FIRST WEEK OF BEING A FIRST YEAR TEACHER! | Elementary in the Mitten

[Music] paper guys long time no vlog today is Saturday and I barely blogged at all this week because you guys I've just been so busy and a little bit overwhelmed with just trying to get everything ready in my room we go back on Tuesday but teachers report back on Monday and we have a professional development literally all day Monday it starts from 7:30 and then it goes until 4:00 and then we have our open house at 5:00 so it's not a lot of time to prep on Monday so I've just kind of felt a little overwhelmed with getting everything set up like for our open house and just everything so anyways I am in today I didn't come in yesterday and I told myself I wasn't gonna vlog anything yesterday either because I just needed a day to relax I didn't exactly relax I worked from home and then I did some errands and stuff but still it was just good to tell myself I wasn't allowed to come in so anyways it is about almost 10 a.m. and there are a couple other teachers in the building working too and I just got here a little bit ago and I just started working on a couple things so today what I need to do is I need to get my locker tags up I won't be able to show you those unfortunately because they do have the students names on them but I have to do that today and then I just need to make sure everything is ready to go for open house I am gonna come in tomorrow as well and just prep anything that I still need to prep and make sure everything is ready for the first day of school and all that fun stuff but I'm gonna try to get some stuff done today I am gonna go home for a little bit and hang out with Chris after lunch and hang out with him for probably a couple hours or so just I get to visit with him and see him and then I'm gonna come back and work on things and then hang out with Melissa tonight so that'll be fun so I wanted to show you a couple of the things that I've done in the last couple of days and hopefully more will be done today so the first thing that I did is I bought eight more of these little bins and then I hung those read love letters above this bookshelf I did that because I had more series and I wanted to display them on this side of the room and then also that freed up some space for me over here within these books so I still need to use a couple more of those little book on things to squish my books up here or I just need to like reorganize them I started at alphabet using them and then I gave up I do have a little alphabet strip right here we'll see if I end up finishing that it was just such a tedious thing and I just didn't get to it unfortunately I've the desk set up which I think I've shown you a couple times but then I also put down a piece of paper this is exactly where it needs to be to fit underneath the document camera so I thought that would save me some time somebody left this in my room isn't this so cute let me see if you can see that but isn't that so stinkin cute so I have a feeling my mentor teacher left that for me but I don't know for sure but yeah I just think that's adorable and then I have a hot mess going on down here but I got a ton of comments saying that I should move my rug from the middle of my room to over here and then move the mat over into the middle of the room which is what I ended up doing and then I added more to the mat I need to like scoot over a little bit but I think it looks really really nice and then also I added these alphabet letters that I made I do teach cursive in fourth grade and then also they should have already gotten a year of it in third grade so I just put these up with the sign language sign the ASL signs so not sure how well it's gonna stay also it's not centered very well so I want to scoot it over because it's like a little bit too far that way so I'm gonna move it over that way a little bit but we'll see if I get to that it's not like super high in my priority list I have both of these now set up and I have all the labels for those which looks really nice for now I moved over the cubbies for caddies I mean onto here just because I don't want them on the desk for open house I made this little Wow work sign and then I had this printed I created this just on PowerPoint and then I had it printed and then I also created this one on PowerPoint and had it printed I wish it was a little bit bigger but that's okay I think it's still cute and then I have this table set up for open house so kids can pick a couple of books that they want and then I made these little bookmarks to again I just made all of these in PowerPoint but I think they turned out really cute this one's my favorite isn't it so funny and then I have this all set up I made this board the other day this is kind of gonna be like an interactive bulletin board almost but not a bulletin board so when kids finish a book they're going to take out the little piece of card stock from whatever section and they're gonna fill it out and then they're gonna graph it up around here so I think that's going to turn out really cute these forms are from pocket full of primary and I have this set up in station one so this is station one right here station two I just have some information about like books and the library and scholastic and then over here I haven't finished the station yet my mentor teacher left a couple things that she asked me if I could cut out on my Cricut so she gave me the cardstock for that and then over here is gonna be a station where the parents can write their kids a note for the first week of school um so I need to cut out the notes tell and then over here this is gonna have like water and cake pops and maybe some other goodies as well and then these are our three r's these are practiced throughout the school of our PBS PB is just getting PB is okay so I'm going to tape these up in this area over here I'm done let me hide that I have something with the school's name on it over there and now it's blurry yeah I don't have enough hands so anyways I'm going to tape that up over here and then also something else that's new is I finish my little magnet board so I have 17 kids they'll just take their number magnet and tell me if they're having school lunch or if they have lunch from home and that'll help me keep track of that so that's what I've been doing it's a lot of stuff it's a lot of stuff to clean up and to still work on and just still cut out but I'm doing okay yesterday I spent probably two to three hours tracking student data from last year so graphing it just so I would have it for my record so I can see where my kids are at and then make goals for them like before I know them so I kind of have an idea of like what goal I might have for them those goals are gonna change throughout the year they're gonna change once I meet the kids they're gonna change once I actually get a chance to test the kids but that kind of gives me some like a baseline and it helps motivate me as well no like okay so-and-so is reading at a level Q I want to get them to whatever let-up level so that kind of just helps me gauge like what's going on so far in the classroom so I am very blessed most of my kids are actually at grade level already which is pretty amazing they might have dipped a little bit over the summer we'll see but that's pretty wild everybody keeps telling me that that like never happens where most of my kids are at grade level apparently this is just a group that has done very very well academically so that's awesome anyways I tracked all that yesterday so that way I could make some Lucy goose groups for the first couple weeks of school when we have our stations but those are going to change they're going to change so much they're flexible groups and also it's going to depend on the kids personalities because if they end up you know I don't want to put a group of kids together that are all like very very shy or group together that's all like very very loud like you kind of crowd I have mixed it up a little bit so anyways we'll just see what happens but I have a lot to do so I will talk to you guys a little bit later hey guys long time no see it is Saturday September 1st right now and I know I've been so am ia I really did not vlog at all this week and you guys I just had a crazy week it was my first week of school as a first year teacher and it was just a lot of running around I was just exhausted every single day there's no heat or there's no heat there's no air conditioning in my building as many of you know and it was just a hot week and I ended up staying late every day and coming in early every day and I had a lot of like meetings and um yeah it was just a crazy week out on us is all like a blur to me but it went really really well I loved meeting my kids my kids are so sweet and I definitely am for seeing some things that I want to work on with them and some things that we're going to want to focus on and stuff over the next couple of weeks for sure and through the school year but overall I just have a really amazing group and I feel very very blessed I have 17 kids which I mentioned before and on Monday I had my open house so I had trainings all day long and then at night my parents are my kids parents came in and my kids and I had every single one of my kids and their parents show up except for two of them and then the next morning was the first day of school and then the like one of the two who didn't come she ended up coming like pretty early before school started with her dad and they apologized and said that they didn't make it the night before because she was at her older brother's soccer game which was that town so that was why she couldn't make it so they ended up coming early the next day and we just chatted for a while that morning and yes all of the parents at my school seemed very involved which is amazing I've never really experienced that before in this way I've definitely seen like involved parents but this is true for almost the entire school the parents are just very involved and we want to know what's going on in their children's lives and stuff and it's just really really cool so I spent most of this morning sending out a newsletter to all of my families and yeah I've just made some parent phone calls already and connected with them and just said how awesome their kids are doing and it's just been really really fun it's been fun getting to know the kids it's been a lot of work for sure we did start our reading curriculum this week which is pretty intense it's a lot of different aspects and I met with the reading coach or reading specialist for the school that I'm at and I went through some things with her and she trained me on some different testing stuff that I need to administer this upcoming week and you guys it's just been crazy so thank you to all of you who have reached out and just wished me a great week I've had so many comments and messages and stuff just saying hey you know we're bummed we haven't heard from you but hopefully that just means you're having an awesome week and you're not able to get to a new video yet so anyways thank you to all of you who've been so understanding and I really planned on vlogging on the first day of school and like throughout the week but you guys it has just been so crazy and I knew if I wanted to stay sane I needed to just focus on school this week and not do anything else because it was just wild so anyway today Chris and I have a wedding we're gonna go to in about an hour I think we're gonna leave so I need to start getting ready for that I'm mostly ready but i need to kind of touch-up and stuff but i wanted to show you guys some different packages that have come in since i haven't logged for like a week i have had quite a few things come in some things i took to my classroom already so I will post a little clip of that right now and do a little voiceover so unfortunately I don't have names for these but the first book that I got is be kind and I already read this with my kids and they really really enjoyed it and then also I got a couple more books in this series which I showed in one of my last haul video so I added those to my classroom library too and then surrounding me right now I have lots of other things that have come in so thank you guys so so much you guys have no idea how awesome it has been to share my space with these kids and the kids loved it we were able to check out books this week from our classroom library and the kids were so enthralled by it like most of these kids had never seen a library like this before and so just having them like dig through the books and find ones that they were interested in it was so cool it like almost brought tears to my eyes because they were so excited about it and every single child is able to find a book that would be a good fit for them and that they were interested in so that was really really special I do have some needs in my classroom right now as far as my classroom library that I haven't quite been able to meet just yet I have one buddy in my class one child who I just didn't have a ton on this child's reading level in the classroom so I was able to talk with some other teachers and find things that this child would be interested in in other classrooms um different grade levels so I did add some books to my list and these are ones that I'm probably going to try to pick up either in the next like Scholastic order or maybe from Amazon but just so you know those are there if you're interested in supporting that child obviously you don't have to or anything like that I'm just so appreciative for everything that has come in and I had a couple comments like a couple of videos ago where somebody was like I feel like you only do these videos so you can get free stuff from people off your wish list and I hope that most of you know that that is not the case I am so grateful just for the support that I get through words and through views and just through people saying that they're supporting my classroom it's not about the things the things help in my classroom for sure but they're not things that are for me there are things that are for the education of my kids if that makes sense so anyways thank you to all of you I feel like that was a whole big feel but basically I think is all around me right now I think I'm just gonna start grabbing at random and show you all the goodies so one thing that recently came in is this book how beautiful is this you guys this is from Meghan Baker she said as a military wife with a deployed husband I think it's important to teach children about the Armed Forces I always loved history and hope your kids will as well good luck doing your first year as a teacher from Meghan Meghan thank you so much for this I have one student in my class who's really interested in the Armed Services and he wants to go into the Armed Forces someday as well so I think that this book is definitely something that is going to interest him I also just love the pictures in this book I think the illustrations are really beautiful and I read through this the other day when it came in and I was really impressed with the story so Meghan thank you so so much for this I am so excited to add this to my classroom next I have this box of goodies so this is from let's see let's see let's see let's see oh no I'm not finding a name okay wait there's a bunch of different notes in the air let's see what I can and one out of four here is two out of four three out of four and four out of four okay these items are from Jackie and her message says hi Kim my name is Jackie and I've been watching your channel since your beauty days even though I'm not a teacher or in any way connected to the teaching world I remember wanting to be a school teacher when I was younger so I very much enjoy living vicariously through your videos as a young latina myself it makes me so happy to so you recognize the importance of embracing different cultures and diversity in the classroom for that reason I chose some books from your wish list that highlight Hispanic culture I also chose just being Jackie because of my namesake I always loved learning about Jacqueline Kennedy I hope these items find you well best of luck in your first year of teaching from Jackie Jackie thank you so much she included lots of goodies in this package first she gave me two boxes of these twistable colored pencils my kids love these things you guys I think one of my kids brought these and the first week of school just like something that he had from home and literally all the kids were like flocking to him and they were like hey can we use those hey Can we borrow those hey can I see those and they were like all about it so too funny thank you so much for these Jackie the kids are gonna love them and then I love this how cool is this this is called yes we are Latinos poems and prose about the Latino experience this is just a really neat book and September is actually a Hispanic History Month so I'm really excited to highlight that celebration in my classroom I have probably about half of my kids maybe more than that at least half of my kids are from Hispanic cultures and I'd say like close to half or maybe like a third of my kids speak Spanish at home so I think that's gonna be awesome to have in my classroom another thing that she sent over is called dear primo a letter to my cousin I love this book if you guys haven't read this before I would definitely recommend it it's just a really cool story about cousins writing to each other in different places of the world so one of them lives in America and one of them lives and I believe in Mexico if I'm remembering correctly it's just a really cool story so love this thank you so much Jackie for that and this is supercool she sent over this book which is called Jackie just being Jackie and this is a really neat book they have a couple different ones like this there's just being Jackie about Jackie Kennedy and then there's also what I've seen about Audrey Hepburn and I just think the illustrations and this are really cool and yeah I'm just really excited for this so thank you so much how beautiful is this book I'm so excited to put this in my classroom libraries thank you so much Jackie so this snow is from Vanessa vanessa has donated things before this note says hi Kim guess who finally got her first nursing paycheck oh my gosh Vanessa that is oh my gosh that like makes me want to cry Vanessa I got her first nursing paycheck which like by the way you go girl that's awesome I'm so glad that you got a job but she chose to donate to my classroom with that first paycheck that seriously oh my gosh that is so kind thank you so much Vanessa um it says I knew one of the first things I wanted to purchase with my first paycheck with something for your classroom you deserve it with love Vanessa that's so sweet oh my gosh that's so nice and Vanessa actually donated a couple of pocket charts to my classroom I'll try to remember it to insert a picture right here but you guys as soon as they came I really really wanted to get them set up in my classroom and I wanted to use them right away because I'm using them for some different vocabulary things in my classroom and so literally as soon as they came I brought them into my classroom that day and I didn't film with clip yet but Vanessa they are awesome they fit perfectly where I wanted them and they just worked perfectly for what we're using them for we're using them for different vocab words to highlight them and yeah they're just awesome so thank you so much for those she sent over two they're like these little standing pocket chart things and they're awesome so thank you so much Vanessa for that and then also this is so perfect she sent me this picture book called I walk with Vanessa a story about a simple act of kindness and we're talking a lot about kindness in my room right now we've done some different activities and some team-building things and I think that something that my students struggle with a little bit is almost all of my students have older siblings you're like a lot of them do and sometimes I hear their siblings say things to them or to their friends that aren't very kind and so I found that in my classroom sometimes my kids are saying things to each other and like they're joking around but they don't understand the impact that their words can have and so we've talked a lot about that so far so I've been trying to share with them different books about kindness and this one is going to be awesome so thank you so much Vanessa I so appreciate it next I have another package that's also from Meghan so I have a couple things for Meghan in this one it just says enjoy your gift from Meghan Baker so Meghan thank you so so much Meghan bought me this book which was on my wish list and this is a really cool historical fiction book actually this might be an informational book I haven't actually read it before I feel like this might be informational I'll have to read through it and see but I have some really awesome pictures in here and I just love the way that it's set up I think would be definitely super interesting for a lot of kids so Meghan thank you so so much for this I definitely think this will be a popular book in my library and then also this wasn't on my wish list and she just thought I would like it this is called hero dad and this is a really really cool book Meghan thank you so much for those books in addition to the other one that you already gave that is amazing and I appreciate them so much next I have a few things from Naomi and it says that Naomi lives in Northern Ireland which is super cool so Naomi thank you for sending these things over says hi Kim I am a new viewer to your vlogs but I'm loving how you're putting your classroom together and thinking of the kiddos and everything you do good luck with teaching and enjoy the gifts from Naomi so Naomi thank you so so much she included some books and let me see which books were from her let me make sure that I have the right things going on here all right if I'm looking at this correctly I'm pretty sure that Naomi gave me touch blue by Cynthia Lord which I love this author so I'm pretty sure she gave me this and then I'm pretty sure she gave me this pillow I had two of these pillows come in the mail around the same time and I'm trying to keep straight what is from who but these are in two different packages so I think this is from Naomi but I'm sorry if I'm getting this incorrect but I actually already have one of these in my classroom library right now and the kids love it you guys they are like living for it I see them like with this all around the room doing their reading or working on a clipboard and they just love it so I'm so bad I have another one of these and then actually in the next package that I got I have another another one this is how it comes in the mail it's like in all this plastic so I haven't opened this one up just yet but it's going to look like this when I do and that is from let's see okay Katie and it says hi Kim I wanted to send you these items because I was the poor kid in class growing up I was so poor I knew it I was so grateful for the donations my mom would receive so I could do my best at school an elementary school my teachers treated me the same as the rich kids they encouraged me to work hard and be anything I wanted to be I went on to college and because of those kind teachers and donors in college I knew I wanted to do that for kids what others had done for me my hard work in school set me up for a great career and ability to do so I've donated locally and now chose your class good luck for the year Katie the pillows are from me too so I wonder if both pillows are from her then I don't know but anyways I'm pretty sure this one notes from Katie Katie that is an amazing story and AH a lot of my kids are of a lower socioeconomic status and a lot of kids that they're gonna go to middle school and high school with once we combine schools from like different schools in the district and I just want my kids to know that like I am such a supporter of them and I'm always gonna be a cheerleader for them and I want to see them go to college and I want to see them have these amazing careers I'm one of these kids to be whenever they want to be so if they want to be an architect I want them to go out and be an architect if they want to be a doctor I want them to go be a doctor they want to be a nurse or own their own daycare or if they want to do whatever they want to do I want them to know that I will always support them in getting and yeah definitely hits close to home so Katie thank you so much she also sent over a couple of books she sent imagination according to Humphrey these are really really cute look see guys this is a series of books and I have two I think in my classroom already so I'm excited to add this one and this is a perfect book for a fourth grade for sure and then also she sent this book this is one of the race to the wild books and I have two of these in my library already so I'm really excited to add this one as well this is the second one in the series so now I have the first the second and the third all in my classroom so Katie thank you so much and thank you for sharing your story that seriously just means the world to me this next package doesn't have a name on it but it says hi Kim I love your videos I'm a teacher in a mom of two kids one special needs so I you added this so had to get you one hopefully others pick up the rest this is a yoga ball for my classroom and I have quite a few children in my class who just need to move and we've talked a lot about how we have our three r's at school so we have respect respectful responsible ready to learn so we talked about what ready to learn looks like and how that looks different for every single person so for some people it might look like you're sitting down in your chair and you're sitting straight up and for some people you might learn better if you're standing up or if you're walking around and I'm like you know what as long as you're not distracting your classmates and you are showing me that you're ready to learn I don't mind what you do as far as like if you're standing or if you're bouncing or like whatever you need to do that's totally fine with me so this will be an awesome option in my classroom I have a kiddo in mind right now who I think would really really benefit from this so I think I'm going to blow it up this weekend and give him the option of sitting on a yoga ball Monday in class if he can prove to me that that helps him be ready to learn so thank you so so much for this it definitely means the world to me and I'm so excited to get this all set up for my classroom all right I have gotten a lot of questions lately if I'm going to be doing a question and answer video soon and I think I am going to try to do that as one of my coming videos so if you're interested in that definitely just leave me a comment below and let me know what questions you have for the video and I will try to go through that and answer those questions I'll also probably shoot something out on like Instagram maybe saying okay I'm gonna do a Q&A let me know if you have any questions so definitely stay tuned for that also yes I'm gonna be vlogging this year I just need to kind of get in the swing of things before I feel comfortable vlogging like during my planning period or daring um like I don't know my lunch or whatever it may be because right now I'm just like constantly prepping things and like trying to keep my head above water so I will try to do that once I get into the swing of things so stay tuned for that as well that is all for this video I really hope that you guys enjoyed it make sure to subscribe to my channel if you're not subscribed already give this video a big thumbs up it helps it reach other teachers remember that you are incredibly beautiful and loved and I will see you guys next time bye guys

Channel: Elementary In The Mitten

Views: 43,404

Rating: 4.9084668 out of 5

Keywords: lifewithkimm, makeupbykimm, vlog, vlogger, lifestyle, elementary, in, the, mitten

Id: BmNaW6QgFuk

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 06 2018