the other so i go ahead and copy the link and then i have opened up google keep i've actually created a little note called nearpod i just paste the link and then what i can do is on this computer i'll go to google keep copy the link and drop it in the chat so that students can join meanwhile on my ipad y'all listen this is totally extra i will join in so i'm going to join in that google me i'm going to go ahead and turn off my camera join in okay so i've had a lot of questions about how do you not get feedback i make sure my mic is off and i also turn the volume all the way down on my ipad so there's no volume coming out of it then on here i'm going to go ahead and present my screen so i'm going to share screen start broadcast i'm going to go to nearpod which is right here and i'm going to join in with that code so i'm just going back here to nearpod and for here i'm just going to type it in so it is o v hwz hit join okay it's going to ask me to put in my name so i put miss faray and hit join okay so i'm now in this session so this computer is used to change the slide so if i want to change the slide i'm just going to click the next button and you will notice it changes on this screen as well there we go okay so it's changing on there meanwhile on google me because i'm sharing my ipad my students are going to see the student view now sometimes it's a little bit laggy so it takes a second for it to actually transfer over but this is really helpful because let me show you for example when i go to a drawing slide this is the teacher view i'll be able to see all of the students responses but this is the student view so i want to make sure i'm sharing the student view so that they see what they are seeing on their screen if that makes sense like i want this to match what my students are actually seeing and then i'm just gonna kind of draw and like share it real quick so you all can see so if i submit that yes then on the teacher view it's gonna say i've submitted i can actually open this up and i can click share and then it's going to put that response on everyone's screen so you can see it's now there and as well it is up here now sometimes on google me i feel like it doesn't update so what i do if it's not updating i just click this arrow and like once i click it it will update on here i don't know why it does that but it just does so that's how i'm running near pod it is excessive because i'm using three different devices i know not everyone has that capability but i will say if you have multiple devices give it a try because for me it has been working really well now again i will do a full video tutorial on nearpod but just a little sample in terms of how i actually create them i create my slides right in google slides and then you can actually add interactive pieces through nearpod as an add-on so if you go up to add-ons and then click near pod now if you don't have nearpod just click manage add-ons or get add-ons and you'll be able to add some but once you go to nearpod click open near pod and it's going to open a little sidebar and on that sidebar you can add in interactive pieces or you can actually change so i'm going to click edit this lesson yes because i've already saved it you can also change slides to a draw it so for example if for some reason i wanted my students to draw on this slide not that i need them to if i select the slide come down to convert to draw it it's going to take this exact slide and just give students the ability to add text or images or drawings right on top it will appear blank for a second and then once it loads you will see that that slide looks exactly the same so there it is you also can add in other pieces such as a collaborate board so if you want to ask a question and have your students all add in their thoughts you can add that in you can add in open-ended questions you can add in polls quizzes games all of that so once you add in all the pieces you just click save and go to nearpod and it's gonna save it into your nearpod library and then you can run it exactly how i showed you before it is now a little bit after four the afternoon went more smoothly the video for social studies still did not work but i was able to present my screen and share it that way i had all my students turn off their cameras and turn off all of their mics and it made it run more smoothly my students said it was less laggy so at least that's a good thing after school i had to complete this like worksheet thing because i am in a mentoring course because i'm going to be hosting interns and i had to have it completed by tomorrow afternoon because i have a q a session i have to attend tomorrow after school and i had not even started it but it's now done so that's good i do however want to share you all like a hack it's not really a hack but i'm calling it a hack that i have been doing with near not near pod with jamboard that i think you all will like so right now i just have opened up a set of slides what i've been doing in jamboard is basically creating an example and then posting it later for my students to see here's what i mean first of all i want to be able to use my slide template on jamboard so on google slides on the slide that i want i'm going to go to file and then i'm going to come down to download and i'm going to choose jpeg image that is going to save just this slide as an image now i'm going to go to my drive and i'm going to open up a new jamboard so i'm just clicking new come down to more and choosing jamboard so this is going to open up a blank jamboard i can title it so let's say this is comparing numbers example i'm going to click ok now unfortunately there's not a way at least let me double check nope not a way i keep waiting for jamboard to add this feature i can't add the image as a background but it's okay i'm just going to go to the image i'm going to upload it from my computer and i'm just going to resize it so it takes up the entire screen so i'm going to move it up to the corner and i'm going to resize it so it fills the entire space cool now what i'm going to do is actually access access access the chat board on my ipad and the reason i like to use my ipad is because i actually have an apple pencil so it makes it a lot easier for me to write on the screen now i don't feel like doing that right now for this video but just imagine i'm doing this on my ipad i will actually go to share and i will come down and i'll change it to anyone with the link which if you're doing this on a g suite for education account you'll have it for just like the people in your district or whatever i'm going to leave it as viewer because i don't want my students to actually edit this i just want them to be able to view it i would copy that link and i would drop it right in the chat on google me so that way my students can open it up and they can see the jamboard and see what i'm doing in real time i also share my screen on google me but you know i just give them options so i would go ahead and start drawing again i would be doing this on my ipad but i would put it in the place value chart five hundred eight tens seven ones five hundred seven and eight okay i would talk through the example i'm writing all over the screen i'm highlighting stuff i'm maybe adding sticky notes with little reminders all of that then the great thing is this is now an example that i can have my students look back on so for example let's come back to my slides let's say this was a student set of slides that they were completing on google classroom and let's say they got this question incorrect i can actually leave a comment so i can right click and go to comment or on a piece or i don't know how to do it on pc but on a mac it's command option m it's one of those things where i just do it without even thinking about it i don't know what the shortcut is on a pc but in my comment i could say look back at the example we did as a class and then i can paste that jamboard link so that they can then click on it and it will open up the jamboard again they only have view access they're not going to be able to edit it but they can look back at that example so i feel like that has been super helpful it's just a little thing and it's easy but i feel like it's really helped my student so hopefully that was helpful for you too it is now almost 4 45 and i still need to schedule my social studies lesson for tomorrow we as a team have split the planning so we do a week of science and then a week of social studies and the math teachers that's me plan out science and then the ela teachers plan out social studies so they just shared the links and everything but i don't even have the energy right now to go on to google classroom and schedule the assignment so i'm gonna wait until after the gym because i typically get another burst of energy after the gym and i will schedule it then but otherwise i'm gonna catch up with you all tomorrow because i feel like i only have two brain cells left and i need to get up out of the chair and stop looking at a screen happy tuesday we need to chat so last night i'll be honest it kind of just all hit me at once i got super frustrated and overwhelmed because last week i had all of my lesson planning done for this week on friday so i went into the weekend thinking great i don't really have anything to do for next week meanwhile last night i was still working until 10 p.m just making changes and adapting things based on how yesterday went and that was just frustrating because i feel like i'm working hard all week to prepare for the next week and then i still end up working long hours just trying to make changes and make things work and it just goes to show you how much harder virtual teaching is because in the past i always had my lesson slides and everything ready to go and i would just make small tweaks whereas now i'm literally rebuilding everything and adapting everything and it's a lot of work now i'm feeling a little bit more positive this morning um it was kind of hard to get myself out of bed because i'm going to my classroom today and i have to leave earlier on those days obviously i won't be able to vlog but i will catch up with you after school and hopefully i am in a better mood hopefully today goes smoother than yesterday did because yesterday was just not the best it's now close to 6 p.m and i'm just now getting to the gym instruction today went pretty well i'm satisfied however it has been a long day because i had my students on for live well for our morning meeting time followed directly by math instruction i do get a short break when my students go to cultural arts but then i had them for social studies instruction and then that led right into friends and fun times so i mean we do fun stuff during that time but still i'm on with kids then that led directly into my collaborative planning for math and then i had a short you know 25 minute break for lunch or maybe it's 30 i don't even know how long it is then i had my academic flex time with my blocks two students and then i had math with my blog two students and then i had my office hours i had a short break and i had a pd this afternoon for my mentoring course that i'm in good news is that's the last thing and i'm done so hallelujah but that just ended at 5 30. so i am in need of the gym just to get my mind off of school however when i get home tonight i don't have anything to do so that's a very good feeling i will be working from home tomorrow so hopefully i'll be able to share more updates um but for now i'm gonna go work out and i'll catch up with you tomorrow happy wednesday it is lunchtime i just sat down with a sandwich some strawberries and blueberries i did not vlog this morning because i didn't want to get out of bed and therefore i was behind but i do have some very exciting news to share first of all as of last night i have everything done for this week i had to make like adjustments to some of the social studies lessons for tomorrow and friday but those are done i also am fully planned for all of next week so i feel a big weight off of my shoulder shoulders i have two shoulders not just one and the last thing kind of weighing me down was emergency sub plans so we have to create three days of like pre-recorded ready to go emergency sub plans for virtual learning in case something happens and as a team we were able to divvy it up so i only had to create three days of math plans but they're due at the end of the month and kind of running out of time so my plan was to get that done this weekend however when i got to my planning time today because i already planned for all of next week i was able to work on my emergency subplans and y'all i'm completely done and it feels so good so here's basically how i did it i used my ipad and did a screen recording so it recorded my screen but it also recorded my voice i had my microphone on and i used jamboard and i just did a quick review of whatever the topic was so if it was like understanding place value or reading and writing numbers in different ways i would write on the jamboard talk through some examples each recording was like 12 to 15 minutes long because let's be honest kids lose interest after that then i have an independent assignment they're gonna do through google classroom so it's a set of like google slides that they would complete as independent work and i created a google doc that just goes through the um like directions for the substitute and i also linked that jamboard where i did the screen recording i linked it so that if students need to go back and look at it for notes they can and i also created an overarching google doc that has like my schedule for every day of the week and my general routines and procedures for each of the different areas so emergency subplants are done i feel so good about that the other thing that has made me so excited is when i logged on to google meet this morning i had one of the new updates that allows me to turn off the chat so i can make it so i'm the only one that can use the chat and my students are not able to and that was so needed because the chat has been the bane of my existence i mean it's been useful for a lot of things but obviously there are moments where my students are just not using it how they're supposed to be using it and i love that i can now turn it off if you don't have that update yet it's coming my understanding of these updates is that they're rolling out for different institutions and people and whatnot at different times so we're not all getting the same updates at once but for now i'm happy i'm gonna eat my sandwich and then i have to jump on to pd this afternoon for an hour and a half and then i have office hours and then i have a meeting so i will catch up with you later on i am fully aware this is not the best angle but we're just gonna roll with it i mentioned that i was fully planned for the rest of this week and for next week and i want to show you all how i know that i'm fully planned because if you're also teaching virtually you feel like your to-do list is never ending and you're always worried like did i schedule that assignment did i prepare that did i share it out like it's just a lot so i want to show you how i have adapted my lesson planning like process in order to fit that so i'm gonna go ahead to september and then we are currently on week three so i'm gonna go ahead two that week these are my lesson plans for this week and you might notice off the bat i'm not listing out like every little part of the lesson because personally i create slideshows for all of my lessons and that's what i teach from and that's where i really decide the progression of the lesson and that's where i decide if i'm going to grade part of it or yay you get the point so i don't need to write that in my lesson planner i just feel like it's overkill and it's not needed but what i am really using this for is checklist to make sure i have done what i need to do so if you zoom in on monday and tuesday of this week this is just the title of the lesson and then i've created a little checklist for myself so for these math lessons i needed to create the near pod create the google classroom slides because even though i am recording my lessons i want my students to easily be able to open up the slides and look back on them um then i need to schedule the assignment on google classroom and add it to the doc which as a team we have created a google doc for each subject area so for example i'm planning these math lessons and then i'm sharing it with the other math teachers so i will give them the link for the near pod the link for the slides and i will tell them how to post on google classroom like is it an assignment is it a material how many points if it's graded et cetera et cetera then you'll notice for social studies i did not have to plan social studies this week one of my other team teachers planned that so all i needed to do was to schedule it on google classroom then our academic flex time i actually had to end up changing this academic flex which is why i love digital plans it makes it really easy to make changes and i had to finish that social studies lesson as i told you all so then for the second academic plex this is with my block 2 students i was creating the m cubed lesson so i had to create the near pod create the google classroom slides schedule it on google classroom and add it to the doc um but then for block 2 math this is the same as that morning lesson so i only have the checklist up here and then down at the bottom all i had to do was schedule it on that google classroom because i've already created it in the morning then if you come over to wednesday so that's today i had guidance computer science i didn't have to do anything for those academic flex time i did a comparing numbers review with them and then i did ketchup and pickles so for ketchup and pickles i just had to update my slide with missing work and update computer science slide that's what that meant and that was just a note to me to make sure i had directions for computer science like in my daily slides so that was just a reminder one of my team teachers planned these two math lessons so all i had to do was schedule on google classroom same thing for social studies same thing for academic flex one of my team teachers created the google form so i just had to schedule it and then same thing for here so i'll go ahead to next week and just kind of show you uh we're actually giving this i ready diagnostic test so i don't have too much going on next week but it is a science week so i had to create the near pod google classroom slides schedule it on google classroom and add to the doc for that along with the academic flex but so far this is working really well so you'll notice all of my check boxes on this week are completely checked off on this week they're all checked off with the exception of these two science lessons which one of my team teachers is planning and then same thing for this academic flex one of my team teachers is planning that so all i have to do is schedule it once it is done and ready so if you are interested in my digital planner this was created by bridget and i it's in our store on teachingonthedouble.com i will link it for you i also created a tutorial video this is the pdf version bridget created the pdf tutorial my tutorial is on the google slide so if you would rather use this within google slides we have that option as well i will link both of the tutorial videos in case you are interested i stopped recording and realized i forgot something i'm so sorry so these check boxes i literally just went to google and searched box symbol copied it and then pasted it on here it's not an actual like check box it's just a symbol and then with my apple pencil i just manually go in with the pen tool and check it off here's the crazy thing about this whole virtual teaching experience although i guess it's really no different than regular teaching but it has been a roller coaster monday night i was feeling stressed overwhelmed and frustrated because i was working so many hours and i felt like i still wasn't getting everything done last night felt kind of similar i worked long hours and felt frustrated that i still had more to do but now suddenly it's wednesday afternoon and i feel pretty good my plans for this week are done my plans for next week are done my emergency subplans are done i have a zero inbox currently i have no emails in my inbox and i feel like i have things under control and i know some of you are probably like yeah michelle i wish i felt that way and if that is you i promise it does get easier and it does get better and you will catch your breath it might not be today it might not be this week it might not even be this month but you will get to that point where things get easier and you don't feel that stress and it's almost like things are just lifted off of your shoulders because that's how i feel right now and i feel pretty good however i do know in the next week or two i'm going to feel stressed again i have to prepare six days of subplants because mr miss oh my gosh i always just said mr william because that's what i call him to my students billy you all know him as billy mr pocketful primary um him and i will be going on our honeymoon so we're not leaving right after we get married we're waiting a week because we have conferences and stuff like that and then after that we're going on a honeymoon we cannot go to greece due to the circumstances we are punting that to next year we still really really want to go we ended up scoring a phenomenal deal on a different location y'all are just gonna have to wait and check on instagram to figure out where we're going but we were able to get a room for like 10 of what it would typically cost so we are gonna go on a honeymoon and i have to write some plans it's gonna be really stressful but for now i'm just trying to enjoy this moment because i know it won't last forever i will catch up with you tomorrow hopefully i'm still feeling the same way i'm feeling right now happy thursday i have to say thoroughly enjoyed not doing any schoolwork last night and in hindsight i'm happy that everything is done because on days like today i don't really get a lot of planning time because my planning time is going to be spent on collaborative planning so tuesday's collaborative planning is for math planning but thursday's collaborative planning is where we meet just as a team and go over like all of those little things that we have to go over and bring up student concerns and those types of things which means i'm not going to get a whole lot done today which is fine because i don't have a lot to do and i don't remember the last time i was able to say that but i am definitely feeling tired this morning i feel like this year especially is so much more exhausting than a typical school year and i'm seeing that same trend from a lot of other teachers they're all saying how they're working harder than they ever have before which is crazy because i thought before this that teachers were working extremely hard and there was no way they could work harder but somehow you put us under pressure and you know we pull through but i'm headed into my classroom today so i will catch up with you after school hopefully with some good news and not too many tech problems it is now thursday afternoon and i'm gonna reflect over my day in a peach pit format this is something i do with my students on fridays so a peach is something good and a pit is something not so good so i'll have my students share their peach from the week and their pit from the week i've heard this called a lot of different things but i've always liked peach and pit so let's start with my pit from the day during block two my afternoon math class i ended up losing internet connection even though i was on the school's internet i was teaching from school it just completely closed out for like two minutes kicked me out of the me i was trying to reload but my internet wasn't working thankfully i was able to get connected and it all worked out but those moments like that two minutes felt like an hour like of time it always goes by so slow however let's move on to my peaches i do have two peaches i want to share from the day so two really good things little just tricks or kind of new things i've been trying so we have to record every lesson even if all of our students are present we still have to record the lesson that way students can go back and they can re-watch if needed we had to get student permission slips signed and we did it like as an electronic form thankfully all of my students are approved for me to record our google meets and for the past you know two weeks i have just been recording the lesson as i'm doing it the problem is it ends up being like 40 to 45 minutes long and the reality is kids are not gonna go back and watch that and there's a lot of just like dead air where students are working on a problem and i'm just kind of looking at their work i typically play like strings music on my phone i love vitamin string quartet i use amazon music and i just like play it so it's not silence but still it's just time where like actual instruction isn't going on so in lieu of that i got this idea from one of the other teachers at my school i am now recording just a quick like five to seven minute summary of the lesson so i go through the slides which i'm using near pod so i will actually join into the near pod as a student on my ipad and after the lesson ends i keep the near pod running i don't end the session and i will then do a screen recording on my ipad with audio you have to make sure you enable the microphone which if you don't know how to do that if you hold your finger down on the screen recording like little button um it'll pop up and it'll show the microphone and you can make sure it's enabled but i will just talk through the slides and i'll say like hey here was an example we did together as a class and because i still have the near pod running i'm able to like pull up student samples and share it and it'll pop up on the screen so i can show student work as we're going through which is just fantastic so that worked really well today i recorded the social studies lesson in between my social studies block and friends and fun time which is like our you know virtual lunch bunch time there's like a five minute gap so i told my students i said hey get off of google me i'm gonna end we're gonna have that five minute break and come back at 11 20 and during that five minutes is when i recorded that video and then my math class in the afternoon ended at three o'clock and immediately following that i just left the near pod running went ahead and did that screen recording my other peach from the day is and this is one of those things i don't know why i wasn't doing it sooner um i'm having a lot of troubles where my students won't be able to find an assignment on google classroom even though i'm literally telling them like look it's under week of september 21st and it has a green dot next to it because it's thursday by the way i color-coded my google classroom assignments so i just use the color dot emoji to symbolize the day so monday is red tuesday is orange wednesday is yellow thursday is green and friday is blue and they still won't be able to find it and i'll even be sharing a slide of directions and it'll say like complete this assignment and it has a full title and they can't find it so what i started doing this afternoon is actually copy the link to the google classroom assignment so if you go to google classroom and you go to classwork and you see that assignment next to it there are three dots if you click that it gives you the option to copy the link and then i paste that link in the chat and then i disable the chat so they can't like flood it with random stuff so that link will stay right at the bottom when they're working on independent work so at any point if someone's like this fray i can't find it they can click it and it takes them directly to that assignment so that was a game changer i feel like i've been rambling and i know that was probably not the best explanation tomorrow when i'm at home i'll try to show you i'm gonna go into the gym get my workout on and i will catch up with you in the morning happy friday i have a quick story for you all flashback to monday of this week i was teaching from home and i had my wireless mouse which i got this from amazon i love it and i left it here on monday by accident tuesday got to school realized i didn't have it and it was kind of a pain because i got used to using it so on wednesday when i stayed home again to teach from home i said okay i need to make sure i find the mouse and i came into the office i kid you not i probably spent a solid five minutes looking for it to the point where i was digging in the trash can because i thought maybe the cats knocked it off and it ended up in the trash can no it was sitting right on the desk on top of a mouse pad that is teach your brain at its finest or in this case virtual teacher brain because i'm sure those of you who are in the same position can agree that because this is so much harder and we're doing so much more work i am so much more scatterbrained and i could not believe that it was sitting right on the desk that entire time and i just didn't notice it but the whole point of me telling you this story yesterday i made sure i brought my mouse with me to school and i made sure i brought it home and i get home and i turn it on well i get like in here this morning i turn it on and i'm like why isn't it connecting to my computer well i left the usb piece plugged in to my school laptop which is at school so started the week without a mouse on tuesday and i'm ending the week again without a mouse but yesterday i mentioned peach and pit and how this is something i do with my class typically i do it with sticky notes like on my whiteboard but here's how i'm doing it virtually i created this jamboard very very simple i literally put a picture of a peach i put some rules down at the bottom as a reminder so you can only edit and move your own sticky note i always tell them they can make their sticky note smaller but not bigger because if they make it bigger we can't fit them all and then miss frey is the only one who can use the laser pointer and then i just have these two boxes one for peach and one for pitt so my students will use the sticky note tool in order to create a sticky note and they will put one under peach and one under pit i literally reuse the same jamboard every single time i do peach and pit and i just change the sharing settings so i will give my students edit access while we're using it and then i turn off their edit access we talk about them and then i delete the sticky notes and share it out next time it is now lunchtime and i feel like i was super productive during my planning time today even though i'm fully planned for next week there's always more things to do so because i'm the e-coach i receive emails from the office of instructional technology and i have to pass those along to my staff but our principal recently started compiling all of the different emails people wanted to send and then she sends it as one email at the end of the day which i love so instead of sending out to the staff i actually sent it to her and then she will include it in that email that allowed me to clear out my inbox on my email and have a zero inbox which means no email sitting in my inbox i try to always keep it at zero but sometimes emails come in and i leave them in my inbox until i take care of them whether that's sending the information to someone else or responding to something or completing something i leave them in there until it's done but now i have a zero inbox and that feels good i also drafted my weekly summary email that i've been sending to parents and i slightly altered it but i really like the way that i did it this week so you can use this as an idea basically on friday afternoon i send an email to all of my parents as a summary so i usually start with something that went well and this week i shared google me shortcuts like keyboard shortcuts so if you didn't know you can use ctrl d to mute and unmute yourself in google me and you can use control e in order to turn your camera on and off i know there are also extensions for chrome that will allow you to like mute and unmute with the space bar but i do not want any more extensions i'm so tired of adding chrome extensions to my chrome browser so i really like that one because it's just using your regular keyboard and you do not need any additional extensions to make them work then i listed out the math skills that we covered so i would write the skill and i would tell them what lesson it was on google classroom then i listed out social studies lessons and then i listed out graded assignments and again i told them what the lesson was on google classroom then i listed out just general reminders so things like signing up for chorus and next week we're administering the iready diagnostic test and if your student joins google me and they have no sound have them leave and come back so it's kind of a mixture of like events going on but also like little technology tips and that was it but i i feel like it's helpful for parents um for example when i listed out the math skills i also added a little bullet to say which skill i felt students needed the most practice with and i attached like our math newsletter that has different examples of strategies and different activities that parents can do with their kids so that way if they're looking to help support their child at home i've given them resources for that so that's something you all can definitely use i need to finish eating my lunch my usual sandwich strawberries and blueberries i literally have been having that every day and then this afternoon i have my block two students for academic flex i'm giving them a graded assignment on rounding which i did as a self-grading google form i have a youtube video on how to create a self-grading quiz through google form so i will link that for you all if you're interested and then the next time i talk to you it will be the end of the day and i might take a nap because i'm feeling very drained right now quickly i just wanted to go over the comment bank in google classroom because again if you are not using this you need to it's a game changer it's basically a way to store comments that you use frequently on student work those can either be comments that you're leaving as private comments or comments that you're leaving as an actual comment on the slide or on the google doc so if you open up a student's assignment it defaults to the grade or the grading section which is where you obviously type their grade and you can insert private comments but right underneath this is the comment bank so it looks like a little speech bubble and in order to add to it you just click add to bank and you can either type it or you can copy and paste in your text so i wanted to show you all some of the frequently used comments that i have so first i have one for when my students complete pre-assessments so their pre-assessments are not graded it's just a way for me to see what they know and then i alter my instruction based off of that and you will notice i end it with this assignment is now complete i put that on a lot of my comments because i want to be very clear to students and their families whether it's done or whether they need to go back then i have a comment so if they i can see they've worked on it but they haven't submitted it i will just tell them don't forget to turn it in if you're done um so this comment thank you for working hard on this i left some comments on your slides for you to check this is where maybe they turned it in but i can't grade it because they made a lot of mistakes so i will just leave comments and have them go back and check it so it doesn't say this is complete because it's not complete yet um then if they make changes and fix it and then resubmit i'll say thank you for fixing your work uh this assignment is now complete um so this is one that i'll use if their assignment is done and i've graded it but maybe they got a point or two off and i want them to have the opportunity to make changes i will leave that comment then i have um fantastic job thank you for working so hard this assignment is now complete so if they got full credit from the get go that's the comment i'll leave if they did make changes and resubmit um i will say thank you for resubmitting i've updated your grade and then if they resubmitted but they still didn't get full points i will tell them again like i've updated your grade but if you want to improve your score you can make changes and resubmit again personally i just care about them ultimately understanding it and i think learning sometimes takes multiple chances so i'm totally fine with redos in order to use these comments you can just click this copy to clipboard button you used to have to click here and then choose copy to clipboard but google classroom simplified it and now you get this little button when you hover over the comments so it makes it that much faster but i would love some feedback from you all are you enjoying vlogs like this obviously you're seeing this video like a week after it actually happened but is it helpful or is it boring i mean i feel like it's kind of boring because it's just a lot of me talking to you and then me showing you stuff on the computer but then again that is my life right now with virtual teaching and on days when i teach in my classroom it's just me and my car but is it helpful like just to hear the little tips and tricks that i have i don't know i'm doubting myself so just leave me a comment let me know your thoughts and if you enjoyed this video and you did learn something new or got a fresh idea give it a thumbs up also make sure you hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so you don't miss any future videos it is friday afternoon and i am so ready to get away from the screens i might go take myself a nap you all thought i was joking earlier i was not joking i might actually take a nap as always thank you for watching i love you all so much don't forget to put your positive pants on and i will catch you in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 66,502

Rating: 4.9425731 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher, online teaching, virtual teaching, distance teaching, online learning, virtual learning, distance learning, michelle ferre, a week in my life

Id: BAoQd-QVQbg

Length: 42min 42sec (2562 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020