THINGS I AM CHANGING NEXT YEAR | reflecting on what didn't work

what's up you guys my name is Katie and I just finished my fifth year of teaching third grade in the State of Florida actually it's not my fifth year of teaching third grade I finished my fifth year of teaching my first year of third grade teaching in the State of Florida anyways and I'm so glad you're here for today's video [Music] can you tell it's the end of the school year because my words are just all jumbled but I thought I would do a sit down video for you guys and share some of the things that I have reflected on this school year that I want to change in my classroom for next year um I just thought that would be really interesting I've got my coffee with me this morning and I have this little notebook that a student gave me that's full of like sticky notes on the inside and one of the sticky notes that I have and I've written this in here I think I got this when did she give this to me Christmas time is when I got this as a gift and I started this note probably in January and it just says next year with a line underneath and it's things that I want to try to do differently in my classroom next year or maybe like a procedure that I reflected on and I was like that worked okay this year but I'd rather do it this way next year um I just think that's super interesting um I don't know if I've ever seen anybody post a video like this but if you've seen one like this tag it because I'd love to watch theirs but I just thought it would be really cool to see like what it looks like to reflect on a procedure and change it for the next school year and just to hear some ideas and have a brainstorming session so it's gonna be super casual I don't know how long this is going to take my list isn't super duper long but I'll just share like something I did this year how I'm changing it for next year and maybe give you a little bit of my why while I sip on my coffee this morning all right so without further Ado let's get started please keep in mind this is my first year that I taught at this school and my first year teaching third grade so that is a lot of the reason like I'm reflecting and changing things because now I'm like okay I know how some things work a little bit better um the first one I have is no library on off days so my students as a class we go to the library one day a week after our special area time so they can swap out books and we have ar time during the week um and I let them this week go this week this year go to the library throughout the week as they finish their AR books and I think some students were taking advantage of that and it also um like they weren't actually finishing their books or taking their tests or they were like oh I didn't pick a good one when we go and we spend a good amount of time in the library for them to like look for a book and I just don't think they were looking I think they were like picking up something random and then the next week they're like oh well I didn't really want this book and I want that time like if we're spending 15 to 20 minutes of our time in the library like of our instructional time I want it to be valuable and I want them to Value it so I'm thinking we might just go to the library during that day or maybe I have one day one additional day that I let them go that way they can pick books that are more meaningful and also some of these kiddos are ready to pick chapter books but they were picking like the easy ones because they could read it real quick get the AR points and then go swap it the next day and I want them to challenge themselves and and still earn their goal and not discourage them from doing that but like really to let them think like maybe we should get a chapter book and one of those non-fiction books to kind of ease into it if you know what I mean so I'm thinking no library on off days next year and just going when we go as a class you swap it and if they finish their books during the week they can just reread it I also need to do better about my own classroom library and maybe letting them look through that a little bit more than I did this past year but there's so many great books in our library here so I don't think they were lacking books I think I'm just going to do that procedure differently um next thing this was a big change that I made this year I used stem bins for my morning routine and um I liked it and I didn't like it I love that I didn't have to make copies for the morning I loved that because it was nice to not have to worry about I don't know how to do this problem or not like Miss Ellen I don't know how to what do I and having to go around and check journals I could just sip on my coffee take my attendance um pass out things like you know take care of the I don't know what the word is like the management tasks that you have to do in the morning as the kids come in because here's my envelope here's this my mom said to give this to you I could take care of all of that without having to do the rest um but on the flip side they by the end of the year they just got pretty Rowdy with them and they weren't being as responsible with them and I promise you I explicitly taught the procedures and have closed the stem bins all like a couple times too but it just sometimes it brought they get to play on the playground in the morning which I didn't know this until I started um so they get to play on the playground for like they arrive at 7 45 and we come in here at 8 20. so as long as it's not raining that's like 30 minutes or less depending on when they arrive of playtime and free time out on the playground so the whole initial purpose of the stem tubs in the morning was to give them that time when they come into the classroom um but they get that in the morning on the playground anyways and so I'm kind of thinking maybe I'm just gonna do stem bins as our morning work on Fridays and my team has this morning work that we've used all year long um and it's like math weekly review and I've shown it in so many of my Vlogs and I would do that at the beginning of my math block but my teammates would do it as their like warm up and so I'm thinking and there's Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and then there's nothing on Friday so I'm like maybe I'll start doing that next year that will be my my you come in and you do this and then you can read when you're done and then on Fridays like as a special treat we get stem bins for a morning routine I think that's probably what I'm gonna do I do love having the stem in routines in place and really solid though because that served me well for that scared me for extra recess when we were inside so anytime we had indoor recess I was like okay you can use a stim Min and they already knew how to do it and knew the procedures which was so nice so I'm not getting rid of them but I might just move them to just Fridays because it was like they were bringing a lot of playground chaos in here and still acting like they were out on the playground even when they came into my classroom and I kind of needed it to be a a cut off like now you're in the classroom so let's get focused type thing um so I think that's what I'm gonna change next one is a slow Supply opening so I have my classroom Supply section in the back of the room and um this year I didn't like cover it up or really introduce it much but I think next year I'm gonna do I even like the beginning of the year I toyed around with how I was even going to do supplies I thought I was gonna do table caddies and then I ended up not doing table caddies um because I just couldn't do it and um so I think this next year I'll probably do a slow start for my supplies and like introduce it but not let the kids get into it yet until like a month into the school year and then teach them how like okay I need this colored pencil and so I can go get it which is about the time when maybe they'd start losing things or things might break that they brought like a month or two in um so I'm still toying around with that idea but like a slow Supply opening so they don't just have free reign to all the supplies which I don't think they had free reign to all of them this year either it wasn't like a free-for-all um but there was a point in the year where they were taking advantage of the erasers in the bin and all the cap erasers they were ripping the Caps off and then just using the bottoms and like stacking them on their pencils and I found like 20 or more behind the drawer of the supply bin over there I was not a happy camper and I took the Eraser drawer out and I was like there are no more erasers if you want an eraser you got to bring an eraser from home because I was like seriously you've wasted so many Gap erasers and then you left the evidence on the floor behind the drawer so I don't know if it was doing that but um and on you know in way of school supplies I don't let the kids use my pencil sharpener I think next year I might let them use it just in the morning to get their pencils ready I have like a swap like if it's dull they put it in the doll bucket and then they pick up a sharp one and I'll still do that next year because I liked that because then I didn't have to do pencil sharpening during the day um and it was just a quick like they held up a one they needed a pencil I said go they picked one up and they went to their seat um but I think as part of our morning routine I might maybe like after the first few weeks of school bring the pencil sharpener out say it's here it's available for you just for your pencils and you know put like a piece of paper like don't sharpen your pencil unless it's bigger than this um and then after like the morning announcements put it away so they have that extra time to sharpen because some of them would just forget about swapping their pencils in the morning or I don't know I just think that might be a good thing to do um next thing that I have oh math morning work check I talked about that um no floor in the afternoon so in the afternoon we do an app called pick my kid and parents like enter when they're here on the app and it like pops up on my screen and then I dismiss them so we're all in the classroom in the afternoons so I have this big long playlist of like PBS shows essentially that we watch um in the afternoons and this year I let them sit on the floor to watch and I'm thinking maybe I won't do that anymore or maybe again it'll only be a Friday thing because some of them would just play and then from my desk I couldn't see everybody when they were on the floor and I just had some students that took advantage of it not all but some so I think I might just have them like you have to stay at your desk and watch it's not very long it's like 10 minutes at the end of the day um so we might do that and then maybe on Fridays I'll let them sit on the floor that's just a little fix that I might just be a little bit more rigid with what we do in the afternoons from the get-go to set myself up for Success later on down for Road um Ela skills wall okay so I have um my bulletin boards which are here for ELA and then I have one over there for Math and I hang anchor charts on them often I hang math anchor charts I'm just spinning you all around my room today over on top of that computer screen that we don't use and in the back walls back here I would hang anchor charts but I think and then behind me I would put our skip counting songs and over here I have like our skip counting numbers but I think something that I want to do next year is an Ela skill wall I would keep the anchor chart up for a week but I would love to have like a a wall where we put like author's purpose and then a picture of the text that we practiced it with just so all of those things like don't Escape their mind and when they come back up again because I notice like some of them came back again in the curriculum and they would look at you like I don't remember doing author's purpose and then you're like oh we did this when we read this and they're like oh yeah I like that story and I'm like I should do that on my wall so I'm thinking either the wall behind me and I'll move my skip counting songs somewhere else and that's a really strong option because these cabinets are huge and it would be easy to access to hang things or I was thinking um this wall right here those where I have like the little bubbles speech bubbles I could do it there but just printing out some cards and I might make those this summer um based on the standards that say like identify authors per or maybe just like author's purpose or point of view and I don't feel like I have to if I put it here I could Define it a little bit more but if I put it over there I won't but I don't even feel like I have to put like the definition of each of those things up there just like the word and then a text that we used for it so it's a good like reference for the kids if that makes sense and I I would use it kind of like a like a word wall in primary grades how you build it as you learn the words I think I would do that like a skill swall and as we learn a skill we add it and maybe like a section for genres too okay that could be really cool up here like a skills genres something else maybe so I'm toying around with that idea but I would love to add that as a display also just for myself teaching so I can be up there and I could say remember point of view and like you know point to the point of view um next thing I need a hand sign for getting water I have bathroom question I agree is me too in sign language pencil and tissue and I need to add one that's um a sip of water because I added the water bottle shelves like halfway through the year and then they had to like raise their hand to ask to get water and I let them get it if they ask um most of the time where I'll be like hey wait like three minutes until we finish this part of the lesson then yes you can get a drink um but I would love to have a hand sign for that so it doesn't look like a question in the middle of the lesson and I can address it like without drawing attention to the yes you can go get water because then seven of them need to go get water but really don't so that um hand sign pack is from who is it from Lauren is her first name but I can't putting them first Lauren from putting them first on TBT I'll link it in the description but I don't know if she had a hand sign for water um I know she had a lot of different options a lot of different options so I'm gonna go look and see and if not I could probably like tweak the product and add one for water just to put on the board up there so that's something I want to add um I only have two more one of them is an economy app there's an app think about like classroom management and it's kind of cool some of our fourth grade classes started using it and it's basically like a classroom economy system but via app and the students get paid and I kind of like that idea of them getting like classroom money and shopping in a store but they didn't get paid it wasn't like necessarily Behavior if that makes sense um it was like they got a paycheck for being at school and like doing their work and they would get bonuses when they got like a hundred on a math test or something um and not just bonuses for that but also you could get bonuses for like going above and beyond or but it wasn't like strictly tied to behavior it's it's not Class Dojo it was I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head but I'm gonna do some research on it this summer because I think that would be really cool and one of the things that I did this year with the wheel of Excellence that I liked is like kids still get rewarded every time they do something good because that's just not the real world and by the time they get to third grade like it's good to start weaning them off of that like you you don't get a point every time you push in your chair you don't get a point every time you raise your hand to answer a question like some of those are things that you just should be doing and I understand like the need for that when they're in younger grades and training them if if you believe in that some people don't even believe in that in younger grades um but by third grade I I can just see this is like a huge transition year and I think if I did it fun like that and they had something that they were working towards that would be cool and then the last and so I'll keep you updated on that the last one is table talk and I don't even know what that means so I guess um I have no idea why I wrote that down so if it ever like comes back to me I'll let you know so those are the changes that I'm thinking about making to my classroom this year and that's literally it um I'm sure there will be more and some rearranging and stuff but I'll update you on those as they come okay I have a co-worker come in and we just chatted for a minute but I just I'm gonna close this video out if anything else pops up over my in my head over the summer I'll probably do some videos where I come and I work in my classroom like cleaning my closet and reorganizing and so I'll share those there but that is my next year things I'm going to change lists so thank you guys so much for watching please give this video a thumbs up if you liked it click subscribe click subscribe so you don't miss anything on my channel and as always I'll see you in the next one [Music] thank you

Channel: Mrs. Katie in Elementary

Views: 9,979

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Id: KzfCT3j9sG8

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023