Changes for Next Year?! | COME TEACH WITH ME

I wanted to give you all an update on flexible seating if I look sweaty and exhausted and I sound out of breath it's because I am I always believe in doing what's best for my students even if it's not in the curriculum we are doing our name cemetery project lots of changes coming one I know that I'm moving rooms like hard me just wants to start packing stuff up now [Music] [Music] welcome to another week in fourth grade I wanted to start with a quick recap of my weekend on Saturday Billy and I spent the day in DC and then that night we attended an event in DC drove back home pretty late got up early on Sunday morning drove to Baltimore for the girls on the Run 5k and then I came home and took a nap because I was exhausted and basically just did some work around the house the rest of the day this week for school is a normal week except it's not a normal week because their schedule is off we are starting PARCC testing and if you don't know PARCC testing is it is a national standardized test that our students take although I don't think they're even calling it Park anymore at least in Maryland I think we're doing some other I don't know I don't know but this week is 5th grades test next week is 4th grade and then the week after is third grade so because of 5th grade testing this week we had to change our on our schedule a little bit so we typically have cultural arts which is our planning time in the morning from 935 to 1035 Monday through Thursday but instead this week we are having it from 1035 to 1135 so we're gonna switch for block one and then go to cultural arts and then go back to block one also our lunch time instead of being at 12:35 is gonna be at 1:10 so it's a little bit later probably gonna have a million questions today about when is lunch but that's what we're dealing with so I have to go meet with my team teachers for collaborative planning this morning and then I will catch up with you later on [Music] I wanted to give you all an update on flexible seating you may remember my team teacher and I did a DonorsChoose project in order to get flexible seating for our classrooms and we are so excited for it however we have to wait until after PARCC testing because we have to have all of our lovely deaths in single file rows during testing and the flexible seating isn't going to work for that so we're waiting until afterwards in order to implement it so after next week once PARCC testing is out of the way then we will start implementing a full flexible seating which we are ecstatic for so we've kind of just kept the boxes up by the office we finally brought them down to our room I'm starting to unpack stuff getting it ready so as soon as the dreaded testing week is done then we can implement flexible seating and of course I will do a tour with it and I'll do a video don't worry I wanted to walk you all through my lesson today we are starting at cemetry so my first slide is always our essential question how can we describe symmetrical figures using geometric vocabulary then I have our I can't statement I can identify and draw lines of symmetry and polygons then we have our pose a problem this is something sometimes students work through on whiteboards but today we're actually just going to have a discussion I'm going to show them different logos so McDonald's Volkswagen shale-gas Starbucks adidas or adidas and I used to think it was not pronounced Audie das but there was a podcast I listened to long story I now say adidas and then Walmart and we're gonna have a discussion about what these logos have in common fingers crossed hopefully someone recognizes that they all have lines of symmetry so then I will show them where those lines of symmetry are and we'll have a discussion about it and I'll try to get my students to come up with a definition of what they think symmetrical means then we are going to look through some slides so these are actually something I got off of TPT I will link them for you but it just kind of goes through like definition and then we'll go through some examples and talk about multiple lines of symmetry such as with these letters and we'll talk about how some figures don't have any lines of symmetry and it just goes through piece by piece so I really like those slides then I'm going to show them a video on vocabulary all about lines of symmetry vocabulary is a paid website but to me it's totally worth it my students love vocabulary videos then I'm going to give them some notes on lines of symmetry so I actually just made these up this morning because I don't think I gave my students notes last year but these just kind of go through like a definition of a line of symmetry some examples and then some things to remember down here once they glue those in their notebook they're gonna complete the practice so I'm going to give them some shapes and they are going to fold the shapes to find the different lines of symmetry and then trace over them instead of me cutting out all of the shapes for all of the groups because that would take forever I'm just giving them this page and then they will be responsible for cutting these out and then folding them and we'll have a discussion about how some shapes have one line of symmetry like this heart and like this trapezoid some have more than one line like this rectangle star and Pentagon and then some shapes don't have any like this shape right here which I guess would technically be a Pentagon does it have five sides but not a regular pentagon and then after we have that discussion as a class they will complete the check for understanding which is right here so they are going to circle the ones that show a line of symmetry first of all I match the wall did not play on that second of all that lesson that I just talked to you all through is a good example of me kind of deviating from the curriculum because we do have a County created curriculum and I pull a lot of resources from there but sometimes I read through the lessons and I'm just like I'm sorry but that is so boring if my kiddos are not going to be engaged and so I pull from it what I like and then I add in things that I think will help make it relevant for my students so for example having the different logos those are all things that my students recognize and that's helping them to understand how this is applicable to the real world so I love doing that I love doing vocabulary even though my County doesn't pay for it personally I know how engaging it is for my students and so I'm willing to do that for them because I always believe in doing what's best for my students even if it's not in the curriculum even if it means putting a little bit of money out of my own pocket I believe in doing what's best for my kiddos so I did take the idea of having the different shapes and having the students fold them to fine lines of symmetry but in the curriculum it only had them doing it with triangles so I thought it was more beneficial for them to do it with multiple shapes and so I just you know tweak little things here and there and make it work and in the end I think I'm doing what's best for my kiddos and that's all that matters it is now after school I had girls on the run practice for the last time today which on our last practice we do a banquet so it's kind of like an award ceremony and we eat some good food and sign each other is like shirts and things like that so that is now done I just got back to my room I have a lot of grading to do because I had to give two different graded assignments in science day and a graded assignment in math because having part testing next week means we're not gonna get any grades next week and grades for interim reports are due like the week after so we don't have a lot of time left to get grades so I kind of have to squeeze them in as much as possible so that means a lot of grading however next week I will not have any grading which is nice so I'm gonna go ahead and sit down get the grading done and then I'm gonna head out of here and I will catch up with you at tomorrow good morning today is another day where our schedule is off and I forgot to mention yesterday not only is our cultural arts time and our lunch time different but also our recess time usually we have recess in the middle of our block 2:00 in the afternoon but now we have it at the beginning of lunch at least for this week with testing so that's been a little bit interesting to try to you know get used to we are doing something pretty fun today in math to kind of apply our knowledge of symmetry that we learned yesterday so let me show you what that is we are doing our name cemetry projects you may remember me sharing about these last year but I'm gonna share about them again because I think they're pretty cool now there are two different versions this one is a little bit easier it only has one line of symmetry this one is a little bit more difficult it has multiple lines of symmetry so for each one of these they only need two pieces of paper for the more simple version the first piece of paper they're going to cut it in half long ways they're going to write their name in bubble letters and trace over it with sharpie tracing over it with Sharpie makes it easier for them to be able to trace it their new piece so on the new piece they're going to fold it in half down the middle hotdog style and then they're going to put the template underneath and they're going to trace over it once they trace over it on this side they are going to flip it and they're going to trace over it on the other side then with their final copy they can go ahead and trace over it in sharpie and color it with the more complicated version it's a square piece of paper instead of a regular piece of paper so you can just trim down the regular pieces to become a square they're gonna fold it diagonally both ways to kind of create this cross in the middle they're going to cut out one of those triangles to create their template and again they're gonna write their name in bubble letters and they're kind of gonna do the same thing they're gonna put it underneath to trace but with this one they're gonna start here and then they're gonna flip it this way and then they're going to flip it this way and then they're going to flip it this way for that final corner so again they're just going to trace it four times and then they can trace over it with sharpie and color it in hopefully that made sense probably not the best explanation but I'm sure you all can figure it out these are always a hit and fourth grade for the month of May we have the front display case so we always hang them up there so students can all see them as they come into the school I just have to say that it is a phenomenal feeling when it is 4:15 and I'm ready to get out of here because all my grading is done I have no planning to do because I'm planned the rest of the week and all next week we're testing so I'm feeling really good now today with the name cemetry overall it went really well I have to say my students followed directions for the most part and I only had a couple of mess-ups but after they messed up once they were like oh okay now I get it so we learned from our mistakes it's all good we are gonna be hanging these up in the display case so we're gonna give our students until Friday to finish them whenever we have a couple of minutes of downtime I'll tell them to pull out their name symmetry color it in finish tracing it whatever they got to do get it turned in and any students who are already done because I would say in block one 75% of them finished and then it blocked - probably about 50% of them finished if they are done then they can work on their math review packet which is due at Friday so that's our incentive for finishing early I'm gonna go ahead and get out of here because I have no reason to stay at school I'm gonna go enjoy some time by myself and then I will catch up with you all tomorrow morning happy Wednesday it is actually my planning time it's like I don't know 10:45 11 o'clock so this morning you know we had our staff meeting and we found out about all kinds of changes happening next year so first of all one of our team teachers is not coming back next year and then we are also gaining a fifth fourth grade position so because our numbers are gonna be higher next year we are going to have five teachers instead of four so we actually have two teachers that are coming in next year to fill those positions we are also moving classrooms so I'm gonna be moving to a different part of the school which means instead of just packing up my classroom at the end of the year to return the next year I'm gonna be packing it up to move to a new room so I will definitely do a video on like my tips for kind of packing and all that good stuff but lots of changes coming and I'll be honest once I know that I'm moving rooms like pardon me just wants to start packing stuff up now but I will say that as I start to get my room ready for testing next week a lot of the posters that typically I would cover I'm just gonna take down because I'm gonna have to take them down anyway so that would be interesting I need to grade an assignment that I gave my students in science this morning and get it put into the gradebook and then today we are playing Trask 8 ball to review for Park which I'm not gonna spend time telling you about Tresca ball because I've done that 10 million times before but if you are interested in Trask 8 ball I do have a video of all my favorite review games which of course trash ketball is included in that I will link for you in the description box one quick tip though fortress ketball this is something I just started doing and I absolutely love it when my students are playing trash ketball they answer questions on a whiteboard and then I go around to each team and check over their answer if they're correct I have them go up to the board add their point get a ball and then wait for their turn to shoot a basket now some of the questions as they get more complicated are difficult to work out in my head and I don't display the answer slide until every team has done so to make it easier for me to know what the answers are as I'm going around and checking I actually print out the slides and I print six to a page so it's nice and easy to read but that way I can carry this around with me and I know what all of the answers are even before I display the answer slide I print out the question and the answer sides but you could easily just print out the answer sides carry it around with you so that you are ready to go if I look sweaty and exhausted and I sound out of breath it's because I am I had hero boys practice after school and today we are doing Sprint's which obviously I participated in so I am very tired overall the day was pretty good like I told you before we just played Trask appalled to review four-part testing over all my kiddos did well there were a couple problems that were things we went over at the beginning of the year that they did not remember so we had to go over that but you can just tell it's that time of year where we're all very burnt out and ready for summer so I'm just trying to motivate them as much as possible and keep it fun but I will say I'm very anxious for testing to be over because we're all just kind of reaching our limit I need to put grades in the gradebook thankfully I don't have anything else to do in terms of planning and then I need to get to the gym and get home so I will catch up with you tomorrow all right we are almost through the week it is Thursday number one it was super foggy this morning kind of disappointed we didn't get a delay but I'll get over it number two I have a parent conference at 8:30 and it's currently about 8 o'clock so I'm gonna just try to be as productive as possible for the next 30 minutes and number three we have something called vocabulary parade tomorrow this is a yearly tradition for our school essentially students all pick a vocabulary word it should be a word that is new to them or a word that they are interested in and they represent it on a poster with like the definition maybe using it in the sentence but they also dress up or create a hat or a costume or something that represents their word now last year we didn't really participate in vocabulary parade because we were on a field trip that day but this year it's tomorrow and we have nothing happening so not only do the kiddos dress up but the teachers do as well so I came up with an idea for our fourth-grade team and I felt like it was very fitting for this time of year I said hey let's all picked it words that mean tired because that's exactly how we feel right now so my word for tomorrow is fatigue so I'm going to dress up in my PJs and I need to decorate my poster but because my word is fatigued I'm not putting a lot of effort into my poster okay see what I did there I went to Dollar Tree the other night and grabbed two poster boards and I'm just going to cut them in half so it gives one for each of the four teachers and my goal by the end of the day is to get that decorated and also start preparing my room for park but I'll talk more on that later [Music] and just like that it is six o'clock today was a little bit of a whirlwind don't really know why I just feel like I've been gogogo the entire day for science and social studies my team teacher and I were switching so I was in her class teaching science and I'm trying to get grades in and then we took a practice test in math for park on the computer so my students could get used to the tools I feel like I'm just trying to cram it as much as I can but honestly now at this point all I can really do is motivate my students I know they're prepared for the test and I just need to continue encouraging them which brings me to next week's video it's gonna be all about testing motivation these ideas you can use for pretty much any grade level so make sure you tune in next week to check that out but as you saw I did start taking down posters and things from my classroom that I cannot have up for PARCC testing so things like my multiples charts my multiplication chart my place value chart we had our QQQ posters which stands for a quest for quality questioning which our students don't even really use if I'm being honest but I had to take those down last year you may remember that I covered all of my posters with paper and I put motivational quotes on them but this year because I know that next year I'm gonna be in a different classroom there's no point in covering them because I'm gonna take them down at the end of the school here anyway so I went ahead and took them down I'm gonna leave them down because it will start to kind of wean my students off of their dependence on using those posters for example our multiplication chart my students are very dependent on using that so by taking it down for the rest of the year it will force them to find other strategies to use and hopefully fingers crossed memorize their facts but anyway it is after 6 o'clock I need to get out of here I will catch up with you at tomorrow morning happy Friday today should be very interesting because I do not have planning time on Fridays and your schedule is off we are gonna have our blocks in the morning but because our schedule is off for park it's even more off than it would normally be so we are gonna have block 1/4 an and then study hall for an hour but we're gonna do study hall in block one because our students are gonna go to chorus and we usually do that in homeroom so that should be interesting then we're gonna go to block two for an hour go to recess and then go to lunch and then have the vocabulary parade but for the most popular parade it's supposed to be raining which means we will probably have it inside so we're just gonna go with the flow today you know I know my kiddos are all tired they're anxious for testing next week they're off because our schedule being off and it's just a hurricane of hot messes but we will survive we will get through it I will check in with you around lunchtime when I'm getting ready for vocabulary parade here is my setup for vocabulary parade obviously I'm not wearing it yet but I'm gonna change it lunch time here is my poster it's literally just half a piece of poster board from the dollar store and all I did is put the definition petite extremely tired from physical or mental exertion and I had a little bit of space at the bottom so I went ahead and put adjective just to fill up space and then from home I brought some hee-jae so these are like my Christmas pajamas but I don't have a lot of pajama pants so this was one of my only options and then I have this shirt that says namaste in bed that I got from Target and it's super ratty because I wear it to bed all the time but I thought it was appropriate this is a sleep mask that I actually took from one of my students that I had last year that's now in fifth grade I saw her in the hallway with it for a pajama day and I was like hey can I steal that for vocabulary parade so she gave it to me and I'll give it back afterwards and then I have a pair of slippers I'm actually gonna be including these in my next favorites video I keep these in my classroom for when my feet really hurt and I don't want to wear my shoes anymore so it was super convenient to go ahead and wear them for vocabulary parade just a quick side note this time of year Dollar Tree starts carrying the snack containers again these are the perfect size to hold a 24 pack of crayons and they also hold a deck of cards so these are some of my favorite containers and right now at least in my Dollar Tree they have them in a three pack for a dollar instead of a two pack four dollars so whenever I see them in a three pack I grab them just in case even if I don't need them right now I feel like I always end up needing these containers it is lunchtime and I'm officially ready for the vocabulary parade I got my eye mask my pj shirt my DJ pants and my slippers I did end up adding a little sleeping emoji to my poster and it's been a little bit hectic because we've been fighting off with the rain and trying to figure out what we were gonna do and so at one point we were told that we were moving the book heavily parade up to two o'clock and then as a result we had to change our lunch time and then 15 minutes later they came to us and said no nevermind you can keep your same lunch time and regardless so the parade is now gonna be 30 minutes earlier and then we're gonna do the sharing with our buddy class which is the second grade class next door so that way the 4th graders can share with the 2nd graders and vice versa that's going to happen after the parade instead of before so it's been a little bit hectic but we're halfway through the day so I think I can make it [Music] [Applause] [Music] my classroom is officially park ready as much as I hate it my desks are all in single file Rose I have their pencils on them and then I hung up all of my different motivational posters which I'm gonna talk more about these in next week's video so don't worry that is coming but they are just displayed up and around the room and then over here I have some privacy shields some mints that they're going to get and then their headphones and there's a couple of other things that I'm doing to motivate my students but I'm not gonna tell you about them now so make sure you check out next week's video I feel like wearing a sleep mask is kind of like wearing a hat once you put it on you just got to leave it on so this is still on along with my PJs so I've been very comfy as I've been moving dusts and hanging posters and all that other not so fun stuff but you got to do it you know it just comes with the program this week was very tiring if I'm being honest I am very worn out I know next week will probably be the same it's amazing how when you're testing and even though you're not teaching just because you're walking laps around your room for like an hour in the morning and then an hour and 15 minutes in the afternoon it is very tiring so I know I'm probably gonna feel time here next week as well but we're getting there it is May we only have about 30 ish days left of school maybe it's 40 no I think it's 40 I don't know we go until the middle of June so however long that is but we're getting there you know one day at a time if you enjoyed this video please go ahead and give it a thumbs up also hit the subscribe button and the notification bell if you haven't already as always thank you for watching I love you all so much don't forget to put pricey pants on for me today they are plaid and I will get you all on the next one thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this video and for supporting my youtube channel if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two links right down here and if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any get your videos you can use like right up here the links to all of my social media sites my teachers pay teacher's store my merchandise store and my amazon store are in the description box and I'll catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 103,423

Rating: 4.9417949 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

Id: LslF8UqT4lw

Length: 25min 27sec (1527 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2019