How I'm Preparing For The Upcoming School Year!

hi guys it's for them that welcome back to my channel today's it's gonna be all about how I prep for an upcoming school year I asked you guys on Instagram what kind of videos you wanted to see and this one was a very much requested one so in case you're new here hi I'm Fernanda I am a first grade teacher in Arizona I'm going into my fourth year teaching it almost goes without saying that prepping for this upcoming school year is so much different than we would for a regular school year just because of what's going on in the world right now I mean for this upcoming school year has been so hard for me because I don't know where to start I don't know if to prep for in-person I don't know to prep for online so I've kind of just done what I can do that's gonna be versatile for both in-person teaching and online teaching so here are my things that I'm working on you see me looking down is because I'm looking at my laptop I took some notes I just want to make sure I don't miss anything alright so let's start off with what I've been doing to prepare for the upcoming school year in the event that we do go back to school like regular or like in person first and foremost I've been organizing my classroom the last time I was in my classroom with my students was was March 13th I left it a huge mess knowing that I had spring break and okay now listen I go clean up in organized during spring break prep for when we came back from Spring Break and that never happened so I just had so much stuff just lying around everywhere my classroom doesn't have a lot of storage it actually has some no storage so everything that I have for storage was I kind of got myself but luckily I was given a metal like storage cabinet and when I was given that it was in the middle of the school year so I didn't really have time to like really organized I just shoved a bunch of things in there I'll show you a clip of what it looked like before and I knew that one thing I really wanted to do whether we go back to school normal or we teach online is I wanted to want to have that tubman organized just so I know what I have and what I mean I think it took me about a whole day to get it organized I took everything out I took a bunch of construction paper out and I don't know what you guys but I thought I was low on construction paper and it turns out I'm not low on construction paper I did have to spend quite a bit of time sorting construction paper oftentimes and parents buy construction paper as part of like supply list any buy the pack that's not sorted so I spent about an hour sorting a bunch of paper and then I got tired and then I just called it a day I posted this picture on Instagram and it had a few people asking me what I used to organize the paper and have it stand up like right and I use these IKEA magazine organizers they're made out of cardboard and they also have them like tilted the next thing that I have to do I am NOT looking forward to is I'm you know organize my classroom library I have lots and lots of books but I've never ever since I started teaching I never got around to actually organizing them by like John Woo or a theme or anything like that I never had a solid organization system up until like maybe a year ago I bought some labels from learning in Wunderland and they are just like numbered so the bin has a number in the books in that bin have a number which worked really well but they're not sorted by like genre or type of book or anything like that so that is next on my list if you guys enjoy the way that you have your classroom library organized please let me know in the comments below because I have no idea where to start next thing I've been working on is my classroom syllabus I usually do a flip book that looks like this it's lots of these templates on TPT but I made my own just because I needed a certain amount of like tabs and I usually I would have these ready to go for parents to take during meet the teacher night but I don't know how this might look like this year so I haven't finished them and prep them especially because I also want to add something about the safety measures that my school can implement once I know what those safety measures are all right the next thing I worked on really really hard for and then I have to go back and change is pacing guides last year I mapped out every single lesson for math and phonics for the entire year and I'm super helpful going into this year because I had it on from last year it was it was kind of fast to do because I would just move lessons over to those states that I need it so it took me quite a bit of time to do that because I change the template of it when I finished it and then the start of the school year was pushed back by two weeks so I have to go in again and push everything back two weeks think I'm actually gonna wait on a little bit longer to do just in case things get pushed back again but I do think that having a pacing guide is really really helpful to just kind of see how much time you have to cover everything you need to cover in case you're wondering what my pacing guides look like I'll have them right here and if you are interested in having a copy of that let me know in the comments below and I can definitely put it on my TV tea as a freebie all right so the next thing I did to prepare for the upcoming school year was to switch out my wobble soles for regular chairs so if you're new here then you probably don't know but I have a class set of wobble stool so every single one of my students has a wobble stool and it was a cool thing for kindergarteners to go to first grade because they finally were able to sit on a low stool for the whole school year yeah not this year and the reason for that is because in case we do go back to school 100% sure that communal supplies will not be a thing and that's what I had done my entire teaching career I also have tables not desk so it's not like I have a place for students to store their individual supplies so I opted to switch wobble stools for regular chair so that I could do would this I ended up ordering from Dollar Tree and when you order from Dollar Tree you have a minimum amount that you can order because it comes like in a set so even though I probably only need 20 of these trays I had to order 36 of them and I also order them online because I couldn't find these specific trays at my local Dollar Tree and I wanted this specific tree because it fits whiteboards and stuff like that really nicely where they don't bend at all um they're just like lay flat really nicely and then I also bought these clear shubin's from Walmart I know that Dollar Tree also sells them but little secret here they're cheaper at Walmart believe it or not a Dollar Tree obviously they're like a dollar apiece Walmart they sell them in a pack ten four seven four like 789 or something like I have two sets right now and I think that should be enough for the amount since I have enrolled right now so my plan for this setup is that students would keep their own whiteboy they were on marker their own folders their own anything that's flat with go inside the trait and then inside the shoe box would be like their own little like hand sanitizer um Kleenex and just personal stuff Elly's this will give kids a little bit of storage for their own personal things I think those are all the things that I've been doing to prepare to go to school and be at school in the fall I hope that make sense so now let's move on to what I'm doing currently to prepare for distance learning I just realized that I never made a video on what I actually ended up doing one I did distance learning I know that I've logged here and there but I never actually did a video where I sat down and told you what I did so if you were interested in that please let me know right so this first thing that I'm doing to prepare for distance learning will also work for impressed and learning so either way I have to do it anyway and then as having my lessons on Google slides or just updating them for this upcoming school year who uses ckle for their phonics curriculum and I currently use first EMAP from little minds at work for our math curriculum and then can their uses kinder math and then second grade uses second grade math I think that's what it's called so basically what I do is I go through every lesson from like the teachers manual and I and I make it into a PowerPoint slide presentation using Google slides I think I've been doing this since my second year of teaching but I did something very very similar during my first year teaching what the curriculum that I use then it's super time-consuming at the beginning but it definitely pays off as you guys go on I mean I made these presentations back when I started teaching at this school two years ago and now going into my third year here they're already done so I just have to make sure that they're still updated and they're good to go having these Google slides done made it so much easier when transitioning to distance learning this past spring I would just say those presentations as a PDF and then put him on my good Notes app and then share that screen with the students on Zoom and I was able to write on them sounds like a lot but it was really easy so I need to go ahead and make sure that I have those updated and I do need to make some for math because we used to use a different curriculum I'm for sure also gonna be using classdojo still for distance learning to communicate with parents this is an example of what I would post every single day on my class story for parents which made it really easy for them just to click on a link and then their student was honored zoom meeting a lot of times I know kids would do it on their own they would have an alarm like on their iPad or something and then they would log in they would open the class dojo pop click on the link that had their name and then they were ready to go so I'll still be doing that I will still be doing um the little I don't know visualizes like week one no day two or whatever I felt like that was helpful and it helped keep everything more cohesive specially one parents have more than one kid in a school I know this is an option where you can keep like students stories separate but then there's also the option that keeps them together and in case it's like that then my story would send out and they would know like oh this is fresh great story because it's this color I hope so that brings me into my next point on home prepping for distance learning I signed up for a PD from sharing kindergarten and I know I don't teach kindergarten but based on what the PD offers I figured I can still get a lot from it I'll have an overlay here of what it includes you get a home it's self-paced so you get a whole month to finish it I need to start it today but I haven't but I will start today and the one thing that really interested me in those PD is the seesaw and like all those platforms for distance learning because it's geared towards kindergarten so kindergartners can do it first graders gonna do it too um so that's what I'm doing I had filmed for this video did not save so this is me just looking you guys know that that is it for today's video I hope you guys enjoyed it and if you did please give this video a thumbs up let me know in the comments below what you're doing to prepare for the upcoming school year because I would love to know and I will see you guys in my next video bye

Channel: That One Happy Classroom

Views: 19,321

Rating: 4.967742 out of 5

Keywords: Teacher, Teacher Vlog, A Day in the Life of a Teacher

Id: xVA6gMt2tBQ

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020