Did I Push Too Hard? Teacher Vlog

so today is Tuesday and today we've had a delay start so I'm here at nine o'clock which gives me a couple of hours before the kids start to arrive a funny story we were actually in school yesterday uh yesterday actually was a pretty intense day for us because I had a lot of the folders I needed to give them their brand-new folders that you would have seen in Wednesday's video but I gave out handed out brand-new folders I finished up with their schedules as far as like they're like this is your schedule for the time being unless anything is to happen and kind of have laminate it all nice and pretty inside of their folders we have visitors coming from multiple different schools to kind of view the Mac team and see what it is that we are doing bells are ringing but to see kind of what it is that we are doing how we're implementing the Mac team what does it kind of look like for a typical day for us so they were here for the entire morning yesterday they left when we left basically we ended up getting dismissed at 11:30 because there was ice weather so we ended up giving a lot of ice yesterday I am not joking it was like boom it was bad like all of a sudden we walked we're walking out and everything is covered in ice like I almost fell three times just walking to my car um luckily I was able to make it home safe although I did make some little videos in my phone that I want to show you right now see it bouncing off of my card [Music] I had little bits of ice like that we're like bumping off of my car and there was an accident on the road people were driving at like 10 miles per hour I did make it home safe everybody made it home safe which is what was kind of them which was most important to everyone and then we spent the rest of the day at home we kind of had some movies with the kids my husband and I watched a movie yesterday and it was nice although I don't know how much more I can take of this kind of like weather and missing school because I feel off the kids are off like even yesterday trying to get them back into the rhythm especially with one was I think we had like Wednesday or Thursday we were off and then there was Thursday that we were off Friday we had a delayed start so it was just it's been crazy and it's hard to get the kids back into the lake the motions and the rhythm of things so today hopefully is going to be a little bit of a better day I know it is a delayed start but it is what it is it's nice in that yesterday we got out early so I think what I'm just gonna end up doing I'm keeping all my plans but I've only taught the first half of the class so now I'm gonna do my second half of the day I ended up having to change out some schedules yesterday just because of like chorus and band I realized that the group that I had at 9:20 or 9:40 they were not coming back until like 10 minutes after my lesson had started so that didn't really fit for their schedules so we ended up having to go back to the drawing board and I have a few like you have about this many schedules that now I need to go back and laminate and give them the corrected version so we decided to go ahead and add a two little asterisks up at the top just to say hey this is the updated version so that we're not getting it incredibly confused so I need a lay man easy smooth this morning and get these ready to go I also need to kind of update some of my plans as far as what I had for the remainder of the week which is going to be okay I was going around this morning I need to send out an email because I was going around to my partner's rooms so we each have like different genres in our rooms I have famousy I have graphic novels I have poetry and I think I have animal fiction yes pretty sure but anywho so I needed to look for have you guys read how to steal a dog is by the same author as this book such a good good read I don't know if you've been watching me for a while but when I went to Texas with mr. G my cousin we went to the get your teach on conference and we stopped at a like one of those places where they like it's the second hand like bookstores I couldn't think of the word but the secondhand bookstores and I picked that book up at that time and I remember getting into the airport and I had to wait I read that entire book before the plane even took off like I was so so into it well I have a fifth grade group compromised like fourth and fifth grade I think it is or maybe fifth and sixth grade anywho I can't remember all their grades like they all just kind of blend in you know there are students at this point they just want to learn but I have like a fifth grade curriculum group that I am instructing now and for reading and I really wanted to I don't typically do this but I really wanted to go ahead and start kind of pulling out some novels and seeing if they can really apply some of the skills that we've been learning to that text and what's great with the fifth grade curriculum is that there's a lot of compare and contrast so what I thought would be wonderful is since we've already read this one as a huge group I can use this to kind of guide my instruction and have the kids kind of start dissecting this piece of it but then I haven't want them to go back through and apply it to the how to steal a dog and then we're gonna do a nice little comparison of the two books since it's part of the standard so it's what I got to teach but yeah I thought that would be a really good idea so I need to send out a message because I don't have enough copies for everyone and see if the people in my building might possibly have enough copies for my small group crossing my fingers there so you guys know how much I love like my little organization and my my little binders and all that good stuff I think what I'm gonna end up doing is I printed out a copy of all of the kids schedules and they're sorted out by homeroom in alphabetical order so I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bind it using my little spiral I know you guys have seen me use this before the GBC proclick I think I'm going to bind to this sucker so that I can always look to see what kids are where I just need to add in some pieces of cardstock to separate out the homerooms add a cover to it in the back and then I'll be good to go that's what I'm gonna do let me go get some cardstock for net being and delay today for the morning it was actually a really really good day and it's really sunny outside and that just kind of I think it cheers up my mood I think all the snow and all the cloudiness has been like raining on my parade anyways so the kids that are really really well today it was just like your normal day we went over kind of routines and procedures I need to head out a little bit early today it is my son's birthday it is blinis birthday tomorrow so he is turning four years old and I needed to go pick up just a couple of things for his birthday and then I'm gonna get balloons and some decorations later on tonight so that my husband can take it to my in-laws because we're gonna go to my in-laws tomorrow for like his little birthday bash so I'm gonna head out and be able to get some of those things before too too late now I need to pick up food for dinner I've been really bad at planning my meals this week before I actually head out I did want to show you a couple of things that we did a little bit differently so when we were before break if you've been following me for a little bit you know that we've been doing learning targets and so we had like a learner targets page where the kids would come in they would write down the unit their learning target for the day and the tasks that they needed to complete however because the kids are sometimes working in different rooms it's really hard for us to be able to post up you know have three different teachers in all of the different groups that everybody's doing posted in every single room so we ended up deciding to use Schoology a little bit more which is like our online learning system where we have kind of our courses available for the kids we put up kind of their folders and what they're doing so what we've decided to do is we created folders in our ela in our math course that go along with the rotation so when they go to the ela course they'll see you know mrs. Backman in there so they'll click on mrs. Backman's reading group inside of there they'll see the rotations for which I teach reading they'll find their rotation that they meet with me and then they'll be able to see their learner tasks in there but I still wanted to keep out their learning targets available to them so I ended up changing it just a little bit in my so now when they come to group they're going to see my little learner tasker's right here so for each of the different rotations that I teach in I will have the unit that they're in and then along with the target that they're going to be learning for that day or consecutive number of days however it may be but that's kind of what I've posted there you'd like my little basketball hoop I love it love love love it and then I actually got that for mr. Gean by the way he has the one in his room and I stinkin loved it so I went out and got myself one thanks cuz and then I kind of said over here some conference time so I have two rotations in my room rotation seven and rotation ten where the kids are two are working independently and I don't have to pull a group during that time so I decided to create this kind of these conference times for me to be able to meet kids and kind of conference with them if they're having some difficulties with anything for the most part the kids did a really good job for it today we are giving our kids some choices whether they're the type that likes to just be able to sit down and say hey I have math skills let me go into my folder and see what my teacher wants me to do for math skills they can do that but we're also going to keep available this little page right here which allows them to write down kind of their schedule for the day and then go and in the morning and write down all their tasks they still have to do it but they don't have to do it for every single rotation when they sit down so they do it in the morning go through and look at all their tasks write them down for their two groups and then they're done for the day and they can just go off of the paper so we're letting our kids have those options makes it easy so that if they are working on something for math but they're not in my room for math just because of the class sizes they can just go through Schoology and still know exactly what they're supposed to be doing because they don't really need me for that like so if they're doing you know reflex and they're doing something just to kind of practice or I wanted them to go back out and do it independently they don't need me so it doesn't matter if they're in my room or not so long as you know they're getting the work done that they need to get done which is what it's important so I wanted to show you that really fast I also wanted to show you because I did not get to show you yesterday we added a new little friend to our room so my partner kW at the I think it was the end of last year she wrote a grant for us to be able to get a robot inside of our room which we were very excited about so we did get one and we got the Lego ev3 robot so this is kind of part of my stem station since I am doing the technology piece here I have the ev3 robot for two kids to be able to do and so what I've done is I've created a really ugly challenge day one page so please don't look at that but then I also have the user guide for the Mindstorms ev3 and I've kind of just tabbed it some things that they need to know so how to connect it to their tablets I've also put in here how to be able to like program and work the lobby so that they can start kind of going through and creating and getting the robots actually move so they're coating it essentially that's what they're doing but I have this kind of station here along with my little dash which is over here so I still have my - so here's my - right now they've been just kind of exploring with them for day one and then what they'll do is that we're actually going to take these out place them here and the kids are going to create a plow so they're gonna have an activity where they're going to create a plow they're going to design it tomorrow they'll be able to actually try it out and if they have more time they can kind of improvise it and try it again to kind of beat how long it takes them to get their cotton balls out of the area that I want it I will show you guys more of that tomorrow once I get all of that stuff prepared right now I'm leaving to go get my little birthday boy all of his stuff y'all may not have known this but today is a pretty pretty incredible and special day because today is Blaine's fourth birthday four years ago that little terror gang he's not a terror he's a crazy man but four years ago that little crazy man came out and he has rocked our world ever since so he is at home he's excited he came down there were balloons and all of his gifts were out and we tried to kind of have it a little bit decorated so that he would you know get excited about the day he's taking some little treats that we made for friends and then he we made a cake last night and I don't know I'm just excited for him I like birthdays tonight we are planning to go to my in-laws she is making dinner she's going to make him all his favorite foods which is hotdogs hamburgers and we're gonna eat celebrate with some cake and some gifts at the end of the day and that's really about it just kind of a nice little quiet family gathering I am starving right now this is what I get for not eating um so this morning I am getting together a couple of my technology pieces for my stem my dash which is back there do you see the little blue guy he is going to be a snowplow today so I need to take out my Legos and then I also need to take out some cotton balls which I know I have cotton balls somewhere no this is what happens every time link here we go I forget where I put things so I'm going to take out some Legos leave the light goes out for them and I'm going to find out my giveth so the kids are gonna create a snow plow using Legos with Albert which is our - I kind of boxed off a little area over here and now I'm just going to place the cotton balls around um - signal snow and the task is for them to create a plow for them to be able to get all of the cotton balls out of the square area within a certain amount of time so they're gonna have to do some different moves to be able to gather them and then they're gonna kind of construct their piece and kind of test it out and then they'll have a couple more days of being able to kind of improvise it and figure out if they could do it in a shorter amount of time so I'm just getting that little piece ready that's one stem the second one that I have is the ev3 so the ev3 for today they're just kind of practicing with making straight movements with him luckily for the - the kids have had a lot of experience with it especially coming from third grade they had a ton of experience with - so they're pretty familiar with how to use that technology however the av3 they're not so used to using it so today what they're doing is they're going to be making it go within a straight line so they're going to start it at one point and they're gonna have to make it get up to thirty inches so I want them to get to thirty inches and they have to do it with so many movements and seeing how long it takes them and then they're going to try to improvise that and make it better and they're gonna try to be able to get to that thirty inches within a shorter amount of time so that's the second stem for today and again I just leave out all these I have to print out my second piece to it so that's what it is simple for the most part it's nothing like incredibly fancy again they only get like 20 minutes so I have to kind of break things down for them so that they're like they can actually get things accomplished during that time you know what I mean that's what it is so I got those two items ready I'm gonna get those stems printed out and get those placed into the stations and then I need to look at my math groups and my reading group for today which I think I pretty much have everything ready to go so I have my targets up here my to now has become an independent block so I'm kind of assisting other kids with anything that they need meeting with them for conferences because my partner took or and to move down to four for me that doesn't make any sense for y'all but we had to do some rearranging with our schedule and it ended up working out which is really really good I'm going to figure out what I can get to eat I'm hungry all right I need to go print out my stuff I'll see you guys in a sec you know it's a really good feeling whenever you come into your room and it's pretty much ready to go and you're like score like I am prepared I've been working really really hard this week and making sure that my room is pretty much saturated to go for me to have like come in in the morning and start teaching with the exception of like my morning message and maybe a couple of other things but it is I mean like it's teachable like people can come in and I would not be embarrassed of them coming into my room while I'm trying to give instruction to my first group so I like it let me show you so here is kind of my books that I'm doing with my whiteboard and then I have a little note that needs to go to the office I just ended up moving those from over here these are just iPads that I need to give out and then there's a CPM book that I need to kind of review but for the most part I know that this looks like a hot bath right here but it's not I promise you so these are kind of like all of my markers that I end up keeping my - that ends up going to the very back of the room later on these are some books that I'm either between my read-alouds or some that I'm trying to get collect together to use for a group so I'm trying to collect some more of these I know some other people from a different school are going to be sending me some I just cannot find these books anywhere and then I have my highlighter tool kits that we use I've been using them in math and then I've also been using them inside my reading groups so I have those there so that I can just kind of collect them and then you know my math tool kits here some more whiteboards etcetera so see it's pretty much ready to go this is all the stuff I just brought so as some of you may know the Mac team is kind of revolved around you know meeting individual like students and what their needs are and at the same time we're also kind of pulling in that project-based learning piece so we want to make everything that we teach in here real like a real-world application so we've been talking about a broad like our PBL and over like from gosh August September September all the way to December we've really been working on kind of those foundational skills like just making observations a scientist and what that mean we've also been working just on slick foundations and all of the subjects in general so that we can make sure that these kids are pretty knit pretty much a tight-knit family and that we are not having to kind of stop and say hey guys remember at the beginning of the year we talked about this and this and this so we've been really focusing on a lot of like those behaviors those routines those procedures all of those pieces of classroom that kind of make everything work as well oiled machine so I was really really excited because yesterday I decided that during our like afternoon like our three the 3:30 time which is typically like a read-aloud time we pack up and it's our read-aloud time that i was not going to do my read aloud and i was going to start presenting them to them kind of our Factory and I'm gonna go into this in a second but we've already been talking about kind of project-based learning the kids were able to come up with the idea of being able to contribute to our pantry that we have here as a district that supports kind of some of those families who are in need and the way that they wanted to be able to support our community and help them with this and also at the same time learn about life sciences and economics which are the two skills that we are like the two standards that we I guess standards like a social studies unit and then science unit that we're focusing on for this year we they decided to come up with you know growing a garden for them and being able to like support our families with fresh fruits fresh vegetables that would also like that would benefit them so we come together and we've already had this discussion they already knew that they were going to do like a garden so this is nothing new to them so we come down we sit down and I kind of get to them together and I'm like hey guys how's it working about you know like the state of Pennsylvania tells us that we have to teach you these things you know this is the age where you have to learn all of this stuff and then we started talking about how we wanted to be able to apply it to our community and so they all started having the discussion of yeah you know we said that you know build a garden and why are we doing that well because we want to be able to contribute to our community and at the same time give our families some really good healthy meals and then afterwards I said well let's kind of pause that for a minute because that's where we're going there that's kind of our topic for today it's like I want you guys to think about a factory how many of you have ever been to a factory I've ever seen a factory on TV and all of their little hands shoot up and so then we started having that conversation of okay so here's this factory all right let's think about a car factory specifically is one person responsible for building an entire car they started saying absolutely not well why not because there's not enough time there's not enough of a product so they're not making enough money there's not like all of these things started coming out of their mouths I promise y'all I was not telling them any of this the only thing I brought up was a car factory that was it that's all I brought up so they came up with the fact that there it took too long there wasn't enough money so it was like a slow production that type of thing so I said great so there's more than one person that is responsible to that car how do they how do they kind of divide that work out between that those people who work on this car is everybody working on the tires at the same time is everyone working in the bodies at the same time so they started having that conversation of absolutely not because then people are getting in their way so then you have people who have you know a really big like they're very specialized in certain areas so we had that conversation and we started talking about how for us whenever we start to kind of you start diving in which is gonna happen next week on our like project-based learning where we are kind of growing this gardening that we all cannot be doing the exact same thing at the exact same time because it's not productive it's not it's gonna take way too much time everybody kind of has their really skills that they feel like they're really really good at so then we started kind of coming up with our factory so the kids were coming up with jobs and the thing that I kind of presented them I kind of reason them with one big question I said hey guys I want you to think about what is it that we will need in order to be able to grow this garden and they were really really stuck and so I don't know if you can kind of see it but you'll see all my madness I need to take a picture of it and put it like on an anchor chart but you'll see my madness up here and up at the very very top I think it's like right there they put down gardening and they were stuck on it y'all I felt like that was the only thing that they wanted to talk about was oh well somebody's gonna have to weed it somebody's gonna have to water it somebody's gonna have to make sure it's cut right and I'm like guys all of this is gardening so when I started writing their ideas down I didn't really tell them anything at that moment I was kind of just writing them down but I was putting them all in certain areas so like anything that pertains to gardening I put it in one area anything that pertains to building things I put it in another area so finally at one point I was just like guys we have no money we have nothing we don't have anything like there is absolutely not one thing in this building that is gonna help us like I can't pay for this for you our principal is not gonna pay for this for you we have no money no nothing so once I said that it's like their little light bulbs went off and they were like oh we're gonna need somebody who builds the materials we're gonna need somebody who finds sponsors we're gonna have to have a fundraiser we're gonna 5 to find volunteers we are gonna have to let's see get some donations we're gonna have to do some trade we're going to need to get materials and builders and have maintenance and we're gonna have to make sure that we know when where and what to be able to grow so once they started do it Lia it was amazing to kind of I wish you guys could have heard this but with my kids just all of these ideas were coming out and so I'm just sitting here and I'm kind of writing things together and finally at the very very end I kind of circled stuff and I said okay so here's kind of what I'm saying the first thing I'm saying is that you have kind of like that cellar person the person who's going to be selling our product you know they are the ones who are responsible for getting the money for getting the permission from our principal for sharing this with the community this is kind of like our PR and I gave them the word PR I said this is like our PR people these are the people that without them we can't get this off the ground we can't get this started without these people so we had that piece and then I said okay now we have kind of the brains of the group these are the people who are our researchers they're the ones who kind of go off and they find out all the information that we need to know in order to be able to do the things that we want to be able to do then we have those who were the builders these are the people responsible for kind of constructing and coming up with the designs of where we're going to be building it last we have the people who actually garden it who go out there on a day-to-day basis and they read it they water it they make sure everything's kind of going the way it needs to go with the garden and so they were also flippin excited like I'm so wish that I could have shown you this but like when I was talking about builders we have a few kids in our class who want to be architects and they are so so excited about it their faces like lit up they were like oh yeah and I'm like I know you are like this is like the best feeling in the absolute world so then we had the kids who came up with well we're gonna need like supervisors and managers so at the end I kind of left that off to the side and I had two girls kind of stopped me and they were like and these are kind of our go-getter girls there we go so you didn't really mention anything about the managers and supervisors are we gonna have those and I said yes we will but here is kind of what I'm thinking because these different groups within this Factory of ours need to be able to communicate with one another and so it's kind of like teachers and how each grade level typically has like a team teacher like a lead teacher and those lead teachers all get together every once in a while and they kind of have those conversations between all the grade levels this is that same idea so what we're probably going to end up doing is having a manager supervisor something to that extent and each of these big areas and so when they come together you know the person who does the research says hey builders this is kind of what we have found is that we need to have this type of structure and it needs to be in this certain area and then that lets the builders be able to go and continue their work after that we also need to make sure we have like the fund raisers so those who are building can come up with the PR people and say hey this is what research is telling us we need to have this is how much money it's going to cost us to build this we need you guys to go back out and kind of get these funds so that we can go out and start this project so we're gonna have to have those kind of supervisors and managers within those groups to be able to start having those talk like conversations together to be able to keep this thing rolling because if each group stays in isolation they're never gonna get anything accomplished and if they do get something accomplished it's very different from what everyone else is thinking about and it was funny because we're all sitting there afterwards and I'm like telling my husband this because I'm also excited about it and he goes you know it's sound it's so funny because it sounds a lot like what @je this town is gonna be and I said oh my gosh it really is like you can imagine each of these little parts is its own little building and then you have a CEO and a CFO in each little area that have to come together and have to have those like they have to communicate with one another so it's just really really cool and I love how it truly is real-world application and I'm really excited about it so today we're gonna kind of finish up having some of those conversations getting kids the ability to be able to start looking at you know what is it that I feel like I'm really really good at we already know we have some kids who were the researchers who were gonna want to dive into hold up little transformer explosion yikes my son's bus is gonna be late um what was I talking about sorry guys phone bus don't remember what I was talking about now so today what we decided to end up doing is we're gonna kind of get together and allow these kids to be able to start talking about what is it that I feel like I'm really really good at because we do have some of those kids who are the researchers and they just want to dive into the research and they want to be able to kind of be the scientists the researchers of that group we have other kids who are really passionate about that architecture and they want to build we have some kids who just like leadership roles and they're very organized and they like to have those presentations so that's obviously going to be their kind of area of expertise and then we have those kids who are gonna just love to get their hands dirty and dig in the dirt and plant things and be those people who are out there kind of getting it done so I don't know I'm really really excited about the possibilities and where this is gonna be going I don't know it just makes me happy so today we're gonna finish up having the conversation about each of the different areas start allowing the kids to kind of think about what exactly is kind of their area I was even thinking of getting them to kind of write something and say hey this is kind of my area this is why this is my area almost like a resume type deal and then from each of those little areas we're gonna have those kids who are going to be kind of like those leadership roles who are gonna be able to communicate with one another so they do have to have those communication skills they have to have be organized they have to be detail-oriented so we're gonna have those kind of talks within like as teachers and then as each of the little groups start to kind of come together it is super exciting let me show you guys my board looks like so here is kind of the hot mess they ended up coming up with you know the not enough time not enough product not enough time then we had the gardener's the builders these are all of their ideas well I wrote letter to the man the man is the principal the cutting the weeding the watering I don't know they did a really really really great job yesterday it got me really really excited about our project-based learning piece so today is four ia which I'm very excited about because we have a three-day weekend I'm sorry I didn't belong in me at all yesterday I think it just kind of caught up to me as far as like my sleep schedule because I got behind with Blaine's birthday and then also with our schedules and just everything that kind of was new and changing here inside of our classrooms and I was just really really really tired like I just felt hurt like I felt like tired so he spent the day kind of resting and just trying not to overexert myself so it was nice it was good today is gonna be pretty much a normal thing I don't think anything as much is gonna change I do need to get my stem activities together so I'm gonna start kind of getting those printed off I have a faculty meeting this morning and then I think we have food which is very very very important I've been spending a little bit of time this morning getting together my targets just like on our Schoology website and I've decided that I wanted to show you guys kind of what it looks like I have to be a little bit careful because there's a lot of information on here that I cannot show you but this is what our targets look like so if you remember we had targets that were posted on our whiteboards now we've kind of changed it to make it put on our Schoology site so that the kids can just kind of get to it without having to go into the room so they can just kind of pull it up on their computer so when they go into like my math folder they're gonna see three different pieces I only teach two math rotations just because of our schedule so I have my CPM group and then I have my algebra group so if my algebra group was supposed to go in there the very first thing that they see is their learner tasks which are the week for this week every week I will end up moving this down into a folder that they're not going to be able to see so there's going to be like previous learner tasks down here so I will just pull it down and then create a new one for them so that I can kind of have it as a record so they'll go into it and this is kind of what it looks like it'll be labeled Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and then it's broken down from units and then independent that is not correct it's broken down from unit to target and then it has their independent math of what they're doing during that time and then it's also telling them what they're doing during their math skills time so like for instance today here's their unit they're working on algebra unit they're targeted they're going to interpret the rule for function tables and explain their thinking they're gonna continue working on gizmos during the math skills time they have this really awesome like function tables like exploration interactive math that's online which is really cool so the kids are gonna do that and then I have them completing a functions tables practice independently and they have to turn it into an assignment in this folder so when I go to create my assignment so they're gonna go into algebra right now there's not much except for the gizmo items but I'm gonna create an assignment here and this will pop this little thing up and then I can just put my name first so that I know that I need agree it because I share it with two other teachers I'm gonna put this back then and then I'm gonna put function tables oops practice so now I have that piece in there and then I can do completes the function table practice page and submit to this assignment something kind of generic II sometimes I go into a little bit more depth depending on how much is I could add a due date I could and then we have to add our categories here so like for them they're working not on that one where is my I don't think we have one yet so I'm gonna do great at for algebra and then I am gonna do it on a percentage for the mastery scale and then I can always assign it to my kids so I can individually assign so that all the kids are seeing it and that doesn't say that all the kids have to turn that in so then I can kind of create it and then the kids will be able to submit it here so this is where they'll go to submit their assignment so that's kind of a look into how we kind of use Schoology as far as just with our learning targets assignments those types of little things I don't put a ton a lot a ton out just because we have Schoology and you know we make a push for Schoology because our parents can go in and also kind of see what it is that the kids are doing so a lot of it kind of goes off of there I almost think of it like a blackboard so if you've ever been so when you were in college or if you still are in college it's kind of like your back blackboard systems so like teachers can go in and kind of post things and you have discussion boards the same idea but I like this one better so I am gonna get ready to go to my meeting in about seven minutes I have my materials ready for my first group so they have kind of they're working on a few words there so I have kind of my pans from what I was in kindergarten now I also have some handwriting sheets that they're gonna be practicing with their hand writings for those fine motor skills because they're still working on some of those and then we are reading our book as well so I have that out ready to go so my first group is ready then I have a break so I am gonna pull some kids that needed kind of some reinforcement with some math skills so I'm gonna pull them during that time for about three to four minutes and then kind of get that out and let them kind of go back out and continue finishing whatever it is that they have to finish during their rotation don't like I'm talking really fast sorry um alright guys I'm gonna head out in just a little bit so I hope you guys are having a really really really wonderful weekend and I'll talk to you later the kids are at special right now and I figured I'd just kind of do a little catch catch you all up on some things that are kind of going on in the classroom we are pretty much done with all of our rotations all of our like actual small groups the rest of the end of the day ends up being just our read-aloud time which is really really nice I wanted to show you guys this if you follow me on Instagram then you've probably already seen it but I absolutely loved loved loved using good highlighters for this so I'm gonna pull like one of my kids stuff sorry about that y'all okay somebody ended up coming in my room so anyways like I was telling you if you've been watching my videos for a while or you follow me on instagram then you've probably already have seen this but I like to have highlighters so I have like an all-purpose highlighter tool kit so you've seen a lot of these like on Instagram and on Pinterest where people say you know oh this is like my reading you know highlighter kit or this is my writing highlighter kit but I feel like highlighters are universal you can use them within all different subjects and a wide variety of skills so I just did an all-purpose highlighter tool kit so that my kids can see the connections and see how kind of they relate to all of the different subject areas anyways so we were reading a story a short story on the Little Red Riding Hood and I'm going through and with these kids we were looking at now the inciting incident so we have like the exposition is what I teach the inciting incident which is like a point between the exposition and the rising action so I teach exposition inciting incident rising action climax falling action resolution and I wanted we kind of went through we talked about it we created like an example of it and then finally we went through and we started reading it we kind of had like those conversations about which of the different areas we found like of the elements of plot within the story and then the kids got to go through and highlight it it was a really nice visual for them they were able to kind of pinpoint the certain areas that they were looking at specifically for the elements of plot so it worked out really really well so I wanted to show you this one so here you can see that she highlighted that the exposition piece there and then she has sorry this one's like bleeding through this is from the back here's the inciting incident then we have the first raising action seconds and then we have the third back here along with the climax the falling action and then our resolution which is down at the very bottom so today what the kids got to go and do is they took their map that we kind of created here and they went to fill in their plot map I thought I felt like it was a really great lesson they really enjoyed it they could like be using the highlighters and it really kind of helped to make it more concrete for them does that makes any sense I hope so I just wanted to share that because I thought it was really really cute so okay for highlighters if you aren't curious and one look at this product I do have this available inside of the product I have kind of different areas for which I use them so it's kind of like a so it's a little ring of cards and on each card it has like the different areas that I'll use it in so some are for reading some are for writing summer for math and it just kind of helps you get an idea of how I would use these highlighters within all different areas so I will leave a link down below so that you guys can go and check this out in my store the kids have gone home it's the end of the day and what I figured I would do is because I have been getting so many comments about my individualized schedules video you haven't watched it make sure you go back and watch it so you can kind of get a little bit more of an insight on how we kind of develop these schedules and why we ended up developing them but I thought that I would take some time and just kind of answer some of the questions that people left on that video they're great questions I just feel like I can't answer them completely just by typing in it so I'm gonna take some time answer through them but first I want to talk about again why we ended up going to these individualized schedules not that anything was going wrong with what we were doing I think what we were doing was just fine however we noticed that the kids that we needed to spend I think somebody's however we noticed that the kids that we needed to spend the most time with there were our intervention kids and those kids were getting pulled I think she's gonna come in my room she did come in my room mm-hmm so like I was saying it wasn't as if what we were doing was not going well I think what we were doing was going well for us however we started to realize that some of those kids who were having those interventions because of where our interventions are for our team they were getting pulled for the entire reading block and then we would have to pull reading at three o'clock well we already know that those learners don't do the best at three o'clock like that is the hardest time for them to get focused and it was hard for us to get focused and you have kids coming up to you asking questions it just wasn't a really great time for us to be pulling those so we had talked about last year about having these schedules but because we really wanted to make sure that we got the routines we got the procedures down we had down like what our expectations are as far as the mat team goes it wasn't something that we wanted to like do at the very beginning we needed to kind of ease ourselves into it and say this is what the Mac team is this is very new for all of us we're all kind of getting used to it here are the expectations here is what the routines are going to be like and we set that ground in the first semester what's wonderful about our program is because we have these kids for all three years is that the kids that we already have now that are right now fifth and fourth and fifth graders they're gonna be our fifth and sixth graders next year we're gonna easily be able to roll these schedules out for them next year for the fourth graders like the incoming fourth graders we might happen have to have it look a little bit differently for them but we already have a group of kids that are already pretty much trained in it so we basically spent that very first semester real focusing on kind of the routines procedures what we wanted Mac team to kind of look like in sound like and I think we accomplished that really well so when January rolled around and while we were kind of on a break we said you know I would really probably like to pull out some of these schedules again because those kids who do have those intervention times why can't I just pull them in the morning and meet with them for reading in the morning because that's when they do the best for those kids who have like you know gifted and band I'm missing times with them because their reading time is during when I have small group with them so why can't I meet with them at a different time it doesn't really matter that if I'm teaching math that everyone's out there doing math I don't think so it doesn't matter it doesn't matter that if I'm doing reading I have a couple of kids that are doing math independently it doesn't matter you know I'm still their teacher I can still assist them with any questions that they have this is just a way for me to be a little bit more flexible with their needs and to be able to work with them a little bit more plus I can individualize that schedule with them more so the kids who don't need math skills they don't have math skills I give them more of an independent block and though kids who need word study I give them their work setting cut times the kids who don't need it then we don't give it to them the kids who need a little bit more time in math maybe we give them more math time maybe we give them more reading time if that's their struggle it's individualizing it for them and their needs and making it to where it's going to help them succeed more so that is why we ended up going into this kind of schedule block it helps us be able to meet with all of our kids so that the interventions and the times when they're getting pulled for like activity periods and so and so forth are not conflicting with our small group times and so far they seem to be doing okay with it it also helps them to start learning how to prioritize and organize themselves so they're looking at like oh this is what I'm doing from this time it's at this time where is when during this big block time we would say hey you guys need to get done reflux this this this well they're spending 42 minutes on reflux and we're like well why are you spending 40 minutes on reflux when you need to be getting X and Zhi done so this is a more of during this time this is what you are getting accomplished during this time this is what you are getting accomplished and it helps them safe a little bit more focused so I figured what I would do is I'm gonna go through and just kind of answer out some of these questions that you guys have because there were fantastic questions so Aaron Jones left a question of enjoyed the video do your students take these folders home or do they just stay at school any ideas for those kiddos that leave their books homework etc at home or in their parents cars so the folders um that she is talking about are their work-in-progress folders so these are the folders that I talked a lot about in the last video and inside what we did is we took two pocket folders and we attached them using one of those book staplers that go all the way down the middle so they have four pockets available for them and then on the inside we put their schedule kind of individualized here so that they know what they're doing on each cycle day so it may end up changing if they end up having banned or gifted or if they have some other activities that they have to complete during certain times so they do not take these home they will leave them here at school we have a separate folder for them to take home which is a black folder we call it their communication folder that's the folder that they'll take come back and forth typically I know what you mean about those kids who are always like well I left it at home it's in my mom's car it's with my dad it's in my mom's house so on so forth it happens all the time especially with iPads we are one-to-one in my school and these kids will leave their iPads or they will not be charged and they suffer the consequences for them I say you know what you chose to not remember this you chose to forget this you chose to not you know charger your your iPad because your home iPad was way more important to you so now the consequences is that you're gonna have to complete all this work that you already did on your iPad now you're gonna have to complete it on paper and you're gonna have to do the work for today so they have to kind of double up on the work and they suffer the consequence for it I mean it is what it is and then at one point I remember just saying you know what from this point out every single time you just don't remember to bring something and you're gonna stay in for a recess until you start remembering and that would kind of get some of them in gear but for the most part no they they do not take this home unless some of them come up to me and ask me hey can I take on my folder there's a lot of work that I would like to get done then we give them a permission to do it but for the most part all the kids leave them at home or leave those in school and we do kind of have those kids who have to suffer some consequences just because they don't remember to bring things back and forth Alison asked do you think this type of workshop schedule could work in a classroom with one teacher any advice on how to start that I think absolutely this could work with one teacher I think it would actually work the absolute best with one teacher versus multiple teachers because then it's not so hard at trying to figure out who's gonna go where and how they're gonna go if it was one teacher this would have been a breeze coming up with their schedules so yes I do believe that you can do this here's what I would do I would start the same way that we started is we kind of looked at small groups take about 20 minutes so we kind of broke her schedule up into 20 minute blocks so he said well it's you know from 9:00 20s when we start to 9:40 and 9:40 to 10 o'clock I'm about to sneeze I'm sorry so I would definitely kind of look at your schedule break it up into this 20 minute blocks and then from there think about your kids and some of the needs look at think about those kids who get pulled out for interventions and do they get pulled out of your room do you have somebody else that comes in and works with them because those are the kids that you're gonna want to work around first get their schedules and their small groups placed in first and then start placing some of your other groups in there what we did is we looked at how many math groups and how many reading groups we had and then we kind of placed those in throughout the day so I knew that I had you know reading group a and those reading group a kids they got pulled for intervention so I needed make sure that it was during the time that was not being in their intervention time you do not have to have all of your math block together or all of your reading block together so even if you have some of the kids who you say oh my gosh this kid does not do well with reading at the end of the day like they don't do well put them in the morning it's going to be okay if you have some kids who are working on math while others who are doing reading in the morning it's not a big deal those kids are working independently practicing those skills that you've already taught them so they should not need any teacher assistance that's the purpose of practical practicing those skills they are reinforcing what you've already taught them it's not like they're having to teach themselves something new so work with those kids who have those schedules fit in some of those then start looking at some of your other kids and you know as far as when do they do certain subjects the best do you need to have certain kids who are doing stem there are some of ours that we said no way can we do them in the afternoon because they would not be responsible with it so we put them first thing in the morning then we had some more of our responsible students be able to like to contain themselves do it in the afternoon or maybe you have those kids who need to be more engaged and stem is going to engage them put them in the afternoon so that they're focused in on task versus them kind of getting off task with you know independent reading or something to that extent but then also look at what are some of those items that you want your kids to accomplish on a day to day basis well we want to have independent reading we want them to be able to practice skills independently for math we want them to have word study and kind of start filling some of those other schedules and for them and we took it very very slow the first couple of days we sat down and we said okay here's what this looks like here's what this sounds like when you're an independent Matt this is what this looks like this is what this sounds like when you're at word study this is what this looks and sounds like we went through and set those expectations so you may not pull like small groups you may have something very easy during small groups that that day and then just kind of walk around and just make sure that kids are on task doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing it's almost like when you are launching reading workshop it's the exact same idea you slowly get them used to it adding tasks to it so that they are getting more comfortable and more fun with it but to answer your question absolutely you can do this inside of your own classroom with one teacher I think it would actually work the absolute best in that area you have certain kids who are reading certain kids who are doing weird studies subheads are doing that some kids who are working in small groups so everybody's working on things that they specifically need so jackie asked me how will you manage the time for each block I'm notorious for thinking an activity will take a shorter time than it actually does so when I do my plans I I do my plans differently I don't look at my plans as Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday I think of it as an actual lesson so a full-blown lesson from start to finish so if I'm doing a short story with a class with a group and we're talking about plot I'm not going to be able to teach my entire small group plot lesson in one day there is absolutely no way I use scaffolding in order to teach it to them so I think about well the first day here's what we're gonna do we're going to read the text we're gonna talk with about it we're gonna kind of add some of our thinking down the next day we're going to come back together we're going to revisit plot and the elements of plot and then we're gonna do this ain't part of it so I think of it as a full blown lesson and then what happens is I kind of go through that lesson each day so I say okay well I was able to read today great so then that means tomorrow I can go to doing this I had one group I think it was yesterday and so it started yesterday I had these hopes and dreams that we were gonna read and do all of our highlighting for our plot and it did not get done because the kids were having a really great conversation and I don't want to nip that in the bud so I ended up saying hey guys I had plans that we were gonna finish this entire lesson today and you're independent time was going to reflect us finishing this so that you would complete your plot map unfortunately we didn't get there but it's okay because I'm just gonna give you extra time to read and they were so flippin excited because they just wanted to read so I kind of adjust it and make things work and I don't really plan it out I'm gonna do this Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday I think of it more as a lesson and then I kind of stop it wherever I need to stop it based on how much time I have and I'll just tell them hey we'll pick up from here and it's not that big of a deal so I just kind of plan it and look at it a little bit differently I hope that kind of helps to answer some of your questions but that's just what I do um Carly asked do your students ever have science or social studies so yes we do have science and science and social studies so because we are a Mac team we have fourth fifth and sixth grade we are a little bit different when it comes to science and social studies so what we ended up doing is we took off for that six curriculum for science and for social studies and then we broke it up into three year cycles so we have cycle one year two and three we are on cycle one right now and we said well we're gonna look at just life science and economics those are gonna be the the science and the social studies piece that we're gonna focus on for this year then next year we're gonna look at two different pits it could be geography for social studies and or Sciences for science and we teach all of the curriculum for fourth fifth and sixth in that year so the kids are all gonna get for fifth and sixth curriculum for life science and for economics now when we teach it we teach it during our writing and content block so we have an hour of time to be able to teach writing and content before we went to this schedule our writing and content block was it was very separate because for writing we were working on narratives so we would have our narrative time then we would stop and then we would pick up our science and have like a normal science class because of our project-based learning piece that we're going into this this week and this next week we are integrating it so our science and our writing is going to be very much together and combined because we're learning about information what we're writing about informational so the kids are gonna have it very integrated so that our time is going to be more of an hour time of science with writing integrated inside of it so we do have it it just looks a little bit differently for us and then the kids also get stem which is another piece but I feel like that's like an added piece for them it's not just there's their only sign in social studies time so I think that was all of my questions I hope I was able to answer and kind of clarify some of the things that were kind of going on in your head and maybe you didn't want to write down a comment and if you did write down a comment thank you so much for kind of sharing your questions I hope I was able to answer some of those for you guys but I really really love in the schedule so far I'm really excited to go into next week with our stem and our project-based learning and just the schedules and just everything else I need to get some rest from it because I feel like my body just needs to catch up from having to do all of the e the schedules and the folders and just everything that's like the change with it that comes with it so I hope that you guys enjoyed this video it was a little bit of inform informative for you I am here to say that I'm going to have a video posted on Wednesday so guys please come back and check out this channel for Wednesday it's gonna be a more focused video I want to start getting some of those I felt like I kind of got away from them this semester and I want to do that more I enjoyed them that's kind of what started this entire channel as I was doing some of those focus videos and then adding in the vlogs and I want to go back to doing that again so come back check me out on Wednesday I'm gonna have another video up if you enjoyed this one make sure to give it a thumbs up guys share it out on social media come say hi to me on social media and I will talk to you all really really soon bye enjoy your weekend

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 10,536

Rating: 4.9024391 out of 5

Keywords: A day in the life of a teacher, education, elementary school, lesson plan, new teacher, how to become a teacher, how to teach, math, reading, writing, teacher, 4th grade, common core, elementary teacher, book club classroom, tips, teaching, multiage classroom, upper elementary, individualized schedules, mass customized learning, 5th grade, 6th grade, teacher's life, life of a teacher

Id: F-uqxRaApOU

Length: 60min 54sec (3654 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 14 2018