First Week of School Vlog | Pocketful of Primary

[Music] I spinel a latte please it just gonna be a great day good morning YouTube it is the first day of school it is my fifth year of teaching fourth grade in Maryland I'm teaching math and science this year I'll talk about that later but currently I feel a little bit like Nemo on the first day of school and honestly in years past I've always been very excited but also very nervous and I think this is the first year where I'm solely nervous I had no trouble falling asleep last night like honestly I'm just pumped and excited to meet my students and start forming relationships with them and just making it a fantastic year it is currently a little bit after seven so I'm leaving slightly earlier than I usually do I do have a couple of last-minute things to do this morning and then I have to meet with my team teacher so I'm gonna go ahead and head to school and then I'll catch up with you all there let's talk about all of the stuff that I brought into school this morning with me because I feel like that's half of teaching just carrying stuff back and forth between home and school first of all I had to print out supply labels over the weekend so we label all of our students notebooks and folders and we color code them so we have a red for math blue for science and social studies green for reading yellow for writing our morning work journals are just regular composition books and then we also have a Wednesday folder and a communication folder and then we labels still working and finished on the writing folder and keep it home and returned to school on the communication folder so I volunteered to make all of the labels for the entire fourth grade so it was like 200 something pages of labels that I had to print so all of this are labels and it was a lot but I have HP instant ink and if you're not using HP instant ink what are you doing you need to use it I get 500 pages a month that I print that can be full color or black and white for $15 a month so I have a link in the description if you want to sign up and get a month free so these are all ready to go when we meet as a team this morning I will hand them out to each of my team teachers so we have them ready today which tip because we've done this in the past and we used to make little baggies of all of their labels this year we have all of their notebook labels on one half sheet and then all of their folder labels on a full sheet and we're gonna do them like all the notebooks at one time and then all the folders because in years past our students would always mix up their notebook and folder labels and they would end up on the wrong one so I think hopefully this will make it a little bit more organized then I have some little treats for my team teachers I always like to give a little gift on like the first day of school or back-to-school time so this year first I got these stickers I wanted to give them each stickers that went with their theme so my one team teacher has like an emoji theme one of them has like a succulent theme and then the other one she doesn't quite have any theme but she loves otters so I found these stickers that were from finding Tori and they had otters on them but I didn't want to give them just stickers so I was trying to come up with some like little cute fries and I came up with something about like we'll get through this year if we stick together because they're stickers so then I thought I would also give them each a pack of gum because that goes with that so I'm just gonna quickly like I think I'm just gonna stick opposed to no on it to be honest then I have my whiteboard erasers really really kids but these are from last year these come from the dollar store you can get three of them for a dollar and I use them for whiteboard erasers I went ahead and washed my ones from last year because I wanted to have extras plus and color coding my supplies and I could not find any purple ones this year so I'm gonna really ah I'm gonna have to reuse my purple ones from last year then I have first day a fourth-grade letter so we write a letter to all of our students and then they write a letter back to us as their morning work now this is the same template as my meet the teacher letter so if you own that packet you can use the letter templates for different things I use the exact same format and then I just typed out my letter here and I added my little bit moji at the bottom so I have made copies and I need to put those out on their desks along with lined paper I mentioned in one of my last vlogs about how we were just told that we have to use County provided schedule cards I went ahead and laminated them this weekend so I need to put magnets on the back you know what I was kind of upset at first because I do really really love my schedule cards these are in my TPT store I spent hours and hours and hours creating them however it's really not the end of the world and honestly these could look a lot worse like usually no offense but when things are provided by the district they're usually not the prettiest saying these actually I think look pretty good so I'm just not even gonna worry about it and just go ahead and put them up and not make a big deal these are some more magnetic letters that I got over the weekend I went ahead and punched them out so I'm gonna organize those and then these are some other labels of course for additional things these are the highlight your name paper so every year we have our students highlight their names according to their homeroom and then it makes it easier to organize their papers so I have both a 4 5 6 version and a big version so I offered to make these for the team so I just asked each my team teachers if they wanted a small or big one and went ahead and laminated them [Music] all right I have gotten myself together at least as much as I can and I've done the things that I have to do and yes I still have things on my list that I need to do little labels and stuff but right now that just doesn't matter and I'm not gonna sit here and get stressed out about it I would rather sit kind of relax I'm reading over some student information I'm going through my PowerPoint for today and I'm just trying to get excited to meet my kids I mean I'm already excited so I'm trying to just not focus on the things that don't matter and focus on the things that do matter and right now that's my students I have about 20 minutes ish until they come in so I'm just kind of relaxing and then the next time I will catch up with you it will be when I take my students to a cultural arts I wanted to go ahead and show you all my PowerPoint for today now these slides are not in my TPT store yet they're on my list I just have a bunch of other things going on but this is a slide that was showing when my students came in so I gave them directions of everything they needed to do and their morning work was to write a letter back to me then I went over any things that they needed to turn in and then I went over our cultural arts schedule of what we have each day of the week and then I quickly went over hallway expectations I always like to say a 4 s line which stands for straight still silent and smiling just because it's very easy to remember and then I took them to what music so when they come back we're going to have a little bit more time to work on our letter and then I'm gonna collect them then we're going to go over hand signals that we use for bathroom water and pencil talk about what we need to do if we're leaving the room go over some quiet signs emergency procedures because we are having a fire drill today a little bit about class jobs we're gonna go through our supplies and put stuff in our pencil pouches and then label our notebooks and label our folders I showed you those labels earlier then we're gonna do a two truths and a lie so they're each going to get an index card they're gonna write down two true statements and one that is a lie and then lunch expectations recess expectations go to lunch and recess come back we're going to talk about cup kudos which is our behavior incentive system talk about behavior expectations talk about desks because our students use the desk but they're not really theirs to keep their stuff in like when they're not in the room homework and agenda book go over some different parts of our classroom and how to use them we're going to do this find somebody who activities so they have to find someone to initial for each of these spots then we have these truth lessons and code of contact lessons those are provided like by our school or district and we have to do them and they're not very fun but that's okay we're gonna get through it then we're gonna do this first day of school activity so this is from Miss fifth there are these different cards that spell out first day of school and each one has a different question so I'm gonna put these around the room the students are gonna go around and they're gonna respond to each of the questions on the recording sheet I do really really like the questions that are on here you just get a lot of good information about how they're feeling their favorite subjects what questions they have what they're excited about things like that so I will link that activity in the description box if you are interested then we're gonna go ahead and do the code of conduct lessons like I said we have to do those then we're going to talk about dear time arrival and dismissal procedures and then that brings us to the second day that kind of goes over the first day I mean honestly it's a lot of me talking and I tried to kind of break it up with little fun activities here and there but this one and this one and the two truths and a lie or the main like activities we are doing I'm gonna send this home with students and this goes with the like code of conduct or truth lessons and I think that's basically it also I just wanted to show you I am so in love one of my students gave me this Apple so pretty and then I got a necklace from another one my student so I'm gonna go ahead and put the necklace on now because when students give me like jewelry or anything I can wear I love to wear it right away so one of the things I love about having cultural arts first thing in the morning is that I kind of get time to get myself together but I will say on the first day of school it's very hectic our students arrive between 855 and 9:15 and then at 935 we have to go to what cultural arts which is music our PE whatever we have that day so it's very hectic because I'm quickly trying to like tell my kids who they are tell them what I expect in the hallway and then we have to get going so I'm honestly looking forward to picking my class up and like having that time to really go into detail about things and just spend more time with them overall I feel like I have a really good group I'm just loving like my kids and they're excited and they get my sarcasm already which is super important and I know it's just gonna be a great day and just like that first day of school is done so I'm going to quickly kind of show you what my room looks like and then I will talk to you about it first of all my desk is a hot mess right now I try to keep it clean throughout the day and it just doesn't happen but that's okay the back table is where all of their supplies are so I need to put all of that away because it's kind of overflowing the rest of my room though looks pretty good their desks look good I need to straighten them out just a little bit I have to say my class did amazing with checking their chairs I like to put them in stacks of like five or six going all the way down my cabinets oh they did awesome with that I have some water bottles left but that's okay this missile was a little bit hectic and the rest of my room is looking pretty good so now let me go ahead and reflect on the day first of all we had indoor recess because it was too hot outside I think what the heat index it was like over 100 degrees and we were not allowed to go outside so we had indoor recess but that was kind of good because I got to show my students like how the indoor recess stuff works and where I keep it how I organized it and all that so it all worked out overall I had a great day for me as long as I feel like I have started to form relationships with my students I have learned all of their names and they all make it home safely I consider that a good first day of school so all of my students made it home I know all of their names I'm starting to kind of form those relationships with them they're starting to understand my crazy self as a teacher so we are all good I will say that there's a lot I didn't get to that whole first day of school activity with the letters around the room didn't get to it we find someone who activity did not get to it some of our kind of contact lessons I didn't get to and it's just amazing how quickly the first day of school goes but we did get our supplies all labeled and organized so I'm gonna put that away clean off my desk kind of go through my slides for tomorrow I do have some things to prep for tomorrow and then I'm gonna get out of here and I'm gonna go home and I did have a super sweet girl draw me this picture during into her recess so that is me today that is exactly the outfit that I'm wearing super cute and can we just acknowledge that I'm standing on a table and I just think that it's so funny that they pick up on that because I tell them I'm like look this will happen all the time and you will get used to it I stand on tables I stand on chairs I stand on desks so I just thought that this was like the perfect representation of me and I love that she picked up on that already [Music] so tomorrow for the second day of school we are going to do some homeroom rotations in the afternoon basically the kids are gonna go to each different homeroom teacher for half an hour that way we can get to know all of the kids kind of see their faces get to know their names and then they are going to be able to get to know all of the different teachers so each of us picked a different activity to do with our students during that time so we're gonna do the same activity four times with each of the four different classes I am doing the activity saving Fred which you can google this there's tons of different activities for it I'm honestly not using any like recording sheet or anything I'm gonna type the directions on just like a PowerPoint slide but I wanted to show you this activity in case you have never heard of it because it is literally so much fun this is how you set up saving Fred I usually have my students do it in partners or small groups I'm gonna have them do it in partners tomorrow that way it's less students working together which hopefully will lead to it less disagreements so here's the basic setup there is a lifesaver gummy and that gets put under a little plastic cup I am using these plastic cups from Target they are just these many disposable cups by Diamond and then this is Fred Fred is the gummy worm and he goes on top of the cup which is sitting on top of the lifesaver gummy and then they get two paper clips I like to use the Jumbo paper clips or the large paper clips since they are working and partners each partner will get one paper clip so the little story line go is that Fred has like shipwrecked or something I forget the exact story but Fred is not able to touch the water which is the table so at all times Fred either has to sit on this cup or he needs to be held up in the air the ultimate goal is to get the life preserver which is the small lifesaver gummy around Fred so essentially the students have to use their paper clips they have to lift up Fred they have to flip over the cup they have to get the gummy they have to stretch out the gummy to get it to fit around Fred and then they have to do this all while not letting Fred touch the ground so it's a great activity for teamwork it's always a lot of fun the students always really enjoy it I've done this with second grade and fourth grade and it worked for both grade levels so if you have never tried this I highly recommend you try it out if you go on TPT there's all kinds of like recording sheets and things for it because we're gonna have low I'm only gonna have my group for like 25 minutes ish I'm just gonna have them do the actual activity but I'm hoping that they really like it I will check in with all of you tomorrow I'm gonna go ahead and assemble all of these I have to get together I think it's 60 cups because I have 15 partners in each class because it's classes of 30s and I'm gonna have four group so a total of sixty cups so honestly to prep this I'm just gonna take the cup I'm gonna put Fred inside I'm gonna put there oops gummy on the inside there paper clips and then I will put the top on top so it is all ready to go [Music] [Applause] [Music] so all of the little saving Fred kits are now prepped I ran out of lids for these so I'm gonna have to get some more lids from home tonight but I have I think 60 or 61 all ready to go for tomorrow so that's one less thing that I have to do during my planning time it is now about 6:20 and I'm ready to get out of here because I am a little bit tired but not as hard as I used to be you know my first couple years of teaching I just remember the first day being so overwhelming and I will say it went by super fast but I felt more like in control than I used to and I've just learned to let go of a lot I used to feel so uptight because I was trying to keep everything like a certain way and then I've come to realize like it it just doesn't matter and as much as I am type-a personality I've learned to let go of a lot so I'm gonna get out of here I have a couple small things to do tonight just kind of looking over my slides and making sure they are ready for tomorrow because tomorrow night from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock is back-to-school night where the parents come and we give them information so I need to make sure I have all my ducks in a row good morning YouTube I was gonna film myself walking down the stairs but it is so humid outside my camera is just poof right away so sorry about that some of you are probably gonna comment on the fact that I'm not going to Dunkin Donuts I'm trying to turn over a new leaf this year and I'm trying not to go as often I think I'm going to limit myself to going on Fridays although over the summer I think I only got Dunkin Donuts like maybe two or three times so so far I'm doing good I'm trying to keep it out be encouraging instead of discouraging I am going into today knowing that it's going to be a very long day I'm currently leaving at about 7 o'clock and I'm not gonna get home until 9:00 9:30 so I know that it's going to be exhausting however I'm just trying to look on the bright side and I'm excited to be able to meet some more of my students families the ones that did not come to meet the teacher and getting to answer their questions and all that good stuff but I'm gonna be gracious to myself tonight and I'm gonna make sure that when I get home I don't have to do anything because that would not be fun so I'm gonna go ahead and get to school I do have a staff meeting this morning so I will probably catch up with you all during my planning time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so in my opinion the absolute best start to the second day of school is a student bringing you an apple I don't care if it's a cliche I will never not be happy to receive an apple from my students so believe it or not it is like eight o'clock at night and I apologize because today was just a crazy day and I am so tired and my feet hurt so bad it's not even funny so let me just kind of quickly go through the day we had a pretty basic morning we were working on code of conduct lessons and truth lessons that we have to do every single year and then after lunch and recess we did the homeroom rotation so I did the saving Fred activity with all four fourth grade classes absolutely loved seeing the students like trying to figure it out and of course I gave them little hints as they needed it and it was just a really good way to kind of see how kids interact with each other and their teamwork and their perseverance and all that I just love that activity and the students always loved it too and it was a great way to kind of introduce myself to the different students so after that we switched back to our home rooms had dismissal time it was like four o'clock I was trying to put together at that poster with the puzzle pieces which was one of the rotations today because we wanted to have something to display at back-to-school night while I was working on that we actually had to evacuate the building I guess they smelled something almost like a gas leak or something so we had to evacuate wait for the fire department to come and clear the building it was ridiculously hot outside so I am so sweaty it's not even funny because our building is also hot then I had to come in quickly try to finish up the poster quickly try to grab a bite to eat get stuff ready for back-to-school night and then back to school night was six o'clock and it was supposed to go to nine but we were done by 8:00 so hallelujah I am ready to get out of here I do have to say I feel like back-to-school night went really well I loved getting to talk to the families and meet some of the parents that I hadn't met and just give them information and hopefully they could tell how excited I was like that's definitely what I want to communicate with my parents and their families so hold on has now ended with all teachers remaining in the building all right so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up because I've got to get out of here I was gonna show you the back-to-school night presentation what I will do is I will film that at home and show you quickly what I had for the presentation I'm gonna go ahead and get out of here because I'm being told that I have to get out of here and I will catch up with you all tomorrow and I will probably be exhausted I'm calling it now as promised I'm gonna show you our slideshow for back-to-school night I'm not gonna go into detail for each slide I'm literally just going to kind of show you like the headings that we use in case you don't really know what kind of information you should share it back to school night or open house whatever it is that your school calls it hopefully this will give you an idea now this template is editable and in my TPT store so I will link it down in the description box on the next slide I'm gonna skip over it but it has information about each of the teachers what subjects we teach are email addresses and all that then we go over the schedule for a fourth grader we talk about our reading curriculum writing curriculum math curriculum science curriculum and social studies curriculum then we talk about how we do homework and fourth grade we talk about grading and our redo policy then we talk about assessments that our students take behavior management other information which is like activities clubs and field trips then we talk about our birthday policy then we talk about volunteering and ways that parents can volunteer then we talk about our grade website which we use Shutterfly and then that's it so it really is pretty simple typically me and whoever else I am presenting with because we split it up between two different rooms we just kind of alternate talking about the slides it takes about a half an hour and we do two rotations so that parents who have multiple children in the school can go to see both of the presentation so hopefully this was helpful for you if you are interested in the template it will be linked down in the description box it is editable and you can go to TPT and read the description if you want more information good morning YouTube I'm not gonna sit here and complain about how tired I am but I will just say that the rest of the school year so far I've been getting up somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30 and this morning I got up at 7:00 so hopefully that kind of gives you a clue I am headed to school but the good news is last year Thursday was our like no cultural arts day so we had our students all day long we didn't really have a break but this year and that's on Friday so I do have culture arts today which I need very very badly and I think we're gonna introduce our students to Chromebooks today so I will show you what I am doing with my students on the Chromebooks so I have some new bins this morning these are the Sterlite latch pins I will link them for you in the description box I use these for my muffins and then now my stem pins and I wanted to have a total of eight stem bin so I ordered a six pack off of Amazon and finally brought those in and then these large black bins are from Big Lots they are the bigger version of the black bins that I keep my math manipulatives in the reason I had to get these and you may remember earlier in the week I mentioned that this year I am just teaching math and science so my team teacher and I decided that I'm gonna teach science she's gonna teach social studies but I'm gonna teach science to the entire fourth grade and she's gonna teach social studies to the entire fourth grade so what that means is I will keep my block classes for a week and teach them science and then the next week I will still teach my block classes math but we will switch for science and social studies so I will teach her block classes and science and she will teach my block classes social studies hopefully that makes sense but what that means is at the end of the week we have to swap out their journals and their folders for social studies in science so I'm gonna keep these black bands I think like up here I think I will have enough space if I move my letter board and the flowers so on Fridays our students will put their journals into these bins and then her and I can swap them out so that they are ready for Monday morning so I just went ahead and put the bins there it looks like they fit perfectly on this little space and then I still had space for the letter board and I just put the flowers right behind it and I forgot to mention this last night because I was so tired but this is my homeroom turnin bin it stays right here on the side of i desk and that I have a little pencil caddy next to it because I always end up using that this is where my homeroom students put anything that they have to give me notes from home paperwork money any of that stuff so I always joke with them you know Oh your papers go in here money goes in here if you have coffee permits for a that goes in here and like it's just kind of been a running joke well yesterday one of my students actually brought in coffee and put it in there I was laughing so hard I just thought that that was so sweet and you know I'm very sarcastic with things so to see them like actually do it I just thought that that was adorable also a quick tip for you all we all know as teachers that during back-to-school time we get a ton of paperwork and it can be very difficult to keep track of it all so I actually made up this student checklist last night over here I'm just covering up student names but I put the different paperwork's or forms that we have up at the top so we have an emergency card that is school-issued we have emergency info that we give as fourth grade a parent survey the student handbooks sign off page and then agenda book money so I've collected all their forms and they're like grouped with binder clips underneath I'm gonna have my ta go through she's gonna check off all of the students so I can see who was missing what and make sure that I write it in their agenda so we can get it back as soon as possible it is now lunch time I did not vlog during my planning time because I was busy trying to get stuff done cuz that's what you're playing in time is poor but I have to say I have had a phenomenal day with my students I think it has been my favorite day with them thus far because the first day is super hectic because you don't know them at all but by the third day like you know them you're starting to get to know their personalities my students have been working super hard they did great with their morning work I went around and gave them each a cup Kudo which is our school-wide incentive system and then they went to cultural arts came back we did this activity that we do with them every year it's called if I were in charge of the world so there's this poem called if I were in charge of the world and they read the poem and then they rewrite it using their own ideas so they talk about things that they would cancel like things that they don't like and things that they wish that there was more of in the world and they did a great job working on that it was like dead quiet in the room I had the lights off I was playing strings music it was just fantastic and then after that I read aloud the book The Invisible boy if you have never read it highly recommend it for pretty much any grade level for the first week of school I will link it the description box it's basically all about including those students that are often left out and often feel invisible and it's just amazing because as a teacher you're not just here to teach them math science social studies language arts all that you're here to teach them just those things that they need to know to be a good person and for me that's really really important and I love to work those activities and whenever I can and the discussion that we had as a class was just amazing and then I showed them this video that I actually stumbled across on Facebook last night and it was all about like spreading kindness and looking out for those that kind of need their day brightened and it was a short little video it's like two minutes but we watched it like three or four times and we just had such a great discussion and like my students really really just I felt like they were getting into it and that's what I love to see so they are now at lunch then we have recess and then this afternoon we will have Chromebooks for about 45 minutes so I'm going to do a Kahoot with them and I'm gonna show you that so first of all I had a Google slide that just kind of went over our rules for Chromebooks and then when they come back from lunch we're going to do a Kahoot I will link this website in the description it is free you just make an account and then you can actually use a premade kahoots you can search about them here or you can create your own so if I go under cahoots and my cahoots I created one called how well do you know miss for a so this is all kinds of questions like what grade do I teach what subjects do I teach what's my favorite animal how many cats do I have what are their names just little fun questions to test how well they've been paying attention all week and I thought that this would be a great way to kind of introduce them to Kahoot because I use this for math I use it for science there's so many different possibilities for this game basically when you go to play it will put this code up on the board I play classic because my students each have Chromebooks it will put this code up on the board and the students I'll type that in on their computer and then they are connected to play so I'm going to go ahead and exit out of this because it does have music in the background but once they're connected to play the question will show up on my screen and then they answer on their screen and it keeps track of all of their points and it's very like competitive and fun and the students always really really love it so if you have never used this I highly recommend you check it out I did want to talk quickly about the lights around my board one of my classroom setup blogs I showed you how I attached these with little pieces of velcro so the velcro was holding really really well on the sides but down at the bottom this piece is okay because it's pretty small and light but over here because I have this dangling piece it was kind of heavy and it kept falling down and I kept trying to add more velcro but it was not holding so this is my little fixer for right now it's probably not the best thing in the world but it is working I did this yesterday afternoon and it's still holding strong for today this is just a very large binder clip and I clipped it right onto the smart board and it's just holding that part of the cord up so then it automatically holds up the rest of it so those of you who are trying to put lights around their board I had a couple people reach out to me saying that velcro wasn't working for me it worked around the sides it was just the bottom that was too heavy and then I am just holding it with a large binder clip I don't know if y'all can hear it but I'm kind of losing my voice just a little bit because we do so much talking the first week of school so honestly I'm very much ready for it to be next week when I'm in a regular schedule and I'm not talking as much tomorrow our students will find out their block schedules and we're gonna do a mini blocks which in the afternoon just for about an hour each so I do need to kind of work on tonight like what exactly I'm gonna do with my blocks I have a couple of ideas in my head but I will let you know what I end up doing I am gonna go ahead and get out of here because it's about 5:30 I still need to go to the gym go home eat dinner shower work on some stuff and then go to bed and I'm very tired my body feels like it's been hit by a truck which is interesting because I'm a pretty athletic person like I work out six days a week I've run five marathons but nothing compares to the first week of school exhausting good morning YouTube it is Friday I have my Fri yay shirt on this is from Miss mcnamer as class so I will link it for you in the description box I'm very tired however I'm getting myself coffee this morning and I have not had any coffee at this school year like even the week when I was saying up my classroom none whatsoever and I honestly think that that is the longest in like two years that I've gone without coffee so I'm gonna treat myself this morning because hey I deserve and be I'm gonna have my block classes for the first time this afternoon though there is a car and I want to make sure I get so distracted y'all I want to make sure that I am like pumped and energetic for them because I love to set that mood and tone for the first day so I'm gonna go grab me some energy aka coffee and then I will catch up with you all at school good morning can I get a medium iced vanilla latte please [Music] [Applause] so I got my typical I spend a little latte this morning and I will say that with my class I've been having really good discussions about paying it forward and random acts of kindness we watched a video yesterday about it and then some my students like it was a sticky note that got spread around to all these different people and then by the end of the day I saw some my students making their own sticky notes that they were gonna pass around I just thought that that was amazing so in spirit of them this morning and how into it they have been I did go ahead and pay for the person behind me and I kept the receipt and I'm thinking about having a spot in my room where I display all of the receipts of like people that I've paid for throughout the year because again it all comes down to that word impact I want to be able to display for my students like look I was able to do this I have impacted this many people and then who knows how many of those people then pay for the person behind them and it just spreads and spreads and spreads from there I did want to go ahead and show you my Google slides for today and then I will show you what I am doing with my block classes for the first day so this is just the slide that is on the board when they come in in the morning I mean you see my bitmoji a lot then typically on Fridays we don't have cultural arts like I don't have planning time so some of our students go to Korres and then whichever students are left we have a study hall so I'm gonna explain that to them now today because chorus has not started we're gonna do it ketchup and pickles so I'm gonna explain to them what ketchup and pickles is students have to first catch up on any work that is not finished and then if they are caught up then they pick an activity from the list to do so I actually have this slide it's in my TPT store if you're interested it's a freebie so I will link it down the description you can either put student names and tell them specifically what they have to do or in this case I'm just putting down like here's the things you need to be caught up on you have to finish your if I were in charge of the world poem that we did yesterday you need to make sure all of your notebooks and folders are labeled and then make sure that you have a name tent cuz they're gonna carry that with them to their block classes and then I'm still working on some different activities that they can do if they are done after ketchup and pickles I want to go ahead and do like a good kind of get to know you game I personally love games that don't require any prep so this is one they really like it's just called switch sides if so basically I will have maybe all my boys stand on one side all my girls down the other to start that I will make different statements such as switch sides if you like pizza and then they will switch sides if that applies to them and it's just a good way to see what we all have in common then I'm gonna read aloud the book the day you begin I think this is a newer book so I will link it down in the description box and then we will do another kind of get to know you activity but this is really more like teamwork so it's called blobs and lines so I'm gonna ask them to either line up in a particular order such as from oldest to youngest or by the number of siblings that you have or I will ask them to get into a blob which is basically just a group of people that have something in common such as the same eye color or the same hair color but the trick is there is no talking so they have to find other ways to communicate the information without talking to one another and that's always a lot of fun to watch then I'm gonna go ahead and give them their schedules so this tells them who their block teachers are and then they also get a letter that goes home then we're gonna talk about what they should be carrying when they are switching classes and then starts our blocks in the afternoon so I will have this slide up when they come in my block one student names will be written on a pink sticky note my block two student names will be written on a blue sticky note and then I always let my homeroom students know that they could be at a different seat and then this is where I start to introduce myself now because we switched Tuesday no Wednesday Wednesday we did like a little mini switch so that we could meet all of the students so they all kind of know who I am but I'm gonna go through and just give them some more information so I said welcome to my class I teach math and science and then I always tell them that I'm awesome because it's true and they better believe it and I say no really it's actually true and then this is probably really corny but I put this up there on my slide it just got a flashes a couple of times and then I give them some facts about myself so I always tell them I love teaching it's my favorite thing to do I love math I'm hilarious also true I love writing and lifting weights I love the Redskins and then I have two cats and I always like to show them this picture because they think that it's hilarious and then I start to tell them about my pet peeves so number one rocking back in your seat I don't mind if students are sitting like you know on their knees on their seat or even like standing or kind of squirming in their seat but I don't like when they rock back because then it becomes a safety issue and I have seen kids fall and I always tell them that also calling out because it's just rude and ain't no got time for the head and then being unkind to your classmates hashtag we are family so then I always tell my students what they can expect from me as their teacher so I say I will always be happy that they are here I will put forth 100% effort I will do my best to help them learn I will be here for them if they need me and I will believe in them and then a return I tell them what I expect from them so they will have a positive attitude they will put forth 100% effort they will be respectful they will make good choices and they will believe in themselves and then I will show them at this jiff and I always say who feels this way about Mac now we tell them that by the end of the year my goal is to have them feeling like this then I'm doing this little activity I've never done this before so I'm hoping that it goes well I'm gonna ask who has ever hurt their elbow and I'm gonna have someone tell a quick story about when they hurt their elbow and I'm going to give them a band-aid and I'm gonna put it on their elbow then I'm going to say who else has been hurt before it doesn't have to be your elbow it can be your knee it can be your head you know wherever so it'll tell me a quick little story and the second person I'm still gonna put the band-aid on their elbow and then I'm gonna ask again who else has been hurt somewhere else they'll tell me the story again I'm gonna put the band-aid on their elbow and finally they're gonna get to the point where they're like okay mr. a why are you putting it on our elbow like I told you that I hurt my knee so I'm gonna talk a little bit about what fair is and I'm gonna tell them fair isn't everyone getting the same thing fair is everyone getting what they need in order to be successful and I always like to show them this picture it's about equity and just sorry about that and just showing students though not everyone is always going to be doing the same activity in class we will be doing different things depending on what we need then I'm gonna go through some different parts of classroom they need to know so where the trash cans and tissues are dry erase boards water bottle parking lot turn in bins math bins math manipulatives science and social studies notebooks pencil sharpener and our flexible seating choices then I go ahead and give them their purple math book they take these home and I tell them I do not ever want to see it again ever again seriously or else and then they go ahead and label it with a sharpie and they're going to take it home and leave it at home and when they have to bring the pages back they just rip them out carefully and then my homeroom class will come back for dear time and we'll have a dismissal [Music] [Music] so you may remember I had this out on student dust for the second day of school as her morning work so it just kind of asked them like what's the biggest difference between this year and last year three goals three questions and then down here it said use the space to write the names of as many classmates as you can so I've already kind of gone through and I've read their goals and I answer some other questions in front of the class but the real reason I wanted to give them this paper is number four where they had to write the names of their classmates I'm now gonna go through and I'm not looking at you know whose name was mentioned I'm looking at whose name was left off which classmates do most students not know the name of because then I know that those are students that I need to make sure are being welcomed into our classroom community and that everyone knows who they are especially we have a lot of new students this year so I I like to do this just to really kind of see like who's being forgotten because sometimes you know we make a lot of observations as a teacher but we don't always know for sure so this could be a little activity that you could even do just giving students a sticky note having them write down as many names as they can think of the first week and then seeing which students were not mentioned on anyone's list my lights are off because it is very hot today and I'm trying to keep my room as cool as possible the morning has been very long because we did not have planning time it was just a very long time in homerooms but my students really love to catch up in pickles time and I have to tell you why I let them use like the stem bins for the first time and I let them use that knew what blocks rock game that I told you about in one of my classroom setup blogs my kids I kid you not loved it like I had the biggest group all trying to play and they were so into it so I highly recommend you try out that game because truly it is something that students love doing and it is just fantastic so I will link that game again you can actually get it from Amazon so you can save a little bit on shipping and it's little bit cheaper on Amazon than the actual blocks Rock website ap there we go it is not my lunch time but I feel like I'm not even gonna be able to really enjoy my lunch because it's been a little bit hectic we have like our students placed into different block classes so yesterday I went through and I had to write out like who has what block teachers and we had to have a schedule for them plus we have a letter that goes home and just this morning they were moving kids around because class sizes are so big they're trying to keep them as even as possible so I had several students that I had to like move it around and it's just been a little bit hectic like trying to make sure that every kid has the correct schedule has the correct letter to go home and I have to correct rosters and all that I'm just gonna like snack on some things like some pretzels I'm not gonna eat a full lunch I'm gonna try to make sure it's all straight but before I know it will be the end of the day and it's all good I am gonna try to finish my coffee so tie plenty of energy for my block classes this afternoon so our PTA always gives us this like favorite survey that we fill out every year and then they coordinate and they post them online so all if the parents didn't see so I'm gonna go ahead and work on getting this filled out before the end of the day so I have made it through my first week of school it is currently six o'clock on the nose and let me just say exhausted does not even begin to cover it I am so tired I mean I'm happy and I've had a good week don't get me wrong but I am just so tired and I need sleep and rest rejuvenation this weekend but I will say I really enjoyed having my block classes this afternoon I tried to be in just as energetic as possible and to me with my block classes like the first day that I have them that's all that it's about I don't start content I literally try to learn their names as much as possible I go over a little bit of rules and procedures and ultimately I just want them to leave my class and go wow I'm really excited you know I'm so glad that I have miss Bray and I can't wait for her block and that's what I want I want to get my students excited and enthusiastic from the very first day and I feel like I did that next week we are going to start jumping into curriculum I was just with my team teacher who teaches math and social studies this year and we were trying to map out next week for math so I've got a lot to get done this weekend because ideally I like to start working on plans for the following week during the week before her that makes sense but this week I just couldn't because I've been so tired and overwhelmed so I do have a lot to do this weekend but it's okay because this is what I love to do and I'm already just thinking about my kids and what I can do to help them and what they need and how I can't give it to them so I'm gonna go ahead and end this vlog because I need to get out of here and go get some rest if you enjoyed it please please please give it a thumbs up also go ahead and hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and hit the notification bells so that you will get notified every time I dunno oh my goodness y'all I need some sleep alright thank you so much I love you all so much don't forget to think positive and I'll catch you guys to the next slide thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this video and for supporting my youtube channel if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two links right down here if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any get your videos you can use like right up here the links to all of my social media sites my teachers pay teacher's store my merchandise store and my Amazon store are in the description box and I'll catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 824,567

Rating: 4.9130793 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, tpt, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, classroom tour, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher, first week of school, first day of school

Id: sPkZRIQtIjg

Length: 43min 44sec (2624 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 12 2018