Genres, Meetings and a Challenge | Teacher Vlog

I'm a little leaving didn't this vlog started and I do apologize about that but I am here and we have three days left of school so out of four I think I did pretty good so for my outfit for today I have a meeting that I have to go to from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at our main office and this is for our inductions are for our new mentees and then the mentors need to be there today decided to put my hair back because it was not working for me at all so it's like back in a little bitty bun I tend to think that what sometimes when I have like really professional events that I have to go to that my hair looks better when it's back like this anyway so um I have my hair back today I have my Stella and Dot necklace which is a little arrow necklace here I have my normal Kate Spade badge I try to go a little bit more professional especially when I know that I have to like I said attend a meeting for some reason these pants are looking super duper baggy on me right now okay so the jacket is a Madewell jacket and I got it from Poshmark it's just kind of like a navy blue I really like how the collar kind of comes down a little bit further I like it has one button it's super really really comfortable for a blazer you would think that this wouldn't be comfortable actually this is a very comfortable blazer then I have just a normal tank top from Target and this is a yellow one I like the color of it my pants are from Target as well I think I got these about a year ago these are SuperDuper comfortable the only bad thing is is if you put you smell anything on it you're gonna see it so you're gonna see that I accidentally spill something here and I have my Frye shoes that my mom ended up getting me a couple of weeks ago and I'm still trying to work these babies in they still hurt a little bit in the back nowhere near as bad as what they did so I have a few things that I need to get done this morning one thing that I have been trying to get done and I have not been able to finish it at all is working on getting some signs hanging down from my tables I would have these signs while I still do really love them and I'm going to keep them out which were these little signs for the houses and these are from Ikea the little kind of stands themselves are from Ikea and while I do still really like them the kids move them around they shift a ton and end up just driving me nuts that they're constantly playing with them so I ended up printing out some signs that I need to laminate this morning cut them and then get them hanging from the ceiling okay so let me show you guys what I ended up making for the tables to kind of signal where I want students to be able to sit so I mentioned if you were in I think it was my live feed that I ended up mentioning this in but in my life eid i talked a little bit about some of the behavior tricks that i was trying to implement one of the things that i tried to do inside of my classroom is i have my kids sit in certain groups in my room I don't really give them assigned seats but I tell them that they have to sit in certain areas so for instance in the mornings and in the afternoons are typically when I have my homeroom I will have my kids sit by their house so we have four different houses in my classroom but we are for the Mac team in general we have a mu Z endurance that Gotha in RB trium and so those four houses are kind of their colored house and so I had kind of four different areas designated for the houses for my houses to be able to sit and we had those little signs that I showed you guys earlier what the kids were doing they were like playing with them they would constantly take them out and it would drive me insane the house themselves worked really really well and I was able to give points for those houses that were doing really well and they were showing the expected behaviors so to kind of keep my houses and keep the signs where I want them instead I'm gonna put up little signs like this so I have taken the symbols that we have created for our houses and I'm gonna cut them out and then I'm gonna paste them double-sided like this and I'm going to laminate them and then hang them from a string up on the ceiling that works out really well for my homeroom but during other times for instance in my reading time and my math time I don't really have certain areas where my kids can sit we can't really sit by houses because we mix all three of our classrooms together sometimes I might end up having a ton of zygote inside of my classroom and they end up taking like two tables and so it doesn't really work for us in that way so instead what I decided to do is I'm gonna have my kids sit by groups and I've been doing this for the past couple of weeks and it works really well - my math group because they get a little chatty so what I do is I have created four different groups and so these are the four possible small groups that I can have within that time I can't do any more than four small groups just because I don't have the time allotted to do that so I will have up by four small groups and then I have four again four different areas in my classroom Oh what do you think I have my kids sit with their groups so for instance I have an a B and C D group for math and so in math what I'm doing is I'm gonna take that same idea where I have just like this little circle that says group a I have one that says Group B group C Group D and then I'm going to hang those next to kind of where these are um at different height in my classroom so that the kids again know exactly where they're where they need to be sitting and they also have kind of a reference of what group number letter they are so the reason why I end up choosing letters is because in my Schoology account the way that we kind of keep track of our kids and the groups and even if they switch in and out of groups we keep the group letter we change a number that's after it so I might have group a in Schoology and then all of a sudden I have might have one kid that comes out of it because they're not doing so hot and they have to go into a different group and so instead of it being a - one I end up having a - two inside of Schoology so I do letters because that's kind of what helps me in Schoology be able to keep track of all of my groupings because we are able to group our kids through their to assign assignments it just makes it easier to be honest so I need to get these cut out I need to get them glued laminated and then hung up in my classroom so I'm gonna start working on that I'm gonna put it probably a little murder mystery on I think I was listening to a hunting podcast I don't put a little hunting podcast on and then I'm gonna get cutting away so that I can get those up today they appeared to be scratches long and shallow furrows that look like bloody marks that have been left behind by a cat's claws they appeared on Robbie's arms legs and chest some of them some of them appeared to be letters of the alphabet they were letters but they didn't film any words not yet anyway perhaps startled by this new turn of events Reverend Schultz realized that what he'd been doing was not enough to stop what was happening to Robbie he suggested that Robbie's family contact someone else you have to see a Catholic priest he told them the Catholics know about things like this okay so I'm still in the process of who's trying to get my signs up this morning luckily in reading I'm not going to be doing a ton I am gonna continue on with the genres we're gonna have a little discussion with genres today and they're gonna do some kind of walking around the room with some posters that I'm just gonna kind of like just put up and then I'll show you guys those afterwards they're gonna talk about characteristics because what they're focusing on for their reading response at the end of this week for Thursday and Friday is they have to analyze the genre in their book so they have to provide evidence to support the genre that they have in their independent reading book which is always fun so today is gonna be just the discussion of the characteristics Thursday and Friday they're gonna have that work time to be able to complete their writing and then submit it to me so I'm still I'm I'm happy that I don't have a ton going on this morning but I'm still trying to put up all my signs and my a is crooked which is a little bit of a sinker the rest of them are fine so I'm gonna have to read to DA not sure if you guys can see it there's one there's the other one I still need to put that one up and I have one there and then playing with Heights why am i struggling with this so much this morning I'm really really struggling okay I have to get ready for my meeting I'm gonna put that last one up head out to my meeting and then hopefully catch up with you guys a little bit later on in the day rainy day today so I decided to try to wear something that I felt like would be decent in the rain I washed my hair this morning which I don't know why because now my hair is all totally frizzy and I should have just probably worn it back but it's gonna be fine so I am wearing something pretty basic something that I haven't really worn before but I forgot to give it a shot I don't know is filling it today okay so I have like this really it's a dress y'all it's a dress from Walmart that I bought and I do really like it but I didn't want to wear it with my leg showing today and for some reason I was in the mood to wear it have you guys ever been like that like you're in the mood to wear all right so anyway so this is a plaid like black and white dress that I found from Walmart and I really like it because it kind of goes really low or long in the back the dress itself like hits probably right above my knees and it's buttoned down all the way down so today I decided that I'm just gonna wear it open and I have a very plain white t-shirt from I want to say this is from Target yeah this is from Target so I have just like a crew neck t-shirt it's like a short sleeve t-shirts and then I have some black pants from Ann Taylor Loft y'all um I like these because they're really really high so it sucks in on my belly fat so here's my little like outfit that I'm trying to rock in sport today we're gonna see how well I do it and then I have my nude Tory Burch flats that's my outfit so life has been a little bit crazy this week I'm not even joking I think all of us three teachers together were kind of looking at each other at the end of yesterday and said oh my gosh why does this we feel so what like bunkers like it just feels like we haven't really been able to like catch a breath and mainly it's because we've been filled with meetings awful ipping week like I even have a meeting this afternoon I'm really happy because I don't have a meeting this morning which I'm very very very thankful for because I just needed some time to decompress from the wink I was going to end up coming yesterday after my meeting in the afternoon so y'all I had two meetings in the afternoon like I was seriously just like rocking it I at the end of the day had a meeting with a parent our Vice Principal our guidance counselor at 3:30 the kids don't leave until 3:30 five so keep that in mind 3:30 had this meeting literally left everything as soon as the meeting was over which it lasted until probably like 4:20 I had to get to a meeting that started at 4 o'clock in our district office so I had to just pack up my stuff and get going so that I could get to that meeting they knew I was going to run late so it wasn't that big of a deal but I head was there until 6 o'clock I was going to come back and then Kim like twisted my arm not literally but she twisted my arm and said that we had a lot of grad school going on this work this week which we do we have a lot of assignments this week and then I should just go home and spend time with my family so I did went home and I watched game night have you guys seen that movie by the way it is so flippin buddy now Grant said I love like the two main actors I don't know they're like Rachel is it Rachel McAdams Rachel Adams something like that I don't know and the guy from Ozark I don't know their names because I'm awful with learning like character names but the movie itself is so flippin funny I like how kind of corny it is it's just a good movie I loved it so I watched that movie last night responded to some discussions that I had to respond to for my class and then I went to bed because I've been over exhausted this week all right so I want to kind of catch you guys up on some things that we did yesterday because I told you I was going to show you and then I ended up never really showing you this weekend reading I kind of told you a little bit about how we are continuing working on genres I was gonna have the kids originally do like a walk around the room kind of filling in characteristics that they know about genres but I decided to take it up a notch and not really take it up a notch but this kindness is something that I have been really trying to focus on and it's called friction free teaching this was something that I learned at a conference over the summer this was at the Penn State Conference that I went to with Kim and friction-free teaching is just the idea of being able to give our kids skills things that they need to learn I kind of related a lot to vocabulary some of those basic skills that are just kind of easy just to kind of find it online because we have the technology and getting them to be able to learn how to use the technology and then taking the information that they've gained from the internet and placing it into what we are talking about so just being able to transfer it so yesterday I was like okay I'm gonna try this whole friction-free teaching and this is like spur the moment yeah I'm so good at like spur the moment stuff spur the moment decided you know what instead of doing that I'm gonna try to partner them up or put them in small groups of three depending on how many and then they are gonna have the opportunity to be able to research one of not really research but go online and look for characteristics of a specific genre so we all brainstormed all the genres basically like we looked around the room at those genres that we have in our classroom because that's what kind of how we identify our genres we looked at all the genres that are in our classroom we made a list of them the kids group themselves and then after that I gave them a piece of paper a pencil some markers crayons and some pencils like colored pencils and I said I want you to go on you have to kind of create a poster so basically this is something that's gonna get posted in the classroom you're creating it an anchor chart or poster is going to go up you need to have the genre at the very and then underneath it you need to have five characteristics five things that make this genre special so the kids had such a flippin blast with it so I'm going to show you guys some of the can like the end result for some of them they're very very cute excuse all this mess I will tell you about that in a second but here are the little posters that basically it is an eleven by what are these called eleven by eighteen papers eleven by eighteen paper and they created the posters so we have a traditional literature we've got the good versus evil etc etc science fiction time travel journey I love a little merica flag realistic fiction so real people real places for your life real problems real solutions I love it and then we have a mystery I like how this crew decided to take the question mark and then create like the mystery lid inside of it that's really cool so they kind of had their explanations of it we had informational which they decided to go a red white and blue theme I feel like white kids were very patriotic yesterday and then these this kiddo did not they didn't get the opportunity to finish because they were going all out with their dragon check out that dragon y'all awesome so they didn't get the chance to finish but that's what theirs looks like and then we had the biography and autobiography section and then we had one more which again they didn't get to finish but they're going to transfer it today so I'm gonna take those posters and then I'm gonna place them right over there I'm gonna put them up there and then the kids are gonna be able to we're gonna talk about them they're gonna share them today really really quick and today they're gonna have the opportunity to start looking and pulling out evidence from the text that supports the characteristics for their reading response on Friday so they have to have that reading response amended by Friday so that's kind of the gist of it I really love the activity because it involves so much collaboration discussion the kids were engaged it's something that I didn't have to stand up there and teach them the characteristics of a genre I shouldn't have to do that that's where that friction free teaching comes in and I think it's really nice because it's something that if you have a technology in your classrooms which I think more and more schools are starting to realize the importance of technology in their rooms if you have the technology in your classroom use it to your advantage get the kids used to going online and being able to pull out information and being able to find kind of those vocabulary words I'm trying to do the same thing within like my math and my reading well this is my reading but in my math where I have my kids go out and there are looking at vocabulary words or they're looking at something and they're trying to find information that's pretty basic that I just want them to be able to know it before they come to me because why am i spending a 20 minute lesson of me just giving them the definitions of vocabulary words I shouldn't have to do that so I kind of give them those little bits and pieces where they go out and they have to find the information when they come back to me they're prepared ready to go and we can just get into practice so friction free teaching something I'm trying we're gonna work it out this year I'm not gonna be perfect doubted obviously it's something that I'm gonna have to work through we have also been finishing up our writing assignment so the kids have been working on their writing a lot of them have submitted it to me I really want to print them out today so I will hopefully show you guys those maybe either this afternoon or tomorrow tomorrow for sure I wanted to have like a publishing date I wanted to kind of bring in some popcorn for the kids or some pretzels or some type of a small snack and I wanted them to kind of have their writings out and we're gonna just kind of display them out on the tables they're gonna have the opportunity to walk around and read each other's stories because I don't think that for me I did that enough last year and I really want to focus on having some of those publishing parties so it'll be a publishing party where rule just kind of publish all of our stories we'll read them together we'll kind of enjoy each other's company and I think it's gonna be really fun and the kids are gonna kind of see the value and the importance of publishing in general I did get my signs up and I just like shifted one of my tables so I need to figure out how am I gonna shift these number or letter and I don't know I'm gonna show you the kids came in yesterday and they were like oh this is Spackman that's so beautiful because they you guys can't even see them they were like mrs. Beckmann this is so beautiful I was like oh guys thank you so much I'm so happy that you guys think it's so beautiful but there's kind of the gist of it I have their house on there I have their group for when I do groups in reading and for math but you're gonna notice that like here I pushed this table up just a little bit yesterday because went during my math it was really really crowded so it's like right underneath the light so now I need to figure out how to get those to where it's semi I don't know well we're gonna have to figure it out I'm not quite sure yet but we'll figure it out I did those in kindergarten quite a bit and in kindergarten what I would end up doing is I would put sight words on them or I would put like Fame like word families or letter sales or numbers or something up there and I would kind of change it up for them so they would end up and it was like a sticky note like I would put a sticky note over what I originally had their groups numbered like I think I had the numbers up there and so when I wanted to kind of challenge my kids and be able to kind of look at where they were sitting I would change it and I would put a sticky note of a site word up there and so the kids when I would say I would like for the good table to line up so I want the good table to line up so that could they would have to look at their word up at the top above them to see if they had the word could above them so it was really cute it was fun the kids enjoyed that piece of it and it kind of got them practicing and it got me it allowed me to practice a little bit fun little idea go and try it out inside of your classrooms next week anyways alright I'm seriously oh wait I gotta tell you one more thing because this is something I got to work on today so our school is doing an initiative where we're trying to have more engagement with reading which I am all for because I love love love reading and writing so we're trying to incorporate and have some more engagement in reading and by doing that we are creating goals by homerooms and this is like a school-wide initiative that we're doing so each homeroom was responsible for going back and this is what we found out at our effective meeting yesterday morning so I went on ahead and did it yesterday morning for my morning meeting each homeroom who went back and did the math with kids and so basically what we did is we kind of talked about how many books do we read it on average a week multiply that by four multiply that by eight months that we have or seven months that we have left and then we are gonna add them all up together and maybe we can push ourselves and challenge ourselves a little bit further but how many books can we read together as an entire homeroom so it's not based on kid but more about our homeroom and our challenges and being able to reach some of our goals so we did that yesterday which is what the hot mess that you saw on my board was so basically what I ended up doing is I had the kids kind of go back out we talked about the math problem I had it back here somewhere and I think I ended up reirei seing it but then after that I had them come up they gave me their total number books that they said that they could possibly read for the year and then we added them all up together I had some kids responsible for adding them with a calculator and then after that we came up with our total number then we kind of pushed our number up I think like I think you're gonna see it like here we pushed our number up so I think now we are doing our goal as a classroom is to read thirteen hundred books by the end of the year altogether and that means that we need to read three hundred and twenty-five books a month together I know some of you are probably thinking holy moly Bridgette that is a ton of books that is ridiculous it is too much I have some readers in my homeroom like when I say I have readers like it's an issue of me having to say please the book away so that you can focus on the lesson that I'm teaching you right now so it's really not as over the moon as what you would think like I have kids who would read one to two books a week and that is extremely reasonable for them because that's just what they do they love love love books they didn't they were like holy moly that's a huge number and it kind of freaked them out when they saw the number but it did work alright so anyways so we have our number and then I told the kids I want to display it inside of our classroom so that we can keep track of it and there were two ideas that I ended up having one idea was one that I don't think is like anything a little bit overly like extreme but it was where I took this huge board that I have in the back and that doesn't have anything on it and I just kind of did the whole like bookshelf with the book spines and the kids I think as they finished they would fill up the book spines and then that's we would just have like a huge bookshelf in the back with like all these spines of all the books that we've read at the class as a homeroom and then I said I have this even more amazing idea and I have to put the camera down to show you what I mean so here's oh I feel like your Cricut does it help yeah so here is the idea so the idea is that I would take pictures of my kids and I would take pictures of them like they're holding on to something up here but then they're also holding on to something here so let me demonstrate like this okay so what would happen is the arm nets up at the top is holding on to the ceiling and then the arm that's all the way at the bottom is holding on to the stack of books so it's kind of similar to the like the book spine idea and so I would have little bitty books fines and they would fill the mat and then we would keep continue adding them to the string so it's like they're holding on to a stack of books isn't that a great idea my class didn't like it they voted for the bookshelf on the bulletin board it is what it is maybe next year we should do that I don't know but that is something that I was like you know what imma let them vote on it they were like absolutely not happening mrs. Backman I don't want to see my creepy face up there oh you guys are no fun at all so that's what's gonna end up happening I am going to create that little bookshelf get my books mine's going so that we can get our so that we can get our book tallying happening in the back of the classroom posters are up it finally feels like fall outside it is in the 50s it is a very very windy and I am beyond excited to be able to break out this outfit today it's really not like over fancy or I don't really know maybe it's the colors maybe it's the pants I don't really know but I was very excited to kind of wear it but I also feel like I look super lazy today because didn't want to put much effort in let's just be real people I never do all right so I put my hair back in just kind of a little messy bun in the back because I didn't want to bother with trying to straighten my hair curl it or anything like that I have some very very very old except for my pants and my shoes clothing so I guess the top of my clothing is pretty old so this shirt is a shirt that I purchased from Anthropologie so what many years ago I don't even know how long it's been it's old y'all like it's really old so I have this shirt it's just a sleeveless shirt has big pocket comes on comes down a little bit longer in the back which is what I like then I have my banana republic like gray cardigan again it's super super old had it for a while I just like the color and it just I don't know it works I don't have to buy another one I am very excited about my pants let me see if I can get a better close-up here so okay so here are my pants so my pants are these like Grima ooh that's better lighting right there look at that you see OOP there they go like agreement corduroy pants I really really like the way they fit they are so unbelievably comfortable the only thing that I would have to say is like the knees end up by the end of the day they end up looking like they've been worn or whatever so these pants are from Ann Taylor Loft I got them last year in the clearance aisle and they are fantastic so comfortable so soft and then I have my Frye shoes that my mom got me these are the gray ones instead of the brown ones I'm hoping they don't hurt my feet we'll see they probably will so I have the gray Frye shoes today and that's really about it Apple watch Singh necklace there you go guys that is my outfit of the day so I feel like I just have to take a minute to really apologize to you guys for this vlog this week I try really really hard to be able to kind of film before sometimes during but it really hasn't been happening this year because of how busy I've been during school time like during my like break time that I have like my non-contract hours and then during my afternoon like my evenings and I just haven't been able to do that this week and I'm really really sorry I have been able to kind of do a little bit in the morning but it hasn't been much it has been an unbelievably busy week for me I have had meetings every single day and the last couple of days I've had I am not even joking you form meetings in a day so every time that I have a break I'm in a meeting and then on top of that I'm doing a grad class so my partners and I all decided to do a grad class together and so typically like during my lunch time it's been that we need to talk about like our assignment I've had an assignment do every single day this week I cannot even stress to you guys how unbelievably busy it's just been it's sometimes as a teacher you're gonna have like really great weeks where you feel like you have your life together and it's fate and you don't have to worry about anything and you know you go home at good hours and then there are other weeks of teachers where you feel like you are going to lose your mind like I felt like it was it should have been Friday two days ago because I've been so exhausted on top of it so I mean it's the life of the teacher that's kind of how it goes that's how it works sometimes and it this week it just ended up being that it was a very very very busy week for me so I do apologize but this is my week like this is kind of how it is and you know I'm sorry if it is not being really lousy content all right so today is going to be um kind of a laid-back day I'm gonna give you the rundown of what my schedule looks like so this morning um hold it so today I wanted to try out and see if me showing you kind of my planner itself and what I'm doing today on my planner is a good idea if you guys enjoy this and would like to see kind of how my plans look for my day and how I kind of go about organizing my day let me know and I can try to make this something regular inside of my vlog anywho alright so let's look at Friday so today is Friday I usually try to put some type of notes up here at the very top so today is a day 6 we have the back clap clubs I also need to make a note in here that's let's see that we have our new voice and choice cycle starts I'd like to keep track of when our cycle starts because this is like every six weeks and then we vote for a new one so for morning meeting this morning every Friday I will usually clean out folders and they will have an opportunity to be able to organize and then we'll do some sort of an activity I think for the most part we're going to continue with our greet and share we are working on asking questions answering those questions and then asking the question and return so we're gonna do is what do you like about fall and then we'll do an activity and I think I want to do the oh my gosh it's like the like you're a pineapple you're a tree it's like the rock-paper-scissors but the motion version rock-paper-scissors motion I don't even know what it's called that's so sad guys motion version okay so I'm gonna continue working with individual conferences the kids right now they're collecting data for their reading response on genre study and they're going to be writing it today hopefully they finish today I had a few kids that you know with our crazy schedule that we've had because we've had a fundraising kind of happening in between as well that we weren't able to get as much done as what I was hoping on this day so I'm gonna continue conferencing with my kids today they're gonna continue to have the opportunity to write so today during writing time we have that the learners are going to be working on publishing their writing so everybody's turned them in to me I'm gonna print them out and we're gonna have a popcorn and share party so the plan was ooh the plan is is that I'm just gonna put the writing out on all of the different tables and then the kids are gonna have the opportunity to just kind of walk around and be able to read each other's writing today that's what I'm gonna have here for math I need to kind of re-evaluate this I'll probably end up doing that during my lunch time because I do have a few things that I feel like some of my kids were finished with gizmos on their equivalence we continued practicing with rounding for my place value and then I need to look at my fractions they did an assessment for fractions yesterday so I need to get that graded and then my division group continued working on that and so we're gonna go into talking about remainders in that piece of it today so I guess I can write that down so I'm gonna put that in red just because it kind of tells me what we're focusing on so remainders I think I'm just gonna do like a practice test for them I want to see how they do and where they're kind of lacking in so we're gonna pull all of the different skills that we've been practicing with place value and do a practice test and then go over it usually if I do our practice test and that's kind of what they used to study if they do really well on their practice test and I will allow them to kind of use it as their test score but if they end up not doing well we kind of practice we'll go back through we'll do some reassessment and the other kids will end up having some other activities that they can complete during that time and then this little fractions group we're going to continue working on we're going to start unlike denominators and if you guys are really like oh my gosh is this like these are all different grade levels these kiddos are sixth grade this kiddos are fifth grade well like a combination of 4th and 5th grade this is fourth grade this is fifth grade so they're all over the place to be honest but that's kind of an idea of where I get it and then today oh my gosh I have to share this with you this is a really really cool app it is called who's reading right now it is free there is a paid subscription but who's reading is an app for you to be able to track for your students to track what they are reading I might try to because the name of our kids are already inside of our account I might try to make a fake account for this so that I can show you guys and then you can maybe try to implement it inside of your classroom you don't have to be one-to-one all you need to have is a couple of computers because your kids can go to it as a station that as they finish they can enter in their book and take the quiz for their book inside of it so it's a who's reading fan fantastic I am so excited to try to implement it this year so they're gonna do this as a practice today they're going to practice and then we have our read aloud book and this is the book that we're reading for right now so that's kind of my plans that's just of it that's what I have for today and now I just need to get all my things together so this morning I have a meeting at 8 o'clock with my professor it's gonna be myself my two partners my professor we're having like a phone conference so that we can confirm some things about a project because she said the possibility of us being able to work together or how we can split it up because it is based on something that we're trying to implement this year so we have that meeting I'm really excited I have another meeting but I don't think I have anything else for the rest of the day which is gonna be nice so I'm gonna get my things unpacked I have my popcorn for my published popcorn party publishing popcorn party and the kids are gonna be really really excited about that so I have to start getting those printed out it's a publishing party okay I think I'm gonna go sit over there and I'm gonna print these out in the factory hey guys it is the end of the day and I have been working with my two partners as far as like our paper that we have for this evening for my grad class look at that hair he's driving me crazy so I've been working with them and I really haven't had a chance to truly like sit down and do any videoing I did before I was gonna like end up this end with this blog I told you guys that I was gonna talk a little bit about a website that we discovered as teachers I promise you this is not like a paid promotion I just kind of learned about this website and I think it's really cool so the website is called who's reading and I love it because it's a way for me to be able to kind of track my students reading a little bit something that's a little bit easier for me I've tried different strategies in the past and I really haven't loved anything that I've been using and because we are trying to go so very digitally now I wanted to find something that was like a happy medium for me as far as like how do I put it up that's digital to be able to track my students reading and I think this is a really great way to do it so who's reading is just a website and what it is it's a way for you to be able to track your students reading so what books are they reading and it also not even joking it creates like quizzes for them and then they can also give it a rating and then they can review they can leave a review of that book kids in your class and then go into your like class shelf and see all of the books that the kids have read as a class and be able to read their reviews and leave comments as well I think this is so unbelievably amazing I created a site because we've all been kind of using my partner teachers website she kind of created it for the entire Mac team so I use her username and password but I went on and created my own so that I could use it with my son Ian at home so what the kids basically do is they read the book and they can do little check-ins like as they're reading the book which is really nice and then once you're done they can type it in to kind of the search bar they look up their book and then they can take a quiz for it so for the quiz it'll ask them different questions and what I love about this is that they're not just like ABCD answer questions it is that true like deep thinking multiple answers in one multiple questions and what like one answer type of quiz and I like that the album also gives feedback to the kids so if they type something that just doesn't seem like they put enough thought into it or they didn't use enough evidence from the text the little owl will say why don't you go back it doesn't seem quite right why don't you go back through try to add something else to it so it really gets the kids to be able to go back and reflect on the answer that they've getting given and see if they can add more detail to it to it so I absolutely love that piece then the kids can go through that it can add like a 1 to 5 star rating they leave a quick little review of it and then make all of their books that they've been reading for the year is housed on their little bookshelf so they can click on their shelf and they can see all of the books that they've been reading and again like I love the piece of it them going into somebody else's bookshelf and being able to see what the other kids in their classes have read and also kind of leave reviews there you as a teacher this is like completely free to you but you as a teacher can also do a paid version and I think the school district can also do a paid version as well but you can if you ended up doing like a paid version you can print out to see how your kids are doing they have like profiles and all of these really cool just like all the statistic piece that's behind it inside of it and I think that that is pretty amazing I don't know if we're gonna go that route yet we might try to see if we can ask our principal and see if we can try to do maybe a district piece of it or a school version of it but we'll see we're gonna cross our fingers so so far today when our kids were able to do it generates kind of a username and password for you and it allows you to print out the cards so like I printed out I printed out some cards here and it has like my username and password because I created like a fake account but it gives you the website down there it gives you the username the password journey and it's your login card so we gave the kids their login cards today it got them kind of answering some questions they got to look at their owl out of the car is what they call it because they're little owls they're so cute and then basically they had opportunity to put in a book search a book that they've read in the past so they read the book in the past and all they had to do was do a five star rating and they did a review some of the kids finished a little bit earlier and so they wanted to go on and do the quiz so we didn't ask them to go on and try the quiz if they had time for it but it wasn't a requirement so as we're trying to like I told you in the beginning that we've set goals for ourselves so as we're trying to set meet our classroom goal of reading I think we said 1,300 bucks for the entire school year the kids are gonna go on and add their books to who's reading take leave a little review or take the quiz to it so that we can also kind of hold them accountable for that piece I think there are a lot of kids out there that will go through and they'll try to read like two or three books in a day and we know that those kids even though they're are trying that they are readers and we do believe that they are readers if you're reading two to three books in just one day then maybe you're not reading books that are at your specific level so maybe we need to reach Allen more challenging books but this is a really good way for you to be able to just kind of click on different students and be able to see the books that they are reading so you can have those discussions when you get to like one-on-one conferences with them later on you can pull it up and kind of have some discussion points and maybe some goal-setting pieces that can go into that too so I am so flippin excited about this I do really kind of say hey guys go out and try it I do kind of recommend it again it is totally free for you this is not like a paid promotion for them I'm trying it out in my classroom so let's try it out together and see what we think if any of you have actually used that I would love to know what you think about it and maybe some of like the troubleshooting that you've had with it if you can leave that down in the comments like we could help each other out that would be awesome okay so I am needing to go and finish up my paper so I'm gonna go finish my paper we didn't have an opportunity to do our publishing party we had some things that came up in the middle of it so I had to kind of bump my publishing party back which is sad because next week I have my pre-observation meeting on Monday and then I have my observation on Tuesday so that will be coming next week it'll be okay so we had to pump bump our publishing party back and I'll probably just do that on Monday and it'll be fine so I am gonna go finish up my paper I have three things to do this week this weekend I have a paper due today I have a discussion due on Saturday and then have another paper due on Sunday back to back to back and it's gonna be okay and I'm gonna be okay and I'm gonna make it um so I hope that you guys enjoyed this really crazy video I'm very very sorry that it was a little bit scattered I promise it's gonna be better next week I don't have as many meetings I don't have any collaborations in the morning to be able to grade my theories which is really nice so I don't have any collaborations tomorrow next week and hopefully that'll allow me to just kind of like ease into ease into the day and be able to do a little bit more discussing and sharing about what's going on anyway I hope you guys are having a really great weekend if you're watching this on the weekend make sure to give the video a thumbs up for me I so appreciate it it really helps to kind of share it out thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you all next week bye

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 7,206

Rating: 4.8930483 out of 5

Keywords: teacher tips, The Lettered Classroom, classroom decor, first year teacher, classroom setup, classroom organization, a day in the life of a teacher, elementary teacher, middle school teacher, education, how to be a teacher, how to teach, new teacher, teacher, classroom, vlog, teacher vlogger, day in the life of a teacher, classroom tour, vlogger, ootd, outfit of the day, teacher clothes, multi age classroom, five foot one teacher, Early EDventures

Id: eQYa4JpyDw4

Length: 45min 39sec (2739 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018