First Week Back to School | Teacher Vlog | Week 1

and just like that the first day of school is about to begin I cannot believe how many compasses is gonna end up taking me I've been teaching six years I should be completely capable of leaving and it just really gives me so much hope for the future [Music] good morning everyone and it is the first day back for teachers and I am already off to a pretty bad start like I don't know where my phone is I'm not sure if I left it at home or if it's in like the pile of mess that I had to bring back to school today and then I come in to get a cup of coffee because our coffee machine has been town I'm gonna get a new cure today so I didn't have coffee this morning so I come in getting so excited about having coffee at school and my stinking fridge is not connected so everything that was in my fridge went bad which means my creamer is bad luckily my partner does have some creamer so I'm hopefully hoping that I could just scoot on by with the creamer that she has and deal with it I still don't know where my phone is though so my husband is looking for it thank goodness for my phone in my classroom and for my laptop because I don't know my husband's cell phone number anywho that's kind of the drama this morning is my phone and my coffee so here's what's happening I'm waiting for one of my partners we're going to be going to another elementary school together that is where we're gonna have an opening day like breakfast and then we're also going to be having a meeting with our K through six teachers I'm gonna grab myself a cup of coffee hopefully make my morning a little bit better because I'm kind of stressed out not gonna lie and I want to show you guys what it is that I'm wearing maybe it's just like I was like that's really cool so maybe it's just the fact that I haven't like dressed up in a while but like I am wearing just a plain green t-shirt and then I get this cute little cardigan oh look at that it has horrible I have some very very old pants that I bought from Anthropologie a while back these are like your chinos they were super comfortable I freaking love them I did not wash my hair this morning I just kind of threw some of that like it's like sea spray right to make like pretty beautiful waves with beach waves if there's some of that and curled a couple of pieces and hope and prayed for the best [Music] you know this is gonna be like the perfect spot for me to be able to just sit down and have a chit chat with you because like I have you in my open shelving like you're just sitting there and this is like great because I can just like put you in to talk to you whenever I feel like you know so now I have just come into my room and I have a lot of things that I need to kind of unpack and get organized because I took a lot of stuff with me over the weekend to be able to really just plan out for the beginning this week like that we're in right now um I wanted to get some things done so I have a lot of things that I need to unpack here or you can see some of it there and then I've written down my list in my planner to kind of set my game plan for today we need to finish kind of putting the final touches on our schedules for this week and pretty much like what are we gonna be doing like our lesson plans for the week and then start looking into next week as well so yes I picked up a hot pocket I'm not very very healthy I'm really sorry so I'm gonna heat up my hot pack out I'm eating my yogurt and my hot pocket have a diet coke and get to crack in on getting some of this stuff unpacked so I just got out of a meeting that I had to have with appearance and now I have been working away getting some of my things done off of my to-do list so wouldn't I show you guys really quick some of the things that I have prepared for the first day of school so because we're doing the house system I wanted to have some type of a ticket system in order to be able to award points so I made this which is going to be like a little ticket that the teachers will be able to keep inside of their pockets or around their desk area it's gonna be pretty simple they write the person's name down the circle the name of the house that they're in and the circle the number of points that they're given they can only give up to five points each time they award a ticket so no more than five points and so then after we're after they give the kids the tickets the kids will then put them inside of the little bowl which is way over there and the house points will be totaled up every afternoon so that is one thing that I went on hadn't made copies up now I just need to cut him up and be able to hand him out to all the teachers I also made little cards to be able to give out to students I can't show you the information just because it is personal but it has the kids usernames their passwords and their lunch numbers to be able to keep with them so that when we're doing some of the iPad lessons they have that information accessible to them and we don't have to run around trying to give it to them so I have those cards already laminated and cut so that I can hand out so we also decided to do rise and shine folder journals for the first like month of school before we start actually getting in towards their way so I went on ahead and made up a little cover this is pretty much it it's just the rise and shine journal and then I am going to glue those on there write their names in there so that they could have it for the first day of school and then I already have our prompt tonight and just keep in mind the next time you go to look at your mailboxes they are changing so just make sure you look at the tag that you're grabbing from so I also went on ahead and printed out the labels for the first day of school I'm gonna go ahead and actually place these in here so that the kids don't have to do it on the first day but what we're gonna have them do is just pretty much write a story about a student on his or her first day of school just something creative something a little bit fun and we'll get them busy right away as soon as they come into the classroom so this is one other thing that I'm going to be working on I am also in the process of trying to finish doing an iPad expectation sort so the kids are gonna be working with our iPad partners and they're gonna talk about expectations on the first day of school so I have a little sort to over to go ahead and kind of get the conversation going where they're gonna have different scenarios that they're gonna have to sort on whether or not they're responsible and irresponsible so that is what I'm currently working on I think I'm gonna take a break from that for just a minute just because my brain is not one even think the way I want it to think and I have to get my library books sorted because certain genres are going to go into certain rooms so that like we can find the books that we need to find if that makes sense so I'm gonna have the fantasy animal fiction traditional literature and then I'm also going to have graphic novels inside of my classroom so all of the other books that I have in my room are going to go into the other two rooms so I'm going to go ahead and start working on getting those sorted out and sent to the rooms that they are going to go in [Music] I was able to get here at 6:30 this morning to be able to get done my cume folders so this morning we have another meeting and this meeting is actually going to be at the high school and they have like this really big breakfast and y'all this breakfast is something that you just like literally you want to go because you want to have this food it is so good so they do this big breakfast and then we have like a huge district kind of assembly and gathering where the superintendent kind of does a little speech and the talk which was really nice and then we're going to come back pretty early and have a faculty meeting for two hours so it should be done by lunchtime and then after lunch I have the rest of the time to myself so I figured so I don't have to do these because it's the like the least favorite thing on my list to have to do is to look at key holders so I am I got here early to specifically do that and get that over and done with so that when I leave like I don't have to come back and get this done so basically with our cume folders like we have to sign off and we look for 504s any type of really kind of red flags that we want to make sure that we have information on that child so that is what I'm currently doing I'm gonna get this done I have my cup of coffee which I'm very excited about and I need to charge my Apple watch so I'm gonna go ahead and do all those things and then I will catch up with you guys a little bit later on I am feeling pretty darned good about myself right now because I just finished all of my cue folders like before 7:30 I still have 30 minutes I'm waiting for my partner to be able to arrive which actually see her car we were gonna head out to the high school and then I will catch you guys after my faculty meeting and when my belly has something delicious inside of it we just got out of both of our meetings it is now lunch time so the plan is that I am actually going to go and grab some Taco Bell because I do love me some Taco Bell and at the same time I'm gonna drop off our hats so I have to talk to you at all about what we're gonna be doing for the very first day of school so with the first day of school what I like to do at the very very beginning is kind of started off with a little party a celebration of hey we're here together it's the first day of school it's gonna be a great year we're all excited to have you here that type of thing and we're also sorting our kids into houses so the theme for this year is going to be a tea party to go along with that whole fantasy and book feel and so I purchased some hats which are pretty cool so we have like big glitter hats we also have like these little ones that have like these little twirly things on the top they're really cute I don't know I like this and then we also have some of the big like top hats which are really really cool I'm gonna chop them up at home because my sweet sweet husband is gonna help me out a little bit since I was stuck in a meeting all day long he is going to figure out a way to be able to put the houses inside of the hats because that is how we're going to be sorting them into their houses for this year so I'm gonna go to Taco Bell drop this off and then I will see you guys when I get back to school I hear one of my partner's okay so I am now on a mission getting my room together for the morning so as soon as they're arriving what's going to happen is they are gonna find their spots in my room that has their name tag it's already gonna have a journal that's going to it's gonna have one of these on top of it so they're gonna write their names on their journal and they're gonna put their name tags on and they're gonna get to work on that so right now my task is to be able to get the journals together so I can hand them out to both those other two teachers and then set my room up with the name tags in the journals out ready to go so that the students have something to do as soon as they come into the room so I'm gonna start working on these and get these done and then hopefully get these passed out pretty soon [Music] y'all these are some stressful times like I'm breaking out with a little stress ball here is kind of where I'm at at the moment so so far I've gotten out all the morning work have my morning message up and then I also have the data so let me show you what I have now so the kids are gonna come in and they're gonna see that message up there which pretty much tells them that I want them to keep their backpacks with them they're gonna find their spot with their name tag they're gonna start working on the prompt that's inside have the date day one yada yada on that side so let me find one so for like this young man he was one of mine that I had last year but him he has his name Tech here he has his journal there that he will use and then here it just says write a story about a student on his or her first day of school that's what they're gonna get to do when he's finished with that he's going to end up turning it into the white box and there we have a name crossword puzzle that they will be able to work on until everyone is pretty much done so I have that ready to go for tomorrow morning now I'm working on some of the other things I need to finish my dragon which is why I have not shown him to you yet I'm really really sorry but we are gonna finish him so he's gonna get done my husband is taking my boys to my mother-in-law's she says sweet to be watching him so that he can come and help me get a couple more things done I have nametags that I need to have cut I need to laminate them cut them also need to make sure I have the headbands game ready to go for the morning so lots of little things that I'm finishing up but overall I mean it's pretty good like we got a lot done I'm really excited so at the moment I'm working on headbands game we also got a couple of other things printed out that I need to go and make copies of so one of the things is the hopes and dreams we're going to start with hopes and dreams tomorrow they're going to be working on their organizer here so they have a graphic organizer once we talk about hopes and dreams we're going to help them fill out this organizer which then they would go and fill this out and this is going to go out in the hallway as a display and their pictures going to go here also have out just kind of a packet for when we need time for the kids to just be able to kind of chitchat hang out and just talk because let's face it we do a lot of talking in the first few days so this was just something that I found that would be fun and easy for them to be able to do just have some really good little activities for like time filler I'm not going to say that we're going to do that every single day but if we need a time filler we have something ready to go so I have that ready to go there's the name search for our classroom that's here I have our house points there and I'm working on getting those name tags cut and laminated and then I'm also working on the headband game so I have the headbands there this is my stress food I am seriously just thankful that my husband is able to come over here and actually help me out and get a couple more things done so that is where I'm at I am a little bit stressed out I'm not a little law I'm a little nervous I want the kids to really like the house sort and I want them to like the morning kind of celebration of us just being together it really just it's very important to me I really want them to see that I'm excited for them to be here I want them to feel excited to be here I feel like so often like people would dread the first day of school because they have to go back to school and I want to look at it more as a celebration of being with each other and for us to kind of go on this new journey together so I really want it to be something special for them and so it stresses me out because I want it to be nice and I want it to be good but yes that's kind of what I'm doing and nor I've said that like five times I'm sorry I'm gonna keep working on this hopefully get some of this stuff printed out very soon cut it up and then I'll show you guys what it all looks like at the very end alright so the time has come for me to get ready to leave I do have a little bit of work that I needed to do at home and also need to make a pit stop at Walmart so I want to show you what my room looks like now because I'm not sure how much I'm gonna be able to show you in the morning with me having to set up our Tea Party so let me kind of give you a little tour of my classroom everything is pretty much done I do need to add more flowers but I'm just gonna hold off on those for just a little bit but this is what my room looks like the binges look nice I have my incre chart ready to go for when we're talking about entering into the classroom in the mornings and then the piece there was the stalls here is my dragon guys I love him so much look at him look at how beautiful he is he is made with paper mache my mother-in-law is a very talented artist but we made him with paper mache she painted him there's his mouth he looks awesome so here's his head here and then his tail is off on this side and what it does is it pretty much just comes around so you can see where it's attached right there so it comes around here and then we ended up deciding I was gonna have a body made that was just way too much work but we ended up deciding to do these little black pieces of cardstock and then what's going to happen is that each of the black pieces is going to end up holding one of our read-aloud so I'll print the read-aloud picture and then we'll post it up to have Mack the dragon hold all of our read-alouds for the year so that's what he looks like that's supposed to like imitate his body do you see that how it goes from the head to the tail I thought it was cool so yeah there's this tail again he looks so unbelievably cool the body with the black and I love his eyes can you guys see his eyes they're so cool he looks awesome so yes so now I have all of the little areas for them to be able to set they have their name tags ready to go and that's a wrap guys I am done here like I said I do still have a couple things that I need to do I need to stop at Walmart that I'm gonna go do some laminate encouraged to get ready for our house sorting and then also our Tea Party that's gonna be tomorrow with our fun games so I will see you guys in the morning when I'm setting up for our back-to-school celebration happy Wednesday morning everyone it is the first day of school and I have a lot to get done this morning not gonna lie I stayed up and y'all this is crazy for me until probably 11:30 and I made more of a like go to bed at nine o'clock kind of person like I just don't function well when I'm on very very little sleep but somehow I was able to kind of check through it which I'm very proud of myself however I feel like I'm gonna be crashing around like lunchtime so I have two big boxes and a couple of bags that I need to unload to be able to get ready for this morning's like celebration event so I'm going to unload them over here by the side door then I have to go and park and I'm gonna start setting up the outside courtyard because that's where we're going to be we can't really have celebrations like in our room because there's too many of us so we're gonna celebrate out in the courtyard it's gonna be a beautiful day today I think the high is like 78 which is like phenomenal and it's gonna be sunny and cloudy and it's just a perfect kinda day so I'm very thankful for that I'm going to go ahead and get these boxes unloaded and then I'll show you guys what I have you like that the first day of school is about to begin so we have the courtyard which is ready to go we have our areas for our tables so we have each of the houses represented for each of the tables on there we have some like cute decorative I put scrapbook paper and then I just little plate on top of it for them for their skittles and then they have two different games so they have a skittles get-to-know-you game where they're going to share information based on the colors that they pick out of their bags and then they also have headbands game that they're gonna play with groups of three and this is all going to be done within their houses so those are set ready to go they're gonna get to know their houses of the very first thing when we walk out there so the very first thing that we do is they're going to sit down right in front of where we have all the hats displayed we're going to go over some of our color responses really fast and then I'm gonna start calling out names and the kids are gonna come up and they're going to pick a hat and their hat will be revealed by what falls out of it so each of the hat has how simple that is underneath it and it'll fall out off of like a string so it's going to be hanging off of the Hat and then they're going to be represented with their new house once they have their house and their hat they're gonna go off to the table on the side and they'll get their new badge and then we'll write their name down for their houses so we can keep track of it so exciting it is finally happening I'm glad I finally got everything done it is now the afternoon and I am so so so beyond tired I feel like I was just like a hundred miles a minute and I think that's like the first day and what that first day is pretty much like it's the best description for first day you're going a hundred miles a minute you don't really get a chance to like sit down I think I ate my food standing up and actually like as somebody else was teaching because I had to do things during my break it's almost like you don't even like have break times during your first day of school but besides all of that it was absolutely wonderful and I'm very very happy with our first day and I'm very excited about our Mac team in our class and our kids just in general are just so phenomenal and I'm so excited to get to know them a little bit better so I no I did not vlog and I am so sorry but like I said I lost kind of all my brakes because first brake was spent cleaning up the morning party time the second brake was spent stuffing the folders with their house information on it so I didn't have a lot of time to be able to sit down and like vlog with you guys hopefully tomorrow I will have a little bit of that time tomorrow's not as chaotic it's a little bit more of a routine day so cross your fingers that I will be able to do that with you guys so let's kind of run through the day and talk about like overall how it went because I like looking back at these and just like really reflecting on you know the first day of school and remembering what it was that we did and what did we not get to do we actually had four things planned and we did I think only two or maybe not even that I think we did one because it was so jam-packed and we really wanted to take it slow and take our time with explaining some of the things so that we noticed that the kids needed you know some refreshes on what is it like what does it look like and sound like to listen what does it look like and sound like to you know get into a line and to walk in the hallway and it was a lot of that where we just felt like you know what this is a really good time for us to talk about this so we would stop and we would talk about it so here's kind of how the day went we had the kids and I showed you guys this morning we had the kids come in I had spots for them already assigned they started working in their journals right away it was just a really easy like creative writing activity and it also gives me an idea as far as like where they are as writer so I get to kind of flip through it look at their journals and and get an idea of where they are so they did wonderful with that they were so chatty and they all were just so like curious about the day and what was going to be happening it was really great to just kind of hang out and just kind of talk with them so once the announcements came on we took the time like in each of our classes in our home rooms to be able to like talk to the kids about alright well what does it look like and sound like to be able to put our backpacks up because I am such a pet peeve when it comes to backpacks like the kids need to put them in the back they need to remember to zip it they it's just a whole process so we took her time and did that once that was all finished we talked about lines and what a perfect ten looks like and that's one lane zero talking and then we took them out into our courtyard where I had everything set up so each of us brought our kids out and we kind of sat them in front of this deck that we have and I had all of the hats kind of laid out for them so that they can see them and it was really really cool and so I kind of went over the you know column responses that we had and they were all pretty quiet like they weren't really saying much like I thought there was gonna be a little bit of more excitement when they came out and saw everything in fact like one little girl she was the only one that was like I knew this was for us so she must have like walked past it and saw it before she came to my class so they were very quiet they all just kind of hung out and sat around some of them were a little chatty and you know they were talking to because they've already gotten the opportunities to know each other over the summer so they're sitting down and they're talking when you go over some of the call and responses which they did phenomenal with I did not think that they were gonna remember those but they remembered them so so well so once that was done then I simply pulled four kids at random just pulled them and told them to come up and I told them that they were gonna have to pick from one of the hats so I had three different kinds of hats I had these hats that had like little Spinneys I thought they were cute and actually this was a big hit I thought the other two were gonna be big hits and this was one of my actual big hits like I think these were almost gone first if not first it was definitely gone second so this was one of the hats the second type of hats were these which they kind of like have this accordion style where they just kind of go up like a top hat which were really cool these were the least favorites out of all of them and the last one which I think was the by far like the best cat toys sorry oh they're falling everywhere so the last ones which were by far I think we're the best choices were these like top hats and there's the click the glitter top hats so the hats were sitting down like on the ground like this and I told the kids that the hats are gonna be what chooses you that's the hats are gonna tell you what house that you are gonna be in and so here's how it worked so when they went and they were standing up there and I would say make your choice then they would go and pick up a hat and when they picked up the Hat oh this fell out of it so it was simply a symbol like our shield for our house system and so it kind of fell out and just told them which house that they were gonna be in they thought it was pretty cool they were I thought that they were gonna be like a little bit more excited about which house that they were in and in fact they weren't they were a little bit like in different they were like oh okay and so then they would go to my other two partners had a like a table set up where they would log which house that they were in and then they would give them a new badge and the new badge would have like their house symbol it would have like a color across the top it has their name on it pretty simple but it was something to symbolize this is your house this is what you were going to be in and we kind of went through that whole process and it went pretty quick and it was pretty easy once that was all done then I dismissed them by houses to go to their tables so each each row tables had a specific house that I went with so it would hold up to 18 kids which is what the most that we could have in one house in each of the houses so they would went to they went out to their tables and they sat down they were already talking they're really excited because they knew that they were gonna have games and they played one game which was like a skittles game which was kind of like our snack our like treat but because we didn't want to go like above and beyond with food because we were we have lunch like literally right before so it's at ten to fifty which is like the earliest lunch on the face of the planet so my partner made this which is a skit tell us about you which was really really cute so the kids opened up their skittle bags and every time they picked one out they were kind of in a group of three and every time they would picked on out they would have to tell something about them so like red was to tell me something that you did over the summer yellow was a type of food that you love orange was something you like to do in school purple was something about your family and then green was a hobby that you loved and they loved that that was really really fun but I think the best game out of the like the two games that we had was the headbands game which was like one of my favorites so I bought these like gosh we were at the beach and it was like a dollar tree that was going out of was it called they were going out of business so I have like three different versions of cards and each one like each color stands for something different but because we didn't have enough of all the same colors I put shapes at the bottom so the little squares here stands for the category of subjects so like school subjects and they had to guess school subjects the triangles which are these are school supplies so they had to guess the school supply so they got to play this like little game here and the circle ones was things that they could have done like over the summer so they loved loved loved this game they were so excited about it like this was probably like the highlight of the entire like morning itself not the houses not the skittles the head begins games I love headbands headbands is like my go-to y'all I love love love it so once that was done we had to take them to lunch and recess and I stayed this is why I couldn't have lunch I stayed and I cleaned up the and my partners helped too but I finally made them to go eat and I told them that I would eat as they taught the next lesson um so I went and I stayed behind because I had to get the entire courtyard cleaned up because there was going to be another class in the afternoon so and he didn't make sure that I left it the way that I had it well that I came in that morning so I stayed behind and I got it all cleaned up and then when they came back after lunch we were going to start talking about our hopes and our dreams however I think we ended up changing it because we started talking about talking what it meant like to be a good listener and after all of that and after some of that practicing and that modeling we just didn't have enough time so we ended up deciding to go out and playing sharks and minnows we were going to play Red Rover Red Rover with like just like me but it ended up not wanting to work out well so we ended up just playing sharks and minnows and I was a shark the entire time and I am pretty fast y'all like I feel pretty good about myself although there are some boys that in my class are like really really really fast but it was so much fun I really enjoyed it like it was a really great like leisure time to kind of leave again just hang out with my kids and like get to know them um so that was fun and then we came back in and we like we've got over like all the house points house system that type of thing to you and then we gave them just like some quiet time to just like like rest so we let them finish up with their journals from in the morning because a lot of them had not finished their journals in the morning and then we also had like that search that they had a lot of the kids did not get to yet before they had to find like classmates names so we'd let them do that and then after that we have like special we came back we talked about closing circle what that looked like and sounded like and then we also talked about like their communication folders and some of the expectations for that and that was that y'all like that was literally our day I think for the most part they all really had a good day and there's such a great group of kids that we were all very very excited about it so it went really really well it was really laid-back for the rest of the afternoon a lot of just like talking about routines procedures having some of that quiet time to let them just be able to work and then you know getting to kind of go out and play like a fun like running around the body movement type game so it was really good I enjoyed it my room was a hot mess like after everyone had already left so I spent some time trying to get that cleaned up so right now what I need to get done before I can go home and it's my brother-in-law's birthday so we're gonna head over to my in-laws for cake but before I can do that I need to make sure that I have out my folders for tomorrow morning what their badges out where they're going to be sitting and then I also want to have my morning up on my board so I need to get those two things done and I think I have like a couple of things that I need to do at home I'm in charge of the morning meeting activity tomorrow the stem activity read aloud and then I also have to print something which I'm not going to stress that bout and I'm gonna do that tomorrow morning so I am going to get all that set up get everything kind of tidied up cleaned up I think for the most part everything looks okay it's just I have like a little area back behind my stuff where I need to get it cleaned for right now this box have like all these hats check that out all these hats are just gonna have to kind of hang out for a little bit until I can figure out what I want to do with them so I'm gonna touch them underneath here and pretend like that's gonna be okay so I'm gonna do that and then I guess I don't know I'm very excited I'm very tired I didn't go to bed until midnight last night so I'm very ready for bed but overall was a really really good day by the way how cool is this happened I wore this the entire time that I was doing housework you so they're morning work is out except for some of our friends who did not put names on their journals so those journals are just sitting on the stage for them to be able to come and find which one is theirs pencils are out with them clipboards are out so everything is ready to go for them this for tomorrow morning when they come in they have their message up on the board which just gives them directions of what they should be doing date is all changed so I am pretty much done I feel like at this point everything's going to be pretty much kind of calm and relaxed kind of environment because we're going to be like hitting them hard on a lot of those routines and procedures so there's not going to be a ton happening we're still going to continue doing some of those fun like get to know you activities like in between all of the drill and kill practice that we're going to be doing so that's pretty much what we have planned for tomorrow I'm gonna start getting my stuff cleaned up so that I can head home I got a plan for stem activity morning message activity I have my read aloud planned so and then that's pretty much it for the day so I'm pretty excited about that oh and then if we have a read aloud tomorrow I should go ahead and like take the picture because then we can put it up on Mac the dragon how cool is that so we'll put it up on him and he'll have our first read aloud up on his little body so that'll be exciting so yes that was pretty much the day to day guys I'm gonna go home eat some cake go to sleep and then I will see you guys in the morning so I just went to Walmart and I raided their cup section and I think I took all of their cups no as a matter of fact let me correct that because I did take all of their Dixie Cups I cannot believe how many cups this is gonna end up taking me I'm curious to know if the kids are even going to be able to use all of the cups but we're gonna see so we're gonna do a stem challenge this afternoon with the kids it's simple it's just like a cup second activity to see how tall they can get their Tower but I needed a ton of cups because I have 72 children okay so good morning everyone I am just getting into my classroom um I am going to make me a cup of coffee and then I have a couple of things that I need to get done this morning so I need to make a copy or actually create a page for them to be able to record how tall their Tower is I think that's what I want to do I'm not really sure yet to be honest but I do want some type of a recording page to show that there is a recording process that is not just a time to play with cups if that makes sense so I do want to have some type of recording sheet for their stem activity for their cup challenge I also need to finish coming up with my activity which I'm pretty sure I know which activity I want to do for a morning meeting I just need to like clarify which activity I want to do so I need to do that this morning and get their labels cut out and placed on top of their folder so that they can place it in their journals so I'm not gonna lie to you guys I am really really tired yesterday I went home and I just like fell asleep I was so so exhausted and then when I woke up this morning I'm like not having anything that I was gonna wear so let me show you guys what I ended up deciding to put on because I feel like this is like comfy but I don't know I'm really tired okay so let me show you guys what I have on today so um I think these are like linen pants maybe is that right linen pants I have linen pants all in that have turned like a white leg at the bottom I ended up deciding to wear flip-flops because my feet are killing me from yesterday I have like my new shoes and if you've watched my what is it called link back to school like craving your time capsule wardrobe I showed you guys some like Tory Burch shoes that my mom has gotten me well I wore those suckers for two days and they are like rubbing me raw on my back heel so I'm gonna take a break from them not wearing them and I were flip-flops because my feet hurt I wore this little peplum shirt that I showed in that video as well and then I also think I showed this cardigan in there as well so the only thing I didn't show were my pants but y'all I feel like look at that I feel super comfy link you can't get much comfier than that so I'm gonna go ahead and make me something some call fun I'm gonna make coffee I'm gonna get me a little Jimmy Dean role and I will catch up with you guys in a second once I can figure out what it all night it but I can't talk this mine I will catch up with you guys in a little bit once I can figure out what all I need to accomplish this morning I got a few of my students nametags printed reprinted because they either lost it or it was completely destroyed yesterday so I have those printed I have some other things that were printed because I kind of messed up on there some of their names for some reason so I fixed all of those got a few things copied for today and then I also decided that I wanted to create a game plan like just a schedule for today because it is a little bit kind of weird it's not our normal schedule we're not in a routine yet and I just want the kids to kind of be aware of it so this is kind of what our day is gonna look like today so this morning the kids are going to come in we're gonna have morning work arrival and then we'll have morning meeting afterwards from 955 to 10:10 we're gonna be working into two different groups so fourth grade is going to be working on a letter and then fifth and sixth grade is going to be talking with our principal from 1010 to 1035 we're gonna be finishing up our letters in our homeroom and these letters are pretty much just letters to themselves we're going to give these letters back to them at the very end of the year so they could kind of reflect on it so we thought it would be really sweet and really fun for them to be able to do at 10:35 to 10:40 we have a fire drill practice that we were going to do 1042 1130 is from recess and lunch then we'll do I pad expectations hopes and dreams a stem activity will have special and then our read aloud so that is our game plan for today that is all that we are going to be able to get done today I really like the idea of just going slow and steady in the first few weeks of school just because I really want to make sure that these expectations are set so that when they don't come in and quietly we go back out and we try again if they don't take a seat the way that we're supposed to we go back out and we try it again there's lots of opportunities for us to be able to practice that sorry somebody came into my room anywho so like I was saying I like to make sure that I just go really slow and study because it's an opportunity for us to be able to practice a lot of those routines and procedures so I have pretty much everything done today I have like a really like I got things finished which I felt very very like like I feel accomplished like I didn't have a ton of things that I was running around for today so I am going to work on my cup stacking page I will show you guys that once I have that printed out maybe during our lunch time and then I will catch up with you guys a little bit later on can I please just say that one I am very very tired - I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed with how much of a mess I have in my room right now like I just I don't y'all I just don't focus well when I have a mess like I just don't even know what to do with myself because I start to get very flustered and like I just my brain just doesn't work that way like I have to have a nice clean space in order for me to be able to focus them to stay organized and I don't have a clean space right now which is really frustrating me and then three my freaking carpet is fraying and I the hot blue like I thought it was gonna work it's not working because the hot glue is now coming off too so that's an issue and I don't really know what to do I called my husband a little wash Leah texted my husband like frantic because I was kind of upset it looks so bad I'm gonna show it to you it looked awful so do you guys see that and then it gets worse so look at it do you see like these little pieces are also coming off and then it gets worse I don't know if you guys can see that on my screen like in person it's really really bad really bad so there it is the hot blue over here on this edge has completely come off it just came off I don't know so I'm feeling like my hair looks like a mess so I'm feeling a little bit frustrated because it's just it's a mess and you don't like to have a mess and get very stressed out when I have a mess and everything's a mess and then on top of that like last year I had a space because if you guys remember if you've been watching me for a little bit like last year I had like this little space to be able to put things and like so I would be able to have a spot for my computer well this year I don't really have a spot for my computer and I know like right now we're not in the routine there's not like a normal schedule to everything because we're kind it's just like it's a crazy mess right now but I don't have a spot to put my computer I don't have a spot to put things and it's really frustrating to me right now I hope like I can't even express to you guys like how much it's frustrating me right now because I just don't have like places to put things like everything is a hot mess I have papers I have rulers I have papers books and papers badges papers computers papers more junk all over the place and it's just like I just don't know what to do with myself my sweet husband is gonna come and try to help me like get the right situation under control so that I don't have this issue I don't want to bring it home this weekend so he's gonna try to come he's gonna like pick the kids up they're gonna go get a snack they're gonna come we're gonna try to figure out the whole rug situation I'm gonna try to clean up my area and figure out what I can do as far as just having like an area for my things because I have to have something something small I don't need a desk like I don't need anything huge I just need to have like a designated space and those little cabinets like and if you guys see that like this this little cat like cube drawer that's back here it's just not cutting it like there's just not enough space over there for me to be able to put my laptop and just like my planer and things like that it houses like other things that I would need to get to throughout the day but it doesn't have the main a couple of things that I need to have so I need to figure out that situation I'll let you guys know once I kind of figure all of that out but I just don't know what I'm gonna do yet and I'm gonna get my room cleaned up we didn't even do this time activity because we just didn't have time for it today it's so funny like it's not funny look it's actually kind of depressing and sad and stressful but it's like you just don't realize how much you just don't get done the first week of school you just don't get it done because there's no time in the day and you're taking everything so slow and you just don't think about that when you're planning because you're still like in at the end of the year mode and not at the beginning of the year mode so I'm gonna clean up I will hopefully have some updated news on what things should be looking like and hopefully like a spot for be able to put things by the end of today it's about 6 o'clock in the evening so that means I've been here almost while hours and I've been teaching six years I should be completely capable of leaving hi I'm back um so sorry I did not mean to have like a meltdown on you guys I really do apologize I was feeling just I still AM I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed with how much of a mess my room is and I know it's because I have the entire crew all 71 kids in my room for the majority of the day because we are doing so many things that our whole troop just taught colt whole group whole group that are like just talking about expectations and just like what we should be doing and I mean all of that like I totally understand that and it's not gonna be like that sorry but dialed me but I know it's not gonna be like that the whole year I understand that and I get it and I know it's just gonna be rough for these first few days I just like I think it just overwhelms me to be able to see that like other teachers have their rooms so perfect so wonderful so neat and like mine is just chaos and I like I told you guys I just don't function well when I have chaos like I feel overwhelmed I feel like I don't have anything together I don't think straight I get irritable like I just become the creepiest person on the face of it it's like what Cookie Monster doesn't get his cookie he's like that's kind of how I feel whenever I have a mess in my room like it just cannot handle it at all and so yes and with it just like I spend 12 hours here I felt like I've spent so much of my summer here I don't know there's something wrong with me anyways so I am just going to I finally got my room cleaned up my husband came helped me a little bit with the carpet we ran out of hot glue sticks so we couldn't finish the carpet he's gonna try to pick them up tomorrow and come and finish doing it so what we ended up doing is we ended up flipping it and hot gluing underneath it been kind of spreading it out with like a piece of like a card or something like that um to smear it and make a knot instead like a bead but just smearing it I don't know how sex believe that so he came and he did that I kind of see to clean up my area I did get like something situated that I would love to show you like it doesn't look bad I have to keep reminding myself like it's okay right everything's clean so I still have this little area back here which like right now it's not serving as like an important purpose so I have this like little area over here which has like it it's great I use this right here I love my IKEA stand I use it all the time however like all this stuff here I feel like is just right now serving as storage so it's not really being it's not useful to me at the moment which is kind of irritating so I may have to like reconfigure this little space then I have this little space over here which I started getting a little bit smarter about it I put my pride tickets in here I put my house tickets I have my nurses passes right there so that it's easy for me to be able to access it it's right underneath where my schedule is so it just makes it perfect for me I did put I have this little table here it may not end up staying here because it's already proving to be a pain in the butt so actually I think I am going to move this hold on so now that whole little box is gone it was proving to be kind of a pain in the butt over there maybe my trash can sorry there we go so here is not my space it's clean I don't have any junk like sitting over here anymore which was nice I'm pretty sure that little table started in and up being used as like storage for junk so that needed to go because I was just placing drunk on there instead of putting it away like I'm supposed to so that's gone which is nice and now I have like a little area for my computer I am just going to use this cart I tried to see if I can find like one of those taller tables unfortunately I cannot find one of those and I know like sometimes I will use my projector I just don't see myself using it as much especially since a smart a beam sent me this smart marker not sure if you guys have seen at the smart marker in action but it is phenomenal and I'm so excited to be able to use this so since EBM decided to send this to me I'm so graciously send this to me for me to try it out and kind of give me give them my first impressions on it I don't feel like I'm gonna use my projector as much because now I have this really cool marker for like anchor charts and things so either way right now what I did was I just have my laptop a sticky pad and then a little cup over here to be able to stick some pins and pencils because I've been like struggling to find pens and pencils lately I stuck some of me do you see those the Dollar Tree bins right here so that I can have like paper clips and erasers and post-its and finder clips like it's just things that I have been finding that I need and I haven't been able to like I haven't had like a decent place to put things you know this is just junk right now I end up I do need to put some of the stuff away we're gonna be sending out scholastic book orders very soon and then I have to give the kids who completed the summer challenge their price next week so that is now complete my room is decent it is clean I have their nametags out in spaces where I want them to sit tomorrow the only thing that I need to do is now get my morning message up and then also do what is that thing called and then also put up like the date and things like that so I well I think I'm going to go ahead and do that place that up on my whiteboard have that ready to go so that I don't have to worry about it in the morning because it does make life so much easier when I do have that ready put my laptop to charge and then I will be heading home to go and do more work [Music] I'm feeling a little bit better from my breakdown that I have yesterday evening I'm okay I had a really bad headache and I know that that's not like the only thing but I think that that was part of it that was just adding on to it the headache started in the morning I took medicine like I was supposed to the headache did not go away all day and it just progressed circle like progressively got worse and worse and worse which is like not anything that any teacher wants to like experience and it was not just a headache it was a migraine like I always get migraines it is what it is it's typically whenever the weather is changing and today it's really really cool outside so I feel like that was kind of part of it there was cooler weather that was coming into our area and it was just my head was like blown up I was very stressed out with my mask because I don't do well with messes um I guess I'm doing a little bit better today I promise I am very positive I'm gonna have a positive date it's gonna be a great day it's Friday and it's like one of the best days ever I get very excited about Fridays because I feel like Fridays I tried to tend to be like a little bit more laid-back I want to kind of like have fun just like be able to get to know our kids and like do fun things like Fridays have always been like fun days for me even in kindergarten like we didn't do crafts all week long but by golly George on Friday we tried to do the crafts so that's kind of how my outlook is just like started from there like it Fridays are just good days because I get to do some of the things that I really really like to do and we are gonna do something really fun My partner teacher decided that she well she didn't decide she found this one like TVT cellar I'll let you guys know how it ends up being and if it works out the way it's supposed to but it's like an escape the room activity forget to know you like back to school type theme so like the whole thing is that little sneaky aliens have come into the building and they've stolen our principal's so our principal is missing now and they're gonna have to break out of the room I guess so they're having to find all of the clues in order to be able to do it stayed up late try to cut them all I think I have like one or two sets to cut left and put those together so I'm going to try to get that done this morning as I'll let you guys know if I like it and if it ends up being good sometimes like TBT things can be phenomenal and wonderful and then sometimes I'm like doesn't really like that and so I need to get all of my things unpacked and let's see need to get things unpacked and then I also need to do my morning journal prompt so we need to have some type of a proper journal I did bring my stickers from school for home from home I brought my labels from home so that I can go ahead and print them here I have no idea what I want to do yet so I have to get those things together my room is looking very very nice which makes me feel good I've already had one cup of coffee I'm gonna have my second cup of coffee and I am gonna take medicine so that I don't have what I had yesterday I don't feel like I'm gonna have a migraine but just in case you know what I mean all right so I'm gonna get my stuff unpacked and hopefully I can come up with some type of journal prompt within time I have all three boxes of iPads in this classroom and one of the alarms is going off from the kids last year oh my gosh it's already starting you know I can't even I cannot even I don't know what to do I have all three boxes in my classroom okay so I printed out some of the read-alouds that we did last year we read some of the John I can never say his name correctly and I don't know if I'm saying it so you guys let me know from doing her correctly is it Classen or claisen mmm from John claisen so I want my hat back this is not my hat and we found a hat we read those yesterday which were so fun the kids like we're dying laughing the entire time it's so cute so now I'm gonna place him on top of our dinosaur max over here so I'm gonna put these on the little silhouettes of the book shapes up there to show our progression of like our read-aloud that we have for the year so I'll put these up I'm very excited about it I can't wait to see what it starts to look like there it is there's our books already starting on our dragon oh my gosh I love it so much so cute y'all that alarm I need to find that let's go find it I can't I can't do this oh my god okay it's the top box we left out here no no sorry starting I pretty much have everything that I need to happen this morning I want my partner teachers to look at the iPad expectations sort that I created just to make sure that there's not anything that I'm missing so let me show you guys what I mean so yesterday we talked yesterday we talked a little bit about iPad expectations and what were some responsible expectations irresponsible behaviors that type of thing so I put together just a bunch of different scenarios about kids and students just using iPads and some of the decisions that they were making so they're gonna be sorting these with their partners onto this page they're not gluing them down or anything I'm just gonna actually have them on colored paper and instead of a lo bag where they're just gonna kind of go through them and they're gonna just talk about some of those acceptable behaviors so I want to make sure that they're okay with that before I go and print those out and you start getting those cutted cut it I start getting those cuts and then I also have my labels printed out today I just did I'm always curious to know what kind of qualities students like to have in teachers some of them like to have certain type of behaviors that they see specifically so I thought it would be really nice for me to be able to kind of get an idea of what were some of those expectations that kids would really like to see from from us as as their three teachers now I just need to finish up doing the escape the room activity so I'm gonna start working on those getting those finished up so that I can start hiding some of those envelopes and since I am choosing to use the cart that has the projector as kind of my desk for my laptop and for my planner and just like pens and pencils things that I just need to get to immediately because I have been struggling with that the past couple of days I went on ahead and made up a little power like a PowerPoint presentation for some of the morning routines because we're still practicing those we did talk about them but I just want to send them up as reminders here's what it looks like pretty simple all I did was just put the date up in there in the corner I put good morning and then I have the morning routine that's there as a reminder so I'm not constantly answering some of those questions in the morning I have their morning message ready to go today and they're extra work is over here ready to go so I feel pretty good about it I pretty much got all of the envelopes hidden around the classroom which I think this is gonna be really fun it's a lot of work like to do beforehand but it's very much like a break outs like a break out EBU except it's like you know it's escape the classroom which I've never really done I'm gonna go make copies of my expectations for my iPad expectations just in case we do have time to be able to do that today I want to be prepared and I'm pretty much ready for the day I still have like 20 minutes to go that's not too shabby I'm pretty proud of myself all right so I'm gonna go do this and then I will catch you guys later not loving my hair today it's driving me nuts so I want to show you really quick some of the little areas where I hit some of the envelopes because I think it's really funny so what I like what I did like about this because at first I thought that like they were all gonna be in the exact same spot but they're near a same spot so let me show you what I mean so one of the cards was to have it near the pencil sharpener why have one here there's one in here here here there's one right in there you guys see that so I like the fact that I can be on just a little bit sneaky and hide some of the things it makes my heart a little bit happy so the morning has gone pretty well so far we have pretty much only done morning meeting you all like I said we have like the earliest stinking lunch on the face of the planet so we go to lunch at 10:50 first Reese's at 10:40 so we're like cracking so this morning what they've been able to do is like after we had our morning meeting we went over our hopes and dreams so our hopes and dreams Kenza leads us into our roles and setting up some of those rules and some of those things that we want to kind of make promises to each other for our communities they were working on we have like a little hopes and dreams organizer like this that they kind of fill out to just say you know here's kind of what I hope to do for a fourth you know in fourth grade or fifth grade or sixth grade because we got them all and then afterwards once they were done with that we checked them and we kind of signed off on their pages then they got to take out the book page which is where they're going to be writing their hopes and dreams we're gonna take pictures of them they're gonna insert it into the little rectangle and we're gonna display these all year round outside of our classroom to kind of give them as a reminder of what is it that we're working towards it's good to have a goal we kind of like say that it's almost like your news New Year's resolution but it's for your grade level it's for this school year so that's kind of what we've been doing it's been a very quiet like our class is so phenomenal I am so excited I could not be more excited about our back team so that's kind of what we've done all all morning so far I'm gonna go ahead and finish setting up for our a little mystery escape the room activity which I'm very excited about and I will let you guys know how it goes after we are done but we're gonna do the little escape the room activity after this and then end with a read aloud which I'm also very excited about because that means we can add well to our dragon so that's really really exciting that is what I'm going to go ahead and do right now I'm also gonna heat up my lunch in case you're wondering I'm having a Lean Cuisine wasn't very good about planning my lunch this week I'll be better next week oh that's a smart ones not a Lean Cuisine [Music] find this in a book near the tape thank you that too obvious yeah all right so everything is ready to go for this they're gonna start with one of these folders there's gonna be about three or four kids maybe there's one group of four so three kits for group one group has four and they're gonna have to unlock all of the different clues inside of each envelope before they can go and find the next one the clues will tell them exactly where they go to find the next one and those are hidden around the room so I'm gonna go eat so then I will talk to you guys after the activity is already had done and let you guys know how it went it is now very very late in the evening it is about 15 to 6:00 in the evening my partners and I kind of stayed a little bit late and we tried to get two weeks of plans put in so we have two weeks of plans we each kind of gave ourselves some jobs to be able to do over the three-day weekend to go out and plan so that we can get ahead of the game when it comes to our lesson plans because this week was a little bit of a struggle so the activity guys I definitely definitely recommend this activity to you it what kids were so highly engaged they were really into what it was that what they were doing and it was amazing because they were quiet I really really loved it and I think the biggest thing that I enjoyed the most out of having this activity was that I purposefully matched a sixth a fifth and a fourth grader together in this group and they had to work together and y'all they worked so beautifully together and it just really gives me so much hope for the future on how well our Mac team is gonna get going to go this year so I'm really really excited about it I loved the activity itself they had so much fun doing it it was kind of a little bit of a heavy start I didn't do the best job explaining it to them as far as like not opening the envelopes but to be honest I didn't quite expect I didn't know what to expect with with the entire game itself but now that I do I feel like I have a better way of introduced to them the next time I do this and I think for them as well like it was a little bit of a slow start but once they start to get the hang of it they were flying y'all and they had so much fun doing it so let me see if I can find what it was called okay so the activity itself is called cracking the classroom code alien abduction and it's buying it Teresa once I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name but it is a fantastic activity for just being able to get to know other students the students had a really great time getting to know each other there was like a little recording sheets that looked like this that they had to enter in names for different questions that were being asked in there so it was a great activity the kids had a ton of fun with it they were highly engaged with it they did a great job and I was very very impressed by the quality of the work so I think this was a very fantastic product and one that I will definitely use in the future that puts a wrap on are like mini week that we've had our first three days of school very excited to have a three-day weekend I'm not gonna lie like I really need to kind of get some rest and really get it get some more lesson plans under my belt so I don't feel like I'm trying to make it because this week I almost felt like I was just trying to make it to the next day so as with that I am gonna go ahead and channel off with this say goodbye guys thank you so much for watching I would love to know how your first days went please leave a comment down below let me know what your how your first day went let me know some of the activities that you did with some of your kids and be sure to give the video a thumbs up please this helps this video so much and be able to read so many other teachers so I totally appreciate it a thumbs up share it out if you can to some teachers that you know and I will talk to you guys next week bye [Music] the

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 46,739

Rating: 4.8795433 out of 5

Keywords: A day in the life of a teacher, Classroom Tour, education, elementary school, lesson plan, new teacher, how to become a teacher, how to teach, math, reading, writing, education videos, esl, kindergarten, teacher, 4th grade, tour, common core, elementary teacher, university, middle school, tips, teaching, back to school, first week back to school, first days of school, first week of school, multiage classroom, iteachtoo, teacher life, teacher vlog

Id: y-Aw5DkBImQ

Length: 68min 56sec (4136 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 02 2017