What Am I Teaching Next Year? | COME TEACH WITH ME

I am back in my classroom after Memorial Day weekend yesterday Monday was Memorial Day so we were off school which means this is a four-day week but that also means we still have three weeks of school until summer vacation now I know some of you are either already on summer vacation or very close to being on summer vacation and if that is you please sleep in an extra hour for me and go to the beach read a book do fun things enjoy yourself because some of us are still stuck in the land of grading papers making copies and picking up like 20 pencils off the floor every single day for those of you who are still in the classroom like I am and are still teaching I know you're tired okay I feel you I am very ready for summer vacation as much as I love my kiddos as much as I love my job I just need a break so my best piece of advice that I can give you is to keep planning activities that you are excited to teach because if you are not excited to teach a lesson your students are not going to be excited to learn it so I wanted to start off by showing you all what I am doing for science this week [Music] in science we have been discussing renewable and nonrenewable energy sources so to cap off our unit my students are gonna complete a little stem project up here at the top it discusses how our country relies primarily on non-renewable resources so the government is asking their help to reduce our dependence on these sources by developing a sale car so a sale car is essentially a sailboat combined with a car that can be powered by the wind but to keep it more interesting my students have a budget so they cannot spend more than ten dollars car cash on additional materials which I'll go over in a second in terms of how I'm storing all of the materials I'm literally keeping them all in this plastic scrapbooking bin from Michaels I love these bins for holding so many different things by putting all the materials in here at the end of the unit I just close it up store it away in a cabinet and then I'm ready to go for next year so each group automatically gets a cardboard rectangle which you can literally just take a box you have at home and cut it into rectangles they also get two coffee stirrers which are these black pieces here to use as Axl's coffee stirrers are so cheap so it's a great option and then they also get four wheels now I bought this pack of wheels I think there's a hundred of them total off of Amazon it's about $20 originally I was gonna use like lifesaver mints as the wheels but I was worried that they would break so I decided I'd go ahead and invest in these plastic wheels that way I can use them again year after year and they fit perfectly on the coffee stirrers as the axles now the tape is not providing my students do have to buy the tape and this is not given to them assembled they have to assemble it but I do show them this as an example so basically they can tape the axles on the bottom put the wheels on it flip it over and they're ready to go and I did tell them to put a little piece of tape at the end to help hold the wheels on any additional materials they have to spend their car cash on so on this recording sheet I have listed out all the materials so they can buy an extra wheel or a replacement wheel if they happen to lose theirs they can buy tin foil tissue paper copy paper masking tape scotch tape small plastic bags large plastic bags rubber bands pipe cleaners straws popsicle sticks small and large and have the prices listed out so what my students do the first day is they come up with a design of their car so on the back of the recording sheet they have to draw a model of their car and they have to label the different parts and then they have to create a purchase order so I'm making this very businesslike by them creating a purchase order it helps me to be able to get their materials ready for them I don't have time during class to pass out materials to all of the groups individually so what I have them do is complete the purchase order with the item the quantity the cost I make sure it's within the budget of $10 car cash and then I'm actually using these foil trays to help pass out their materials so overnight I go through I pull out everything that group needs I put it in a tray so that the next class all I have to do is hand that group their tray now the next lesson is when they actually build and test their sale cars so I give them two test runs so they can come up test it one time go back make changes come up test it again make changes and then their final run so what I have them do is put the car in front of the fan for ten seconds and I'm in control of that I turn on and off the fan so that way I can make sure it's the same for every group but let me kind of show you how I set up my fan this is a tower fan that I actually bought for Billy for Christmas a couple years ago but since then I have brought it into my classroom because my classroom gets very very warm the reason I have it set up on its side on the floor is so that when my students put the car in front of it the wind is going directly to the car if I had it standing up the wind was too high up and it wasn't hitting the cars so what I did is I put it back one floor tile from this green row where my students actually run their test runs so I tell my students that their car has to go in this white square right here that is before the green and then I have meter sticks lined up along this Green row so that they can measure it and all I do is turn the fan on for about ten seconds let their cars go and then stop it after ten seconds I let the cars keep moving if they're still rolling and once they come to a stop my students measure the distance in centimeters this is one of those lessons that is kind of a pain to get ready because you have to get all the materials which is why I store them all in a container together so it's easier next year but once your students actually do it they have a blast with it I did this with my two blocks two weeks ago and then I'm doing it with my team teachers two blocks today and Thursday and I'm so excited for it because the students get so into it it's so awesome to see them problem solved I had a group that broke one of their axles and so they had to like reconfigure the way that their car was arranged and they ended up only having two wheels and it ended up being one of the most successful sale cars so I just think this is a great opportunity for students to do something that is more real-world based and they're practicing the skills that they learned in class they have so much fun with it it's perfect for the last few weeks of school now in math we are working on hands-on equations which is a way for 4th graders and actually they start this in third grade to do algebra but in a very easy to understand and kind of concrete way so I'm not going to go into detail of what hands-on equations actually is I will leave a link down below if you want to learn more about it but what I did want to talk to you all about is the organization aspect for hands on equations our students use these laminated mats that have a balance on them and then they have pawns and number cubes last year I didn't organize these at all I just kept them in these gallon bags that the teacher before me had put them in because I didn't really have the time to organize them and I wasn't sure how I wanted to organize them but let me just tell you that having like over 30 of these gallon bags with all of the pieces in them is so annoying and the bags are ripping and my students lose them and it's just not working for me so I have upgraded to the snack containers I've talked about these on my channel before I absolutely love these containers because they work for so many things so first of all you get these from the dollar store currently they have them three for a dollar but sometimes later on they're only two for a dollar so if you see them three for a dollar go ahead and grab them because I promise you that you can use them but these containers can hold a deck of cards so they're great for that they also can hold a 24 pack of crayons which is also fantastic and they perfectly hold the number cubes and the pawns for each hands on equations kit so last week I started transferring them from the bags to these snack containers but I ran out so over the weekend I did go to Dollar Tree and grab some more containers so I'm gonna go ahead and get rid of the rest of these plastic bags because I am so over them move them into the containers and my teacher heart an organizational heart is going to be so much happier [Music] [Music] [Music] so the highlight of my day we had a local mortgage company provide lunch today for all the teachers so I have myself a pulled pork sandwich some coleslaw and some potato salad and trust me I needed this today it is now after school in fact it's like 610 and if I'm being completely honest I have not been the most productive person in the world after school but that's okay it happens to the best of us immediately after school I actually kept one of my students with me and I tutored her and then when her mom came to pick her up she brought me coffee which was not only needed because I've had no coffee today but it was appreciated so that was nice and honestly since then I have just been chatting with some my team teachers I did get materials ready for the sale cars so today my two science classes created their purchase orders and like their blueprint model drawing of the sale car and submitted it to me so I use their purchase orders to get their materials ready for Thursday so at least that is done and out of the way but I did not get anything else done and that's alright I'm gonna go ahead and get out of here head home and then I will catch up with you tomorrow it is already Wednesday and that is one thing I love about having Monday's off the week typically flies by however today is one of those days where our schedule is off this afternoon we have a strings and dance concert so we have students in third fourth and fifth grade that place trained instruments so they will be performing along with our dance team as a result we are having our blocks this morning so we'll have block one for an hour block two for an hour go to lunch come back to homeroom we're gonna sneak out to recess a little bit early so that we can come back in kind of cool off get a drink of water because it's supposed to be 90 degrees today and then go down to the strengths and dance concert and that should basically take us through the end of the day any time we have left we'll just come back to homeroom and I'll probably just let my kids play like heads up seven up but for my blocks this morning we are doing it ketchup and pickles now this is something that I started doing way back when I taught second grade I have not talked about it on my channel in a while so I wanted to show you all how I organized ketchup and pickles and what it is and all that good stuff because it's one of my favorite things so when I do catch up in pickles I typically display this slide on the board now this is a fake slide because I'm not gonna display the real information but ketchup in pickles is a really fun way to motivate your students to complete unfinished work so students who haven't finished work or on the ketchup side because they need to catch up on their work see what I did there I typically have a list of assignments followed by the names of students that need to complete that assignment once students have completed their ketchup work they become a pickle and they get to pick an activity from the list I try to keep it to activities that my students can do independently and they can do relatively quietly now if you are interested in these slides I do have these available in my TPT store for free this is a really old product of mine so I gave it a little revamp and made it look a little bit better and updated it on TPT so even if you had previously downloaded it you can go download it again I will link it for you in the description box it includes powerpoints and Google slides slides so you can choose which format you would prefer I have been doing ketchup in pickles about once a week since we're doing hands-on equations it's pretty easy for my students to get behind and have makeup work this may be something you could do on Fridays or you could just do it once a month to get students caught up on work or even once a marking period whatever works for you and your schedule but I guarantee you your students are so much more motivated to get their work done if they know they can become a pickle and do a fun activity another thing that tends to start declining around the end of the school year is student behavior because let's be honest we're all just kind of done at this point teachers are done students are done we're all tired we're all burnt out we need a break so I'm gonna show you the classroom management strategy that I've been using for the past two weeks it's been working really really well for my students so let me show you what I've been doing I have been doing what's called the puzzle wars I did get this off of TPT so I will link it for you it is editable so you can customize it to fit your needs each one of my classes homeroom block one in block two they have a puzzle board that they are trying to fill with puzzle pieces so they can earn puzzle pieces for working quietly lining up quietly listening to the teacher and then leaving their area clean and then each one of my classes got to pick a reward now for the puzzle pieces they're all just velcroed on and so I have these photo cases down here that are holding the different pieces my block one and block two have already filled their puzzle board once and they're working on filling it a second time and they were able to pick a new reward so what block of lime had picked an ice cream party for their first reward so they're redeeming that today and I'll show you what I'm doing for that in a second my block 2's reward was a class of lunch punch which we're gonna do today as well I've really been liking this it's worked very very well to motivate my students I like that I can target specific things that I want to see and it's just worked awesome for a full group classroom management strategy for the end of the year so this is how I do my ice cream parties I keep it super simple the best way that I have found is to give students ice cream sandwiches it's so much easier than trying to scoop out ice cream into a bowl you just plop ice cream sandwich into a bowl give them a spoon and then they get to pick their toppings now I do have a couple of students that are lactose intolerant and cannot have ice cream so I give them ice pops or popsicles and then for the toppings that my students can choose from I keep it super simple because I think sometimes we go overboard or a lot of times we go overboard so they can have whipped topping chocolate syrup caramel syrup sprinkles and then cherries they can have all of it if they want they can pick and choose or they can just have the Ice Cream Sandwich totally up to them but this makes it super super easy not only to pass out to 30 students without it melting but also to clean up it is after school but it's earlier than it was yesterday it's only for 25 I'm already done everything I need to do which is a phenomenal feeling the day was good considering the schedule was off and it was super hot outside for recess so the kids were really sweaty and a little bit of smelly if you want my honest opinion when we came in myself included and considering I shook heard up my black wine with the ice-cream sandwiches I think it was a good day we got a lot of completed work from ketchup and pickles time which was awesome that's all in the grade book I'm almost all done with graded assignments for the year hallelujah so I'm feeling pretty good right now I'm gonna run out of here I'm gonna go to the gym go home work on some grad school assignments tonight and I will catch up with you tomorrow it is now Thursday today is a normal schedule day nothing too crazy going on for hands-on equations we're just doing the next lesson and then for science we are building our sail cars I already have the black ones materials all ready to go I will have to spend my lunch time preparing things for block 2 because I don't have enough containers to do them both at the same time but I will definitely show you what my students end up creating with those here are the final versions of the sail cars as you can see a lot of different designs different teams chose different materials because they had their budget so they got to pick and choose the only thing I allowed them to buy more of today during the day they were actually building it was tape so if they had leftover car cash or if they had materials that they didn't use they could trade them in to me to get more tape but everything else had to already be in their plan in order for them to use it and that forced them to do a lot of problem solving when things didn't work so for example this one right here the back part of it was open originally so when they did a test run the wind was all escaping through that hole so then they bought more tape to cover up the hole and it ended up going a lot farther so we had a lot of kiddos use plastic bags and foil this one was really cool they kind of created like a tunnel this one originally they just had the cardboard piece and then they added the tissue paper behind it some groups did cut down their cardboard in order to make it smaller and therefore it was lighter and then we even had Sun like this one right here it only used two wheels which was really really cool to see and then this one was really interesting designed it has an axle in the front with three wheels on it and then only one wheel in the back and surprisingly it actually went pretty far so I love doing this project I love seeing how creative my kiddos can get and honestly really strict with them in terms of the materials and not just continually giving them more materials if they break them I force them to find a new way to be able to build their car and I think that it promotes problem solving and creative thinking and all kinds of things so even if their cars do not go very far I make sure that I let them know how proud I am of them for thinking it through and problem-solving so remember earlier when I said that today was like a nice normal day ya know although it was normal until the end of the day so right before dismissal probably five minutes before dismissal time starts we went under a tornado warning so we had to all go into the hallway and we had our like one hundred and twenty fourth graders stuck in this really tight little area so they were all on top of each other but it was all good obviously we did not have a tornado thank goodness and we were all safe and that's all that matters but it did push our dismissal back by about 25 minutes so things were a little bit chaotic at the end of the day that's the first time actually in my teaching career when we've had an actual tornado warning while in school and had to move into the hallways so that was interesting I'm kind of happy that it happened cuz now I've experienced it and it helps me to think ahead for the next time what to do and what not to do I am gonna get out of here because I did not get a chance to eat lunch earlier I ended up working on getting materials ready for the block to sale cars and I am starving and so I'm gonna go ahead and leave and I will catch up with you at tomorrow it is now Friday and today is also field day so that means our schedules off again but it's alright we are gonna start with our typical study hall time while our students go to chorus because I do not have planning time on Fridays then shortly after study hall we are having lunch which we typically eat lunch at 12:35 and today we're eating at 10:50 which is crazy but after we go to lunch we're gonna come back get ready for field day and we are out at field day at 11:50 I think and we have ten minute stations and we rotate through them so we're outside for about a total of two hours so the stations are things like tug of war sack race parachutes soccer skills dribbling skills for basketball things like that the students rotate through the stations we have fifth graders and pair of volunteers that run the stations it's gonna be a hot day it's supposed to be in the 80s today so not quite as hot as it's been earlier in the week but it's still gonna be pretty toasty after being outside for field day for two hours then we have the kickball game 5th grade students play against staff members I did play last year I'm not sure yet if I'm playing this year or not only because I'm actually leaving this afternoon for a flight and I have to go straight to the airport and I don't want to be too sweaty but we'll see I'll keep you updated on that for now I need to go put sunscreen on kind of get myself ready for the day and then I'll catch up with you later on it is a sad day some of you may remember I shared this pencil dispenser which is actually a straw dispenser in my recent classroom favorites video and it's still one of my favorite things that has not changed but as you can see I'm officially out of pencils welcome to the end of the school year as a teacher it is now my lunchtime and the morning was very hectic because we ended up not having chorus because our chorus teacher wasn't here but we didn't know that in advance so I had a lot of kids in my classroom because I had all like 30 kids for my homeroom plus I was pulling kids to get makeup work done so I was probably had like 37 kids in my classroom which was a little bit chaotic however it's how good you know we made it I did want to share with you all some news for some changes and I did not strategically save this for the end of the video it's more so like I just found out type of things so I'm just now telling you next year I am going to be teaching reading in addition to I'm thinking I'm still gonna be teaching math but I know I will definitely have a reading class in the morning I just don't know in the afternoon if I'm gonna teach math or science and social studies but I'm pretty sure it's math so I'll let you know once I figure that out for sure but next year is gonna be filled with a lot of changes we're going from for teachers to five we're no longer gonna have our TA I'm gonna be teaching a new subject and I'm not gonna lie I'm nervous about it because I did teach reading when I taught second grade that's very different in comparison to fourth grade plus the reading instruction in this county is very different than how I used to do it so it's gonna be a big adjustment year for me I also have a little bit more news I am going to be our team lead next year which I'm very excited about I feel very honoured I guess I'll just put it that way because I haven't been at the school super a long time so I feel good that my administration chose me for that role and what is most important to me is just that I do a good job I want to make sure our team is united and all together so do a lot of brainstorming over the summer of things that I want to do so overall I feel good I'm nervous to teach reading and have all these changes but I'm excited and that is one of the things that keeps teaching interesting is always having changes and new things so all that being said even though we have technically not gone outside yet for a field day I am gonna go ahead and end this vlog because I'm not gonna have any more breaks the rest of the day this is my only break right now at lunchtime and then directly after school I have to leave I'm literally taking my car keys out with me to bus duty I am leaving cuz I have to go catch a flight tonight I'm flying out for a adventure I can't really tell you about it but I'm also excited for that so if you enjoyed this video and if you're excited for the changes coming next year please give it a thumbs up also if you have not already go ahead and subscribe to my channel hit the notification bell so you do not miss any future videos as always thank you for watching I love you all so much don't forget to put your positive pants on like me right now if I need out that I'm teaching a new subject area next year and I will catch you in the next slide thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this video and for supporting my youtube channel if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two links right down here if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future videos you can use like or right up here the links to all of my social media sites my teachers pay teacher's store my merchandise store and my Amazon store are in the description box and I'll catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 89,208

Rating: 4.9454217 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher

Id: tRvZsfTZCmE

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2019