Teacher Desk | Teacher Vlog | Week 2

I think my refrigerator has it out for me yeah but the weather is so bad we're gonna head out to the library because there are no windows there do you guys want to sneak in my partner's room I have been teaching for six years and within those six years I've had a teacher desk one year it is the morning after Labor Day and it has around 6:20 in the morning I am on my way to work at him a little bit nervous because on Friday I left everything a mess I did not put my name tags out or put my journals out I did not get ready for Tuesday morning because we stayed so late to do our planning and I was ready to get home to my kids so I'm a little bit nervous about what I'm gonna see this morning however I am leaving pretty early in the morning so that I can go and get a lot of my stuff done I finished all of my lesson plans I have a lot of copying to do so I need to get to work and I'm hungry so I'm gonna make a pit stop for a breakfast sandwich there's honestly and truly nothing I can do but seriously laugh I can't I can't even like I don't even understand what's happening right now I think my refrigerator has it out for me yeah this is what I came into this morning yeah fridge is totally opened apparently my soda can decided to like completely rupture there it is that's what I have Oh use me on the baby there I'm gonna go make coffee coffee I can't make coffee because I don't have creamer I'm gonna go make some copies and then I'm gonna do with this mess later I just don't even want to look at it right now it's just whatever I'm gonna go make some copies really fast before people start heading in typically I try to get here before anyone else is here so that I can get to the copiers first I made it to the copiers first so I'm gonna go make my copies and I will see you guys in a second so for morning work we are gonna complete a reader survey I have an actual packet inside of my store that has a reader survey learner survey and then a parent and survey that you can hand out so this is one that I used last year and it just kind of it has them as answer questions just based on things that are reading so circling some of your favorite books on rez because that you're interested in how do you choose a book and just kind of gives me an idea of where they are as readers so they're gonna complete this this morning then they're gonna be working on their journals that they did not complete last week I am hoping that tomorrow we will start to do the learner survey so here's what the learner serve what the survey looks like it just asks what are some of the ways that you like to work best do you like to work alone do you like to do things with your hands do you like to have it quiet in the room and again it just gives us some really good information about where the kids are and where how do we need to be best-fitting some of their needs so hopefully this will be something that we do tomorrow I woke up this morning with a big red eye if you guys see it it's I think it's an allergy I I'm not really sure so I put my glasses on just that my contacts wouldn't irritate it even more so other than that I think I have everything pretty much ready to go for the morning I want to sharpen my pencils and then I need to get rid of some of the paperwork that I have that needs to go to the office so I'm gonna sort that out use my checklist to check off my students and then get those ready to send down so other than that I am pretty much ready to go I will show you guys what we do a little bit later on during my first break yeah check out that storm it's four o'clock right now it's typically sending outside oh my gosh I just got that idea huh oh my gosh it is about to drop out of the sky we are having a tornado warning right now and the power just went out and we just went back on but the weather is so bad we're gonna head out to the library because there are no windows there hopefully and everything will be ok but I will catch up with you guys once I get back into the room and hopefully the storm has passed or nado warning has been lifted and now the wind has actually stopped so now it's just raining outside and we still have a thunderstorm warning but everything seems to be ok so that's good so I'm back in my classroom I do need to pick up just a little bit before I leave I have to go to a parent night for my three-year-old son so we have a parent night for him hopefully it didn't get cancelled because of the weather and that's at 6:30 so I'm gonna try to do some cleaning I would like to show you guys some things that we did today so that you can kind of get some ideas and hopefully start implementing some of those into your own classrooms but overall it was a really great day back kind of hard to get into the roof today like I was still on three-day weekend brain but other than that it was pretty good so I'm gonna go ahead and get some things cleaned up and I'll see you guys in a sec one thing that I decided to implement this year and I took this for my partner teacher is to be able to create a checklist for my students at the very end of the day so I don't like to do jobs just because jobs are something that I really struggle with as far as just like changing them out every single week and maintaining those so I don't like to do jobs typically I've done like experts in the classroom and if you are an expert in one area then you get to do it and this year I'm going to create a checklist I created one on here as we kind of talked about it and just brainstorm some ideas together and the kids did a great job with that there were a couple of people that just kind of stood around and they just check things up as they were able to get some of those finished I'm gonna actually make a dry-erase version that we're going to be able to put on top of one of the doors and then the kids are going to be able to check them off every afternoon so I think that's going to be a great way for me to be able to put some responsibility on my students take some of that off of myself and make the end of the days go so much smoother I got my speech cleaned off which is very awesome I'm very excited about that now I need to label my iPad chargers y'all I am hating my hair today like I don't know why is it look so fluffy it's so weird I don't know okay so now what I need to do is I need to label my iPad charger so that my students for fourth grade my fifth and sixth graders got to take theirs home because they had iPad experience last year fourth graders are just learning iPads this year so they are not allowed to take them home until we feel as though that they are responsible enough to do so so they are left here to be able to charge in the classroom every afternoon so now what I need to do is I need to label their chargers because at the end of the year they have to turn their target errs back in so it's important that they know which one's theirs so I'm gonna do that now just using some tape I'm gonna write it in with a sharpie and then be done with that that absolutely looks like a fire hazard I know but I promise you our tech department says it's okay so all of those are now labeled with their names on it they're charging they're ready to go for tomorrow fifth and sixth grade has our iPads so we are sets okay so one of the things that I wanted to show you guys before I start to head out to go to my son's page meet the teacher night which I'm so excited he has preschool I'm loving him so I wanted to show you guys something that we're doing for our hopes and dreams so if you were part of my patreon group you guys already know about it I already gave you the printables so you guys have been hooked up for a little bit so we start the year talking about our hopes and dreams because it relates really nicely into going into our roles and some of the promises that we make to each other in order for us to be able to reach some of those hopes and dreams in our classrooms so we've been having the word kids work on the graphic organizers they started it last week some of them are continuing to work on it and now we're starting to have some of them that finish it so we decided to do last year we had like this little pennant banner that went outside of our classrooms this year we went along with the book theme because our classrooms are based off of different genres so we thought it would be a really cool idea to be able to use books so I wanted to show you guys what these look like and they're super cute and I'm at I amble now to show this little girl but I am going to cover up her name so that you guys don't see it but what I ended up doing is I ended up creating a little book template for them so they have a spot for them to put their picture they have their hopes and dreams here and on their picture it actually has their name on it and then what they do is they use their graphic organizer to help them be able to copy down what exactly their hopes and dreams are how are they going to be able to achieve some of those goals and what do they need from their teachers and also from their family members in order to achieve those goals we want them to know that we're here to help them achieve their hopes and dreams and that we're going to do that by working on some of those promises that we're going to be making to each other this week with creating our rules for our classrooms but what I wanted to show you that I thought was really cool was this picture so I ended up typically what we've done in the past is we've ended up taking the kids pictures and then we go to Walgreens and we print them at Walgreens and all that I mean that's great it's all fine but we are the worst people when it comes to picking up pictures and getting the pictures developed like I am just the worst person at doing it well a few weeks ago a company actually sent me a really cool little device that allows you to print your pictures on your from your phone so this was not by like I had to put it in any video they didn't ask me to put it in any video they didn't ask me to like do a review on it or anything like that but they just like graciously sent it to me so thank you so much this is called a print pocket which looks like this it's incredibly cute I was excited to use this one because they also very graciously sent me a ton of actual little sticker Zink papers so I figured you know what this is a great opportunity for me to be able to use it in my classroom because that prevents me from having to like go to Walgreens and then these books are never gonna end up getting done I love the fact that I can simply like the kids are finished I take their picture of prints and we stick it on there because it's sticker paper and it works out perfectly and I don't have to spend you know a week or two weeks with these on my desk because I haven't gone and gotten the pictures printed so here's I wanted to show you guys really quick so here's kind of like what it looks like you insert your phone right here the papers inside of this little piece of the device you stick your phone in here and the picture will actually come out from this side so it's great I absolutely loved it I was very excited to be able to use this so thank you so much print I am loving this little device I think it is absolutely great and yeah so it's kind of saved to my butt because now I don't have to go and get these printed now I can have them all done which really really nice so I thought I'd show you guys that because I thought it was like a really cool way of just being easily to get them done done so yes so underneath it like big kids are able I'm able to like type the name under the kids pictures so I have the in in the actual little app I was able to go through and you take the picture and once you take the picture you are able to type in the person's name and then it'll print out what the name at the very bottom which is really nice so I went on ahead and I typed all of my students names in there as I'm like taking their pictures so you also see their name on there underneath their picture which is really cute I thought it was adorable easy quick way of being able to get out of something at me not having to make a trip to Walgreens so that's one thing that we have worked on today I also wanted to show you guys is something that we are doing with our class's iPads and rules that's pretty much what our mornings are going to be at and be like for the rest of this week I'm actually teaching growth mindset lessons so what's happening is each of us took a certain area that we wanted to teach our kids in this week before we actually start curriculum next week curriculum is actually like reading writing and math are all going to start next week this week we really want to focus on growth mindset and then we also wanted to focus on digital citizenship some of our iPad lessons and then pride lessons which is part of like our school itself so I want to show you guys this book because it's great this is the growth mindset coach and it is a great great text in that it kind of walks you through growth mindset and actually giving you explicit lessons on how you can teach growth mindset with kids your I literally took my lessons out of this book it is that easy and they're great lessons like there is nothing apps there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of the lessons that are in here so I wanted to show you a couple of things that I did do and this was literally from the book so I promise like it it's in there but they recommended doing like a little flick book and this is like a little this is a flip book that I did with my students so they talked about too what we ended up talking about is just growth mindset I had my kids go back and they this is lesson for September so I had my kids go back out I had them think about a time that they had to work really really hard at something and then I had something at a time that they had they they failed at something and then after their quick right we talked about reflection and what for reflection meant I had them watch a quick video that was recommended in the book after the video I we discussed some of the the parts of it I kind of shared a story of just growth mindset with my students and then I sent them off to really think about and reflect on what the video was talking about about how you know before you can do something you have to be able to you know acquire different skills so that you can learn how to do another thing so this example was like soccer so I showed them how like soccer you know you have to be able to walk you have to be able to run in dribble and there are just so many things that you have to be able to do before you're able to actually do that one individual thing so they went out today and they were completing this which I thought was really cute so there were some kids that did like photography and then we had baking and then we had videography we had all types of things and they were really able to sit down and kind of reflect on what were some of the things that they needed to be able to do a lot of them had in trouble with like really simplifying it and going back to the very very basic they were all thinking really big go big or go home right but I challenged them to really think very basic what are some of those most basic elements that you need to have before you're able to you know acquire this skill so that is what we did today we're gonna continue on with our growth mindset lessons for the rest of the week so they're gonna have to come back and actually finish this tomorrow and then we're going to continue on with some other pieces of it so that was really exciting I did want to share this book because I think it's great so you guys need to definitely go out and check this book out I will leave a link down by the table ooooh dumb blue I will leave a link down below for all of you to be able to go check the book out definitely get it it is a wonderful book to have inside of your classroom to help really teach some of those kids who have a very hard time thinking positive and thinking and persevering with things and you know really looking at you know I can do this um we found that last year we had quite a few students that really put themselves down a lot like they were like I can't do this this is you know way too hard and how often do we hear that we hear it all the time so to really be able to help your kids think and believe in themselves these have some really great lessons to go along with it so I will leave a link down below to that the weather has finally like officially like stopped so I'm going to start collecting my things so I can go see my son's teacher I am so excited to be able to meet his teachers this is gonna be great and I guess I will just catch you guys in the morning [Music] okay so I put on my contacts this morning hoping that I can make it through the day without my eye getting irritated it's still red but it's gotten better like it's not a spot is what it was I so good morning everyone it is Wednesday morning I cannot believe it's already the end of the middle of the week oh and you have a three-day weekend time to splice so today is gonna be a very very busy day just prepping it for tomorrow tomorrow is our kind of meet the teacher like it's called a parent night back-to-school night I think is what it's called back-to-school night sorry if for some reason I could not remember what it was called so we have a back-to-school night where the parents are gonna come in evenings they're gonna be able to hear our kind of our presentations for us to give them some good information so we're prepping for that today and getting ready for all of those and I'm gonna continue on with my lessons about the growth mindset and I am loving those lessons actually during our little power outage last night because we actually had power out from hmm the time that I was still in school my husband said they had power we didn't get power back until probably about 10:30 at night so we were all by candlelight last night which was really fun but we some scary stories the three-year-old loves to hear the scary stories it's hilarious so this morning I'm gonna make myself a cup of coffee I'm going to review my lesson plans check to see what else I need to get done as far as this morning goes and for today's lessons I think the only other thing that I needed to do is I had to get some labels in order to print out for their morning journals so I have those I'm gonna print those out this morning and then I should be ready to go for the morning which is really nice you guys want to sneak in my partner's room well one of her rooms this is what her room looks like where she wears her life this is my partner's room very Spacey doesn't it cool figured I'd show it to you guys so this is actually wallpaper that we put up so we hung up some wallpaper and is just stapled on to that board it is not actually like sticky paper that we put on there so she did wallpaper my favorite piece is the rug here the pillow cover like the pill like the covers and the pillows and in these really cool chairs and then she has these little air plans do you guys see those look how freakin cute that is look at that look at how cute that little guy is you're so adorable she painted this with her daughters or her daughter and her son she painted that which I thought was cool and then she had I think these were posters or something to that extent that she hung up it's like windows out into space and then she got some really cool posters over here of the different planets let's drop this bad boy that's for her oh and check out her little fish aren't they cute dude everything is ready to go for the morning I have my message up I have my board up letting them know what the routine is and then I've been working on a couple of things for tomorrow and also for this afternoon so the kids are gonna come in we're gonna do some iPad lessons today which for the first in the morning we are gonna be working on Google slides and Google Docs so this weekend what I ended up creating was some sort of a little checklist for them they should already be very familiar with Docs and slides only because they use them in the elementary level as well in the lower elementary level apologies as well so what they're going to do is I have them going through and completing some different tasks so they're gonna open Google Docs they're gonna do an all about me they're gonna name the document that they have different pieces that they have to complete at the very end of doing the Google Docs they are going to share it with their homeroom teacher so that we can check to see if they're very capable of using dots and then the same thing with Google slides that they're gonna it's it's just kind of an all about me presentation type thing they're gonna get to go on the internet be able to look for a certain clipart to be able to add into their slides so we thought it would be fun and just a nice little activity for them to be able to do in order for this to go a little bit more Sluman smoothly especially with having some of the lower elementary students we decided to pair them up with a tech buddy so they have either a fifth six or they have both of them and they are all going to be working on completing these assignments together they're going to be responsible for doing it on their own I had a butt so that they're they're kind of helping them walk through some of these things they're gonna have somebody next to them to kind of go hey what do I do with this or hey how do I do this so it's a very easy little activity what I think is going to be something that they'll enjoy a lot the hair has gone up please do not judge me because tomorrow is back-to-school night for our parents that are going to be coming in we do a little presentation for them it's nothing really fancy I think we get about 45 minutes with them after they have had the opportunity to listen to our principal speak they come into the room and we are going to do our presentation and we also give them some information inside of a folder so right now what I have done is I have actually printed off some labels that have just has like back-to-school night Mac team with the year on it I'm gonna actually put these labels on right now my other partner is going and printing off some of the sheets that we need to be able to stuff inside of these folders and then the only other thing that I need to finish is being able to fix a couple of things that are on my flip book and get those printed and made so that's pretty much it for the most part like it's not a very very stressful night it's pretty easy and laid-back we want to just give the parents a lot of opportunity to be able to ask questions so we're trying to have to do anything big and fancy we will always always always have drinks and snacks if you feed people they're happy automatically so always feed your people that whenever they come see you always give them something to eat and they're all just automatically happy they can't like get mad at you so I'm gonna go ahead and finish that and I am going to put you in the fast-forward mode so you can watch [Music] so I've been home for just a little bit and I am starting to make dinner and I really wanted to show you guys how to make this really easy soup this is a soup that my boys loved my husband absolutely loves his soup it's a chicken taco enchilada kind of soup it's really really good and it's incredibly easy to make it's one of those when I'm getting home late like I am tonight I can just throw everything inside of the pot let it cook up really nice and then I am ready to go and you have something so delicious especially with fall and it's raining outside and it's cooler you just want to have some soup so I'm gonna show you guys what I do to make this soup so inside of a large pots I have two of the containers of chicken broth and then I also have two cans of cream of chicken soup and then I put a entire packet of taco seasoning inside of it I'm gonna let that heat up really nice mix it up really well and then I'm gonna show you guys the next step so while the chicken broth and the cream of chicken and the taco seasonings like turning up a storm and you're already smelling you're like that smells so good cuz I know you're gonna smell you're gonna think that you're gonna think it's so good while that is cooking and kind of heating up and starting to mix together you will want to shred some type of a chicken now if you're better than I am which I'm sure that you are you would have liked these we're gonna four chicken breasts you're gonna like it do the whole cooking thing however you want to do it bake it broil it whatever you want to do shred it all nice and lovely but if you are like me I'm in tune to be a little bit lazy when it comes to things I just pick up a rotisserie chicken and then I just cut up a rotisserie chicken and shred that up and then I throw that in the pot because sometimes so that's what I did I went on ahead and I took my rotisserie chicken shredded it up really nice and now that is gonna be ready to go inside of the pot you will also want to make sure that you're getting together some type of rice I do a white rice because I like it we're more than welcome to do brown rice but I will do right white rice to put underneath the soup and it just oh yeah it's so good so so good I'm getting excited we're gonna mix it up a little bit more and then we're gonna start adding some of the other items inside oh look at that color mmm okay so now that this has gotten a pretty good mix here I still see a little few chunks in there because of the cream of chicken I'm gonna go ahead and throw in my rotisserie chicken because I've actually had mine for a day now so it's had plenty of time to cool inside of the fridge so I want that to get plenty hot so I'm gonna go ahead and take this rotisserie chicken and I'm just gonna dump it right on in all right I'm gonna mix that up I'm gonna let it cook for a little bit heat that up really nice and even and then I'm gonna show you some of the toppings that we put inside of it so now the chicken has had plenty of time to be able to cook thoroughly so that's getting nice and hot now what I'm gonna do is add a 14.5 ounce of the diced tomatoes I'm also adding two four ounce cans of diced green chilies inside of it you can also add black beans and then corn I am choosing to do the black beans and corn separate because I have some family members that like it some family members that don't so I'd like to make it to where everybody can kind of add what they want I'm gonna cook the frozen corn over here I'll add the green chilies and the tomatoes there and then I also have the rice boiling over here in this pot what is it that you want Oh who said that you could watch a movie you only you said that do you think you're allowed to watch movies right now yeah do I get a big kick let me get thank you all right so this is what the soup should look like afterwards if you totally choose to put in the corn and the beans it definitely do so I like I said I like to keep it off to the side so I have the soup ready the first thing we will do is they will fill a bowl at some rice in it I have the corn cook the beans black beans and then this is a topping along with some tortilla strips these are by far like the best thing to add on to any soup it makes it so freakin good you'll love it so we will add all that stuff together in one big bowl and it becomes this delicious soup tasty Ness you're gonna let it so please excuse the lighting for wine but this is what the finished product will look like this is so so good all of my beans and my corn and rice are at the bottom so i'ma mix it up in just a second and chow down on this soup and make sure you put avocado slices I forgot avocado slices making it to school a little bit later than normal today I'm probably about 20 minutes later than what I usually am I do need to get into the school rather quickly though because people are starting to pull in and I need to get to the copiers before everybody else does [Music] it is now the afternoon I have about 30 minutes before we are like officially on the clock to be here for back-to-school night so back-to-school night is pretty much like your meet the teacher parent night type deal where parents get to come in they sit down you give them a presentation you give them some information that type of thing and then they leave the way ours is going to work is that we have two different waves we have like they split them in half by the alphabet so the first group will come in they'll go and sit down with my principal they'll have a speech for my principal that will talk about like skyward and just things to that nature then they'll come into the classroom will do one speech and then we'll have to do a second one so we have two different ways to do it right now we are going to be in my room we weren't able to get the library which is unfortunate but we're going to be in my room and we made it work so here is what the room looks like back here in the very back we have two different tables we have one table that is going to be for them to be able to sign in another one that's going to have little questions I need to put a basket out in some pins we'll have lemonade and treats and candy and pretzels and cookies and all that good thing I did a really nice little that's not nice but I did a a the best that I could on this with a chalkboard says grab a treat and take a seat so that is what I have up here we still need to fill that and set up all the food but then we have all of our seating so we just brought in as much seating as we could find it looks a little eclectic but that's okay so yes so there's the seating and then I'm getting together a few other things that we need to have so the parents are gonna have a folder that they are going no you can go I am so sorry that we got cut off a little bit ago when I was trying to show you what was inside of the folder however we had a couple of my my two partner teachers came into my room so I had to cut it short because we had other things that we needed to get done so it is now over I got my room semi back to normal to where it needs to be I want to show you guys what we had in the folder so that you have kind of an idea of what we put in there all right so like I was saying on the cover I did it very very basic all I did was put back to school night Mac teen 2017-2018 when you open it up one of the very first things that the parent saw was a very important parent this is simply a form that we felt like it would be a really good opportunity for us to be able to see how many parents wanted to kind of volunteer in the classroom so they have an option of doing like a VIP at school that can be a VIP at home a field trip volunteer classroom during your achievement volunteer they circle the ones that they're able to do and they kind of fill out their information they're in the Wilma you will be in contact with them later on about how they can volunteer inside of the classroom some other things that we have inside of this one I put a little card in here that has just some really good information for them to be able to follow us follow us on some of the social media sites so we have our Instagram or Twitter hander and then we also have a kid blog for them to be able to follow us at I just put it on a piece of cardstock because I felt like it just kind of went with everything we also have a flexible seating brochure that my partner made and this goes over this goes over some really good seating options and talks about the seating options that we have and what are some of the expectations for our seating options just to kind of help parents understand flexible seating a little bit more because we all know that they didn't have this when we were younger I think the most important thing that we gave them was going to be this flip book this is just a flip book that has some really good information when they open it up they have some information about kind of the maxime we give them our phone numbers and then we also give them our email so they can be able to contact us we give them all of the the actual schedule that we will be holding and then the different specials that the kids have throughout the day and this one here is transitioning to the Mac team just gives some really good important information about like snack and how to send lunch money how to check you know making sure that they're checking skyward making sure they're checking Schoology dojo etc and then down here we start to go into class dojo just information about how we use class dojo why they should be keeping up with it and what are some of the systems that we're going to collect reward systems that we will do with the kids also goes into information about the house system and then our homework policy that we have as a as team and then down here I'm not gonna show you a ton but it goes into customized learning a little bit we put in our districts information just as far as what are their beliefs and then down here at the very bottom sorry down here at the very bottom I also give a lot of kind of words and phrases things that they're going to be hearing a lot from their kids as they're coming home and just some definitions of what each of those mean down at the bottom then they have the skyward and Schoology this is just from our different districts some information and some things that we would like to make sure that they're doing on a daily basis and making sure that they're updating some of their information how they can you know put in if their kid has apps and all of those types of things are kind of in here for them we also have information here just about Pride and what to each of the letters mean so it kind of goes over the expectation and then the area of the classroom where they will be showing pride throughout the year so we put that in there as well but this is it guys this is all that we have inside of this folder we kept it really really simple didn't go really flamboyant with it we just put some of them basic information that we felt that parents really needed to know and yeah we even had one parent that was like I feel so special I get a folder and we're like yeah you are you're in the maxime so these were the little pieces of paper that I had out available for them to be able to write on they were just able to kind of write their questions now their child's name their name and then throw it into our little basket so that we can answer those at a later time because I know time is kind of at a crunch during these during the session and I can't remember if I said that I like to also have snacks but I always like to have snacks because I think food makes people happy so I like to always give as much food as possible because I feel like it just makes the heart happy like you can't feel bad with food in your mouth you just can't so that's really about it I'm very excited because I actually get to wear jeans tomorrow so tomorrow it's gonna be a great day I am gonna go home go to bed get some rest and then I will see you guys in the morning to talk about some other things that I have changed in my classroom it is Friday and that means it is a fantastic day I love love love Fridays I don't know how I just feel a little bit more laid-back on Fridays like I don't feel the pressure on Fridays but I love me some Fridays and I just heard over the radio that our fair is in town so I am so excited because I really really want to go to the fair the fair is definitely happening this weekend with my family I loved it last year this time we are wanting to go at least two or three different times while they're here because it is so much fun and the kids have a blast during it and it's a great way for like to get out and about and I don't know just makes me happy so today's a really really good day I know you see that I have like a Christmas tree on the back of my car so last night I stuck the Christmas tree in my car because I'm getting rid of it I don't have anywhere to put it in my room I don't want it out in the hallway so I'm putting it in my car to go put it in my basement we'll whip it out during Christmas time so today is gonna be a great day we're really going to be taking the time to just catch up and get a lot of things done that we were not able to get done over the week so we're gonna take a nice slow steady and the next week I'm really excited because next week we finally start diving into some of the curriculum this week has been a lot more with pride lessons and iPads and growth mindset all of lessons which I think my students really really needed and they're benefiting a ton from so I'm gonna get in make some coffee and I'll see you guys in a second my room is still a disaster from last night with having to open no why do I want to keep saying open school y'all it's not open school but when having back-to-school nights that's the one it is still a little bit of a mess so I need to spend some good amount of time this morning just getting everything cleaned and tidy because it's gonna make me feel so much better I have realized this week this week has gone by so much more smoothly because everything has had a place everything has been organized everything has been ready to go and it's made me feel ton better so I am very like confident about the way that everything is gonna go in the future I told you guys I was gonna talk to you a little bit about desks and the tables that you see in the back of my room I promise at the end of this video I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna talk to you guys about it but first I'm gonna drink some coffee and I got to get this place cleaned up so I'm gonna put you on a little bit of a for because I haven't done a ton of those in this video so I put you a little bit on a fast four so that you can watch me clean now hopefully this will help give you a little bit motivated to clean it wherever it is that you are I'm not sure if I've really ever told you guys this but I have a bucket of like coloring supplies so I have one that has great like color crystals I have another one that has crayons I have another one that has glue sticks this is what I let my kids use just because I realized that we don't do a lot of coloring don't throw a lot of coloring in fourth grade kindergarten I did a lot of coloring fourth grade I did not do a lot of coloring so instead of just giving them each their individual supply I go ahead and just put a community bin like filled with it in here but on Fridays these need to be sharpened it's Friday so I'm gonna get these sharpened up for my kiddos so they'll have some fresh color pencils for the next week and also for today because they do have a few coloring assignments that they're doing today so I'm gonna get these sharpened up for them this is go take a look so it's like super duper fast fast forwarding here we go [Music] [Music] yeah let me tell you that like after this week and some of the schedule changes that we have had our afternoons have been going so incredibly smooth the kids are getting their stuff done they're able to come in we can unpacked we leave during wave 1 which is phenomenal so it's been great the kids have done a really really great job with it and I wanted to share a couple of things that my partner actually it's not a couple it's just one I wanted to share something that my partner showed me and I thought it was amazing so I was like can I please share this with my community and she said absolutely so I wanted to share with you this idea that she had and I think she found it somewhere else I'm not really sure so here's what I've been doing I have this little tin cup inside of it with some different with some popsicle sticks now this year I have grouped my kids with as far as like boys and one closet girls in another closet next year I think I'm going to group them by color and as they come in at the beginning of the year they're going to be handed a color card that's going to be the card that they go into for that that closet they have boys or green girls are yellow and at the very beginning when I am getting them cleaned up and getting them to go and pack up I will pull out three boys and three girls now they are expected and it'll just kind of sit down so I will pull out one two three I'll pull them out over here and then I'll pull out three girls one two you know three and then I will say okay you guys go and pack up everybody else I want you cleaning up I want you working on things that you need to complete or silently reading at this time and then as the kids are finished packing up and they have all of their things than they are done they will come and they will pull a popsicle stick call that person's name and then that person will go and they will leave it out they do this all by themselves I do not have the distance to tell kids when to pack up they do it all by themselves and y'all it works so so great to the point like even this little cup always magically ends up right there at the end of the day like that is awesome like my kids even put the popsicle stick Cup back where it belongs it's amazing I thought it was such a genius way of getting the kids to and I have to share that with you guys because it's been making my days and my afternoons go so much more smoothly so we spend about we have about 20 minutes at the end of the day to be able to just kind of have some independent reading some of the kids like to try to get caught up on some of the work that they have so they will be doing that later on we're going to be pulling some small groups we have some people that are pushing into our classrooms during that time to give us extra assistance so they will be they will get pulled for like different small groups outside and the kids are just kind of packing up and getting the room set up which has been so much easier on my life it's helped me out a ton so just that little simple schedule change guys has really made a huge difference on the afternoons and how we are kind of dismissing at the end of the day so I'm really glad that we made those changes because it has made a big difference in the classroom so I'm very happy about that I also wanted to share something that you guys probably see way up here and like don't judge me but the eye is missing I don't know where it went like it just disappeared so I told you guys that the kids are working on hopes and dreams and the way that we kind of introduce rules to them is we don't really say that their rules but we ask them when we say hey guys what do you think school is and then kind of tell us about all these things at school is school is you know fun school is a place of learning school is you know a place to have friends and things to that extent we create a huge anchor chart with them and then afterwards so we say you know what because we know we want to reach these hopes and dreams because we know that this is what school is you know what are some things that we have to do in order to make sure school stays this way so then we create promises together so let me show you what our kids ended up coming up with so up here we have we promise and it says we promise to show respect and kindness to work hard and be responsible to show pride to believe in ourselves because school and this is supposed to say is sorry I have the reprint because school is important a place to learn accepting a place to achieve goals a place to create fun a place to create make friends and safe I think that this is incredibly powerful because every time that we bring up anything I bring these up I say guys remember the promises that we make because we believe that this is what school should be and y'all they do such a great job with it so I strongly recommend you do this in your classroom try it out one year it is such a great and most powerful way to get kids to really understand why is it that we create some of these things together and we don't say rules we say that we're going to make these promises to one another so I thought it was nice and it looks really really real really nice my partner ended up making that so it looks great I love it I thought it was a very powerful way to kind of build us that classroom community and to create some of those promises those rules together and the kids did a really great job with it they were wise beyond their years so very very proud of them with that I think I'm about done I'm ready to go but I do want to show you one more thing because I felt like I haven't talked to you guys that much this week this much this week it's been crazy so I wanted to show you this and I don't remember where I saw this so I apologize that this is if like you are watching this and this is like an idea that you came up with I don't know where I saw this room and I may have kind of tweaked it a little bit to be able to fit my class and my kids needs so here's what I did I found a clipart of a brain I ended up using kind of like a Photoshop to be able to kind of white it out so that my kids were able to write in it but then they the kids had different prompts that they had to do like they wrote down a definition they were able to draw a picture that gave a time when they had a fixed mindset growth mindset they talked about freezes all of those ideas came from that book with the growth mindset coach so all of the prompts came from that book and the kids were able to fill those out and they create this really cool little like green flip book I think it's the coolest thing ever so you can kind of see it here when the kids has colored it but they've made this really nice little flip book so I thought this was a really great way for us to be able solidify and on kind of our understanding of what the what growth mindset in a fixed mindset is so the kids had a really fun time being able to do these and I was very proud with the way that they came out so now what I end up having now what have to do is I have to figure out how many kids I actually have that completed it and then put them on a little checklist and then I have to get these ready to put outside in the hallway I'm not sure if you've been like watching me for a little bit but back when I was like over the summer when we were talking about like setting up classrooms and that type of thing I showed you guys these really long folders that have like these prongs at the top that is what we're gonna put the kids work on so that it's just kind of creating a portfolio of some of the things that they're doing within the classroom I think it's a really easy way to be able to keep track of it I will show that to you guys next week once we're able to get those out in the hallway but that's what I'm gonna end up putting those on I have to check those off of my list to make sure how many cuz I don't have that finish them because they will have to finish them next week and that's it guys I'm gonna end up going home so y'all that's ready to go the fair's this weekend so I'm very excited about that so I feel like I want to do something just a little bit different on Fridays and Fridays I really want to focus on just like questions that you guys ask up ask me comments that you guys tend to put on to some of the videos because I love communicating with each and every single one of you however it gets really difficult to communicate especially when life starts to happen and kids start to come into the picture so I figured I would just do a little sit down at the end of the Friday which is today I'm sorry I did not get to show you a ton of stuff this today it was busy off I had a family like I had a meeting with a family I was making copies during my lunch I really wasn't able to get a ton of stuff kind of in so I have my room cleaned up everything set up for next week I'm ready to go the time I'm gonna really wanted to talk about this week is going into a teacher desk so I know so many of you have told me and I love y'all so much for giving me advice I truly truly do appreciate it I have been teaching for six years and within those six years I've had it to a teacher desk one year when I didn't have a teacher desk I had a small group area now I know that this year is a little bit different for me because I'm still trying to figure out kind of what works best for me and how I do things and where I like to put the because I don't really have a small group area anymore which I'm really excited about because I'm excited about some of the things that I am going to be doing and I do really love my space in the front of my room with my two round tables so it's been a little bit of a trial and error for me this year at the beginning of the year because it's all new it's different I'm doing a Mac team it's a different program I am you know I have a different space now so you kind of have to tweak and try things out before you really commit to something and yes it can get frustrating and yes you can kind of be at all wits in and say you know this is ridiculous I can't believe this is happening but I feel like you have to kind of go through those trial in areas you have to go through those times when you're just really frustrated in order to be able to find what really works for you so I'm very very pleased with my workspace right now and I just my teacher desk it's just not me y'all like there are some people who really enjoy having a teacher desk and kudos to you that is how you want to work things that's how you want to have your classroom and no one should ever take that away from you but for me and for what I believe in and for what how I teach and for how I like to run my classroom a teacher too just does not fit anywhere in my plans but I've been tweaking things and making things work and kind of changing them around and I'm very pleased with some of the things than the changes that I've made even this morning I made a couple of changes here and there and I'm really happy with the way things are running as much as I really love the fact that you guys are commenting and recommending that I would get a teacher dusting inside of my classroom I'm so sorry unfortunately that is just something that I will never ever ever do just because it's just nothing it's not who I am it's not who like the teacher that I I am like it just doesn't work for my space so with that being said I also want to kind of jump into the kind of classroom layout and I've been getting so many comments of like where is your desk where's your desk why don't you have stuff for your students where do your students set now if you are new to my channel I teach a Mac team and what that is it's a multi age classrooms so I teach a variety of fourth fifth and sixth graders and we have a combination of three classes there so there are three teachers that includes myself in this one program and these kids will rotate between our three classrooms and it's to be able to really focus on individual kids needs and really making sure that we're fitting the curriculum to where they are because we all know as teachers that we get kids coming in from all different levels a sixth grader might be a sixth grader just by age but it doesn't mean that they're on a sixth grade level a fifth grader maybe a fifth graders age but they may be working higher than a fifth grade level so the idea of this program is that we're really being able to blend them and fit them in for what their needs are and instead of pushing them to a sixth grade classroom we're moving them down to a fourth grade classroom where they're gonna feel a little bit embarrassed with that they already are all mixed they don't really see each other as great they just see each other as their peers and their kids that are in their class so that's kind of the foundation of our class and how we're trying to run things now when we were first designing our rooms our believes as teachers is that we really are very committed in to building a strong community so we wanted to make sure that we held morning meetings together that we had read Aloud's together that we had opportunities where we could be together as large groups with weather issues and things like that we wanted to make sure that we had a space in one of our rooms to be able to do that my room ended up being this space now I was originally going to be in a room with another teacher however things changed over the summer ended up deciding you know what I think this is best for me in order to just stay in my classroom I will teach in my classroom we'll have it three spaces especially we're just learning about some of our kids and what are some of the needs that they need so I see it in my room and the other two teachers stayed in their room but we still need to make sure that my room was still going to be able to fit the large group so we try to keep a really large open space which is what we have we have a very large space now I didn't have any desk in the beginning I used I had three benches inside of my classroom I have a variety of different flexible seating options for my kids to be able to use and they really enjoy that now I know that you guys saw that I have two large tables in the very back of my room those are gonna be staying in my room and here is why not because I wanted tables or desks it was weak after looking and observing my students after getting to know my kids I started realizing that I have a quite a large group that enjoys sitting at tables that they'd like to be able to sit down at a table so I felt that as a teacher I needed to make those options available to my students so we brought the two tables and put them in the back of the room it's been working beautifully the kids are really doing a great job with it they're enjoying it and it's really working really well for the space while at the same time we are still able to fit the large group in order to have our morning meetings in order to have you know some of those read aloud options with our kids and to have some of those big class meetings so everything has been working beautifully everything is always a trial and error especially when you're trying something new if you're moving to a new grade level if you're a first year teacher you know if you were you know have a new space inside of a different classroom that you haven't been in before you're going to try things you're not gonna like things you're gonna change things and that's completely okay that's exactly what I've been going through this year I've been trying things seeing things that things work sometimes you get frustrated because you know in the end you know you've got a lot of things coming at you at the beginning of the school year and it is what it is you know I put a smile on my face and I'm just gonna deal with it but everything has been working smoothly I like the space that I have I will end up showing you my space next week to kind of go over a little bit more in detail I have a few little bits and pieces that I want to purchase to kind of help me stay a little bit more organized as far as some of the paperwork's and things like that but I feel like for the most part everything is starting to come together really really well the tables are working out nicely for my students I see that they're they're enjoying those options I also offered some different options that they have as far as using the cushions and the lap desks and they're really really working well with it and they're adjusting very well to the classroom so I just wanted to end it on that note I hope that this was informative for you guys I would love to know about more comments more questions that you guys have and then I will do the same thing on Friday next week where I will sit down and kind of answer a general topic that you guys have something along the lines of what I've been doing for the week to hopefully kind of add some more clarification to because it is really hard to like answer a ton of and I try my hardest but with my babies I don't typically get the opportunity to do that because I do like to be at home and be a mom and spend time with them so y'all my eyebrows are in point this week okay let me just throw that out there like last week people were making fun of my eyebrows this week my eyebrows look good because I plucked them so on that note my battery is flashing so guys thank you so much for joining in on this second week of school next week will be my actual first full week 5 days with my kids I'm excited to experience that we're jumping into the curriculum so please stay tuned so there's some amazing things that are gonna be happening next week not gonna say this but something with along the lines of boot camp might be happening next week but so thank you guys so much please make sure to give the video a thumbs up please comment down below let me know if you have some comments questions things that you want me to talk about I will put that in the video next week love you all guys thank you so much for watching and I will see you all really really soon [Music]

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 30,161

Rating: 4.9142418 out of 5

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

Id: 02cj1AVv2v8

Length: 56min 2sec (3362 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 09 2017