Week in the Life of a Teacher | Teacher Vlog

good morning everyone it has been a hot minute since i have done one of these videos so this week i'm gonna do a little week in the life um mainly because one it's a short week so that already is putting me in a really good mood we have easter weekend which is also kind of like our spring break here we really only get like thursday is a half day which i cannot believe we get to leave as teachers thursday on a half day i am so stoked uh and then we'll have friday and we'll have monday off so it'll be a very nice little break to just relax not think about school work but we're not there yet i still have three and a half days so i'm gonna bring you guys along with me we're gonna show you some of the things that i have going on in the classroom not much has really changed to be honest since the beginning of the year uh we keep a very tight routine here um i'm just gonna make my coffee and then i'll see you guys over at my desk okay so let's chat a little bit about this week um so i have a couple of assessments that i'm gonna be giving one in ela which is part of the bridging literacy curriculum that's going to happen today and then we're going to start a brand new unit so this is the pre-assessment to the four reading skills that i'm going to be teaching it gives me a really good idea of what background knowledge do i need to make sure that i'm going back over um so that they are successful with the standards that i'm gonna be teaching so that's gonna happen this morning i forgot to tell my kids that they were gonna take one oops normally i try to give them some time to understand that they were doing it but we took a district writing assessment at the end of the week last week so that didn't happen um in math we're going to be prepping and getting ready for our end of the unit assessment for multiplying and dividing fractions um so i have a unit review today and then the kids are also going to be finishing up a little art project which i'm going to show you in just a minute that we've been working on in content so that's kind of the general idea for today like i said the test is starting the new unit in ela that's going to be kind of the whole week thing but i only have three and a half days so i need to make sure that i don't try to um do too much because i tend to do a lot because i try to cram it in and this time i'm not going to do that to myself i'm going to say you know what it's all right we could do it next week um so overall i'm going to share little snippets here and there this afternoon it's going to be kind of a weird day for me because i am working with the curriculum team to plan out a 30 days 30 days like for the end of the year in the beginning of the year so that means this afternoon i'm not going to be here from 12 until the end of the day so i one i got to write my sub plans haven't written those yet i have a really good idea guys it's all up here um i have a good idea of what the kids are doing so i'm not too stressed out plus it's a really easy afternoon they just got to finish their art project they've got to do their unit review turn that in and that's pretty much it um and so i'm going to be gone doing that probably won't end up filming this afternoon unless i do a little bit at home but that's kind of the game plan so i want to show you guys um let's head over to mailboxes and i'm going to show you what their art projects look like in past years i have used these as true mailboxes because we didn't have desks my kids had tables so in order for them to maintain their materials they would use these mailboxes this year however we're not doing that we have desks so one of the creative ways that i've decided to use my mailboxes is that i use it for turn-in it's really nice because then i can glance over to see general idea who hasn't submitted something so it makes it fairly quick and easy plus it kind of allows it to be in quarantine for a little bit before anybody else touches those papers so let me see if i can find somebody's so what we did we've been learning about circuits guys the struggle of trying to make circuits fun when you don't have enough materials and you can't be hands-on in groups it's so hard so i'm trying my very best to make this interactive while we social distance while everyone has their own materials it's just challenging um it's not my game i can't play this type of game so what the kids have been doing is we've been working with circuits and understanding closed circuit open circuit parallel and series and so one of the things i decided to do was a little art project i don't know if you guys are going to be able to see that and i just dropped all her stuff hold on um so she has started kind of working on her circuits let me see if i can find somebody else's who has yeah here we go so here you can see there's her circuit so she's modeling an open circuit and then she's giving a blurb and she's also labeling each of the components for that circuit so they're doing that for all four of those circuits um for all four of those circuits and we're just going to put them up in the hallway this is kind of the end piece i think we have like a little review of what we're going to do with vocabulary just kind of a quick check-in and then we're going to do a pretty big project where they're going to create a game board using copper tape which actually should come in today so maybe i'll show you guys that later on when i get home so very excited about that project but that means my room is going to be a hot mess for the next little bit and that's fine because the smiling the chatting i just it warms my heart it makes me feel like what school used to be before all of this so that's what they are going to do i am now going to go and start working on my sub plan so that i'm not stressed out come 12 o'clock uh and then i will catch up with you guys a little bit later on okay here can i just tell you guys this little light right here it's called the loom cube i love this light it saves me for every zoom call that i have to make it's great i put it on a cheap little tripod i just keep it it connects to my computer the battery lasts forever and i just look how bright it is watch look at that and i can even make it brighter and i can make it dimmer i love this light it's fantastic i highly recommend it to anyone best little light ever best light so yesterday i very diligently waited for my package to arrive remember the package that i told you guys about that i was supposed to get that had all the materials that we were going to do our project here with for circuits wait you guys have like a a fuzzy there we go it never showed up it said it was gonna show up it never showed up i'm a little frustrated because we've had a lot of packages the fuzzy's not gone we've had a ton of packages that we cannot get on time so frustrating um anyways so this morning i'm running a little bit more behind than normal um i don't i was like rough getting out of the door i it was just one of those types of days it's fine all is well the package is not here so unfortunately i didn't get to show that to you guys yesterday hopefully let's cross our fingers it'll be there today um but no worries because we still have uh one more activity before i introduce to them their big project i would really like to have an example before i introduce that project to them because i want them to start to kind of gather some inspiration talk about what they notice about my example where we can go creativity-wise et cetera et cetera so still waiting for that to show up this morning what i decided to start doing is we are beginning a research unit um and i feel like i'm i've said this about being behind this morning but i also feel like i've just been behind in the year as far as where i normally would be i feel like research i would have already been in it probably about mid-march i should have been in research it's the end of march so i'm about two or three weeks behind than i normally am which it is what it is it's an off year it's different um we might not be able to get to the book clubs like i would really like to but i'll have some fun projects for the kids for the last week or two of school so uh one of the things that i've been working on is their look at that um that is some like bright folders there um one of the things that i'm working on this morning is gathering their research folder now i know that i shouldn't be having a lot of paper contact with my kids because we're not really supposed to be at my school and i'm not um so what i'm going to end up doing is they're going to gather all of their materials in what i'm calling their research folder so i made labels this morning at home which it just says their name so here's my example it just says research folder and then spacman 2021 i like using a research folder because one it makes them feel super duper official two it helps them to gather all of their materials and keep it all in one space versus them having them in different spaces um and it's a nice way for them to just be like here i'm turning in all my work to you so i'm not having them trying to find everything so we're using research folders but i wanted to show you a couple of the things that go inside of this research folder this is part of my bridging literacy plan um or units so within unit 5 which is the research unit i have a few things that are it's like an all editable unit so have a few things in there that you're able to edit and kind of help guide you through the process of planning out your own research topic because let's be honest we all have different research topics schools have very specific things that they like to research so it's really hard to say oh here's what i'm going to plan for your research paper it doesn't work that way um so i kind of guide you through the process using bridging literacy as a model but also giving you all of the resources that you might need for research so one of the things that i have in there is like this little research planning page and basically all it is is a way for me to gather my thoughts and ideas on what we're going to research so i'm in fifth grade um and i am a believer that i don't let kids completely go off the rails with choosing a topic and also um picking out resources and here's why hear me out you're probably like oh my gosh bridge i can't believe you're so controlling kinda um because i want to ensure that they have quality text that's going to give them all of the information that they need so what i end up doing is i kind of have a selection of text and i said you need to choose for like two or three of these and then i want you to go out and find two or three resources using the database or the websites that we've approved and we talk about you know good websites versus bad websites um so that way they're getting some practice with locating information and finding good sources but at the same time i can ensure that they have sources i don't necessarily like to have everybody just choose your own topic because it becomes like a passion project it's way too difficult to manage it's just too much i don't mind i'm trying to do passion projects just not during my literacy time i'm very focused with it i want them to strategically look for certain information i want them to implement specific skills they're going to have plenty of time to have their own research topics when i get into middle school so here i'm trying to scaffold it and i'm trying to guide them through the process of what it looks like to research they want to have something that's a passion project during their win time i am all for it and i will give them the materials but during this time when i'm taking this as an assessment i want it to be a little bit more guided so i plan out the books and i already have my books um those are going to end up coming i think april the 2nd if it comes before this like this video goes up i will try to put a snippet in there at the end of it um another thing that we do is i use research cards now my research cards are not typical research cards so this is what my research cards look like it's a sheet of paper here it says glue bibliography here you have your box and you have your bullets so it follows the traditional box and bullets that i like to teach when it comes to main idea details gathering notes that's that's how i teach it and so the bibliography parts are going to get kids used to pulling information not like mla or ap we're not doing that we keep it simple keep it simple um but this would be an example of a book so all it is is author's last name author's first name and then the title so they we would have these like in little strips and i typically have them pre-cut ready to go they're just laying on the counter the kids will go and grab them they'll fill out the information they'll glue it here and then that information that they pull from that text it all goes here if they have to have a second sheet they just staple a second one to the same page here but that way they know and remember what information did i pull from this text because here's the thing i tried to do research cards i think my very first year when i was here it was a mess you had these little cards the kids couldn't even read what's on the cards they were trying to shove too much information some of them were like i'm just gonna write a word because it's too small so i wanted to give them enough space to write the the information that they were gathering from the text but also keep it in a way where they're able to then um remember where they got it from so i have a book version i have internet i have magazine because i love magazines i have an interview doesn't always work but sometimes we have interviews have a database um so those are all of the examples that i will have and i will have these pre-copied pre-cut ready for them to just glue in as they're doing the research process so this i have to make copies of today the next thing so these are all going to go into their folders so as they create them they place them in their folders they have all of their research in one spot the other thing that i give them is what i say here's our research checklist and i created this checklist because some kids need guidance on what it is that they're doing research is overwhelming it's a lot going on inside of a research paper so instead what we do is we decide on our topic we check that off we have complete reading reading reading i have spots for five readings but i'll be honest if you don't want to do five don't do five if you want them to do three i would just take a marker and just scratch over it and then make a copy of it um it's up to you i think we're probably gonna end up doing four so i'm gonna take out the last one um because i just don't wanna do five this year it's just a different year um and then it goes into writing paragraphs developing the introduction draft revision all of that is inside of this checklist and this remains in their folder so that as i meet with them i'm able to check i'm able to initial to say yep you're on the right track you're doing exactly what you need to be doing so that goes in there as well um this is for me so this is what i'm going to use to help track and it goes everything from topic selected to research cards completed brainstorm outline drafts so on so forth so that i can check off where students are in the process um and then finally the things that i don't really have today are going to be different graphic organizers that we use to help draft right so the planning process once we finish with our research we have to brainstorm and plan out our um our own paragraphs for our writing we have to brainstorm our introduction what is the draft going to look like so all of that's going to end up going inside of these folders which i think is going to be really helpful this year and what's nice is that i'm then going to make them put these folders inside their mailbox because i don't know if y'all looked inside of some of these kids desks it's scary in there and i'm afraid things would bite me if i put my hand in there so i they're not that bad um so we're gonna do folders and we're just going to maintain them inside of our mailboxes that's kind of the game plan overall now let's chat about topics real fast so we're doing space we typically will always tie this with our pbl unfortunately we're going to push our pbl well it's a good thing to be honest but we're pushing our pbl which would have been the garden this year to next year because we want the kids to have the experience this means that i'm kind of looking and searching for different different content pieces to just put into here and we're a little thrown off this year because we had full intentions of just teaching it and not physically doing it but then last minute we decided to change it's fine it's all it's all good it's all for good things um so i would have normally done my research on our garden and so everybody would have something very specific that they research for the garden because they all have certain roles so they're performing those roles and they're researching and writing about them and this year we're not doing that so we're going to do space because we had a really big space unit and i think the kids want to get a little crafty so i'm going to let them get a little crafty with it i was a little more um you know holding the reins like no no no we're not doing any of that at the very beginning of the year and then i'm starting to realize okay it's okay if i have them stand up and actually have them do art behind their tables like it's not a big deal bridget so i'm letting go of that in just a little bit and we're gonna do space and so i have four different topics selected normally i would do six i just don't have a very big class this year and i'm doing four for my sanity so this is a new planning process for me i had all everything ready for for garden um so i had to like switch things at the last minute so there are four subtopics under the category of space i am doing black hole we're doing planets or our universe is kind of how you can think of it we are also doing mars rover and then finally we're doing asteroids and comets so the kids were gonna get to choose between those four topics i've already ordered some new texts that are gonna be coming in i mentioned that um i think on april the second which is friday and then um i decided to pick a separate subtopic for my modeling so i'm doing it on the moon so all of my lessons that i do it on i'm going to model using the moon now i do this because one they can't copy what i'm doing i can use different texts and i don't have to worry about having you know two times the text that are happening so i think it's all going to end up working out i'm going to read a story today we're going to have an interactive read-aloud piece with it um and then we're going to start talking a little bit about the topics but the kids are excited i think they're really excited to be able to do it i haven't told them about the art piece of it yet to get a little crafty to present that information to their class so i think they're really going to enjoy it because we are going to do presentations in the afternoon um with our research projects once we're finished okay now my desk is a mess you want to see see now my desk is a mess um and i need to get it cleaned up i have my morning message up so there's my computer and i have my morning message up for the day um i just need to make sure everything else oops this is what i put you guys on whenever i'm recording it's a little stool so let's put that down so i just need to make sure that everything else is ready to go for today so that is it i still have about 20 minutes before 8 o'clock so i'm going to drink my coffee a little bit probably call trent because i normally call him around this time just to say good morning he's usually still asleep when i leave and then maybe start putting some books away because it's a long time that i need to put some of these books away that i have in the corner okay so i wanted to show you guys um this dress and i want to touch on something really quick i'm kind of sad first i love it okay it's a really flowy uh just comfortable spring dress and i am all here for like the colors this is just my vibe i'm a neutral girl i don't like color this is just how i roll but i have to say guys i'm a little sad um because like let's get a little personal here look at that do you see that do you see that i have like all these marks it looks like pen marks on this dress it's a target dress i just need to make sure that i find another one before i don't see these anymore because i'm devastated i was so sad this morning as i'm sitting there trying to like steam it to straighten it i hate i've literally worn this dress probably three times and now i've already already got pen marks it's gonna be okay but i do i think target is is killing it on the dresses right now look at that look how cute it is and it's so comfy i love it i also wanted to show you guys this uh one of my students actually brought this in for us and she kindly donated it to the class because she said she doesn't use it anymore but these are little snap circuits if you haven't seen these they're great for teaching circuits um we used it as just a model and i think i have upside down no um let me open this up here so what's so neat about it is it has this board here it's just like a clear board and then you attach all of the components so we have our voltage which goes anywhere you want it to go and it just snaps in place and then these stand for the wires so these little guys are wires and then they'll snap here and here and then finally we need some form of a light which is really difficult to do this with one hand let's do this way okay so i have everything snapped in place what is this one apparently i don't know how to do voltage i don't know how to do circuits oh because i have the wrong thing okay so snap that you can already see it lighting up um so it was neat because when we first started exploring with this we had lots of different ways that we were trying to make some of these combinations and i just kind of um i used my ipad and my camera just to be able to display it up to the big board um but it was fun i really like these these are really really neat and then uh blaine ended up looking at it and playing with it for a little bit he loved loved loved it so it comes with all these pieces and of course you can always extend the pack i think there's other options that are out there but you have different switches here uh this is like a little propeller thing that will help this guy to fly you have a buzzard it was just a really cool thing that she brought in so i was very excited when she did that and the kids really enjoyed this as an example so snap circuits if you teach circuits in your classroom this is a great great thing to have and i think it was only 20 bucks so go definitely check that out okay i promise now i'm gonna finally sit down and actually get some work done before these kids show up to school so you're gonna have to excuse my dog in the background he is eating but i wanted to show you guys the stuff that ended up coming in today finally uh for the circuits project so um here are some of the things that i ended up getting we're gonna have these uh just the button batteries this is what they are don't ask me to get into detail three volts that's all we needed and the other thing and this is actually um getting stuck uh this copper wiring is gonna be for an activity that we do tomorrow and i'm gonna show that to you in just a second so this is not part of the bigger project so all of those are for something else but then we have the um the copper tape inside of these so this is what the copper tape looks like very simple so it'll just stick to any sort of paper and this is how they're going to build their circuits and then finally i got these very small led lights and they come in different colors so you can see this one's purple um this one's orange this one is pink and so i got all of this stuff for about i want to say it was like 30 bucks not too horrible um it'll fit for 20 kids in my class so tomorrow what we're going to do is we're going to take this battery here and they're going to have to connect one side to the positive one side to the negative because then what they'll do is they'll assert to kind of explore with how to do that i'm not going to tell them any of this information but when they end up connecting it like this their little light is going to go off so let me see if i can show this to you so here's the battery i'm going to take one side and hold it to whoops to the back so i'm just going to hold it there like that and then i'm going to take this other side hold it on the front so now you can see the two wires and they're being held together and pushing them against the battery and so what they're going to end up exploring and some kids will start like this they're going to realize that that's not going to work um so once they're able to get to this point here they're going to touch the battery and they're going to be like but wait it doesn't like nothing happens look at that i can touch touch touch both ends it's not going to happen but when i flip it there's a little light going off um so we're going to explore with this a little bit they're going to talk about what do they have to be able to do in order to create the light make the light turn on and this is just going to be a really great way to start the conversation in a second walter yes he rings about um in order to make their their circuit boards that we're gonna be doing for the next week i'm gonna go let my dog out now so i gotta tell you guys that i woke up late this morning and that normally does not happen y'all i was rushing like it was nobody's business typically like i will put on a podcast i'll listen to something i will like very slowly get myself going thank goodness that i do that because i woke up a good i want to say like 20 or 30 minutes later than i normally do and the thing is is we went to bed early we watched some naked and afraid afraid on disney plus and then we turned it off and went to bed it was probably not even 10 o'clock how in the world i must be really tired and i was feeling super tired when i got home yesterday i think it's a combination of just like the spring weather it's it's a lot of different things right the year but either way i made it here on time because i rushed like crazy so this morning i spent a little bit of time cleaning up my desk area because i left that messy which again i normally never do but it was just that's real life that's how i was feeling at the acne at the end of the day in the afternoon yesterday it was like i was in a good mood but little things were making me cranky so i just left everything i wasn't even wanting to deal with it um it didn't do much when i went home we just kind of hung out with the kids and then um cleaned up a little bit and then we just lay down and watch naked and afraid that was the extent of my evening um this morning so i came in started cleaning up some of my desk area and then i also started working on putting away some of my books so i have this little box that contains all of my labels for the different genres that i have in my classroom because i organize by genres that's how i teach i teach with genres as a focus and so i want students to explore genres further and that's why i have it organized that way so i have this little box container that basically just has all of the different um all of the different labels that i had some students cut up one year for me and it's nice because i can pull that out and then i can just relabel new books that i get and then put them away fairly quickly um i was using at one point packaging tape but then i kept forgetting to get new packaging tape so then i just started using good old regular tape and it works great because sometimes the packaging tape on paperback books it'll tear or like lift the the actual cover image off of the book itself so it's nice just using something that's not going to damage my books i don't like to use like the avery shipping labels i don't like to use those because they really damage books and they never come off and sometimes you know i will give books to kids or i will give books to new teachers because i have a lot of books and i like to buy books so i have a problem um okay so i wanted to chat you guys through a little bit about what we're doing today um while i also take out all of these papers that i have behind me the kids have i already told you guys taking a pre-assessment earlier this week um so they placed all of their assessments in here and let it sit for a day and then i pull them out so now i'm just going to organize all of their information here and then put it together so anyways let's chat about today today um the kids are going to be um we're going to do an activity in reading because i just introduced my first mentor text and we're talking about utilizing two sources in order to answer questions and problems so i'm using an article from this national geographic that you can get as like it's it's simply free like you can go on in their online articles which are great some of them are interactive which is even better and um they can read it online i posted about it on instagram i actually have a link to it on instagram um from my bio so if you guys check that out you can see that there why why why why i need an iron um so that's what they're going to be doing in reading in math we're gonna be playing a virtual game of connect four but reviewing some of the math concepts that we had um before our test tomorrow so today is kind of it's the last full day so i told you guys we don't really get a spring break we get like a friday saturday sunday and a monday off um and tomorrow is a half day even for teachers so you best believe i'm taking my half day um and that means i'm going to do the bulk of my instruction today and then i'm going to kind of pause it tomorrow we might do some fun activities we might just do like a flashlight to read the kids love a good flashlight read um but they have to take their test tomorrow so i have quite a few kiddos who will take their time especially when it comes to those word problems and i want them to um so i might just find some fun activities a breakout even that we can do during that time i showed you guys yesterday the materials that i got in today we're going to just be exploring with those materials in our content time so i'm not doing a ton we're not going to start our project until next week that'll give me over the weekend to be able to create my own game board so that i can model all of that for them um so yes that's kind of the general situation for today um i will say guys like i have gotten into a really good habit of leaving at 3 45 which is why i don't record at 3 45. um i used to do a lot of recording i remember staying a lot and doing recordings i don't do that anymore because i'm ready to get home be with my family and i'm trying to be better about putting my family my kids first in certain situations so 345 is my non-negotiable i leave at that time unless i have a meeting for team leader or whatever else so i've been leaving every day at 3 45 which feels great um today blaine has like a swim meet or his last swim class before he's finished with that one and then we're going to be putting him into another swim class so he can learn how to swim before the summer uh and i think that's really about it so what i'm going to do today um is really just look at their work and i'll be honest i'm this teacher that if they don't have their math work all completed they're not gonna get to play the game today so they have to get their work completed it's part of it in order to play the game so the way that we do the virtual tic-tac-toe is that i will open up a zoom meeting um they have a tic tac toe board which just has circles it's just basic the most basic of basic things has a bunch of circles on a google slide and so each partner will get a google slide and those kids will then have a board where they're just looking at word problem or the math problems and so if they want to be able to color in that specific circle they're going to have to find that word problem or that problem solve it and then put their color down do i have those problems ready absolutely not which is why i can't show you i literally thought of it last night i was like maybe i should just do we've done jeopardy um and then we've also done hopscotch where i will just take chalk to carpet by the way it comes up so easy we could play hopscotch and then i remembered that i have some boys who do not want to do hopscotch so i figured this would be a nice um a nice way to just compromise so i need to go and get that ready thankfully i have a little bit of time to do that okay i'm gonna go finish getting all my materials ready for this morning uh maybe i will chat with you a little bit before the kids show it to school so i wanted to show you guys the connect 4 board it is very simple it does not have anything fancy um so i try to replicate just using shapes and then we have our rows here our columns here so as the kids are wanting to like fill in one of these circles they're just going to click on the circle and then use their fill tool to fill it in for that color so each kid is going to have like a partner and they're going to have a board and when they open it up in slides they can see if people are on that particular board and then they're just going to type their name here so for the word like for the actual problems that they're solving um it's just gonna be this plain board here that i'm just gonna type in all of the problems that they have i'm using all the problems from the pre-assessments to all the tests that and assignments that we've worked on that is what's going to end up filling up this board here so keeps it fairly simple on my part i'm most likely just going to print this out and just write on it because i hate trying to figure out how to use and type division keys so that's going to be what i end up doing here but super simple very easy that's going to be what we're doing for math so i think i'm just going to go ahead and leave this video here i mentioned that if i get the books in for our research paper i will definitely show you guys what that ends up looking like i'm hoping that i can get them in on friday so if i do get it in i'll have a little clip right after this um but guys thank you so much for watching this little vlog of the week in my life i'm not recording tomorrow because it's a half day and i'm just gonna i'm just gonna come in do my thing and leave at 12 30 which i'm very stoked about so i'm gonna go to in the video here thank you so much for watching if you enjoy this content or you want to see me go live make sure you hit that subscribe button and also the notification bell so that you can be notified every time i go live or upload a new video and i will see you all very very soon bye

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 7,989

Rating: 4.951417 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 youtuber, teacher vlog, weekly teacher vlog, classroom ideas, elementary teacher, classroom inspirations, teacher organization, upper elementary teacher, teacher life

Id: VVPYxULADdQ

Length: 39min 22sec (2362 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021