 It's crazy how much stuff I'm still bringing into school, even though there's no kids here. Why? I'll tell you why. Science. Hey guys, good morning. Welcome back to the vlog. So today is just gonna be a regular day in the life of a virtual teacher. Fourth grade science, fourth grade science, and social studies. So I'm gonna do a quick outfit of the day for you guys. Yes, I am still getting dressed and coming to work as if it were normal. No, I do not have to work from a classroom. Yes, I prefer to do so. Why? Because I work a lot better from school than I do from home and I feel like it motivates the kids to continue pushing and pushing, staying positive so that they can one day be here with me. Anyway, we're gonna start with an outfit of the day. So we're gonna start with my shoes. These are soda brand. I got them on Amazon. I love the pattern on them. This spotted situation going on. I paired it with a black dress. So this dress I actually got from Old Navy. It's one of those tank top dresses with the buttons. Well, I always throw a shirt over our dresses and this one's just one of those cute friends ones. This one's from Amazon. Says teacher, I'll be there for you. Super cute, super simple. And I just tie it up in the back and then sometimes I'll let the tail hang out. Like today, I don't really care because there's no one in here but normally I would just tuck it in and then it's hidden back there. And then earrings. I got these from Target. Can you guys see them? Earrings I got from Target forever ago. And then glasses are by Glasses USA and they will be linked down in the description below. Okay, so what's going on today? Why do I have so much stuff? Well, this week I am beginning to teach the scientific method. Technically it's not a fourth grade standard but scientific inquiry is and so is engineering and I believe that everything needs to begin with the scientific method no matter what. So I'm gonna teach a scientific method this week and the way I'm going to teach that is by doing three marshmallow experiments. The very first one is going to be chubby bunny. So my students are going to be given a question. How many marshmallows can Mrs. Valdez fit in her mouth while still being able to say the words chubby bunny? Then they're going to make a hypothesis. So I brought little marshmallows for that challenge. By the way guys, I'm not gonna be able to fit very many of these in my mouth. I'm just telling you right now, I have a small mouth. Yeah, not even gonna happen. But anyway, I brought small marshmallows for that. The second experiment is what will happen to a marshmallow if it is put in the microwave? Some of the kids may or may not have done this experiment before but we're gonna still do it. And if the kids have experienced with it then their hypothesis will be right. So I got jumbo marshmallows for that one. These are huge. And then another one we're gonna do is the four liquids. So the kids are going to ask a question about which liquid do they think will dissolve a marshmallow the fastest? And so I have four liquids here. I have water. I have vinegar. I have soda. So I'm actually gonna do two experiments with this one. Well not two experiments but two cups. So I'll do one with seven up and one with Coke. And we'll see if one of the sodas is like more acidic than the other. And then we're gonna do some cranberry juice. So the third experiment will be which liquid will dissolve the marshmallow. So we're gonna do that one on Friday and then we'll leave the marshmallows in the liquids over the weekend and then Monday morning when we come in and I come in I will film the results. So that is what I'm teaching this week. Tomorrow I introduce the kids to the first C-Think Wonder which is a picture of a boy eating marshmallows so I wanted to spark the topic for the week by doing that. And then Wednesday is their very first video like full on teaching lesson. And that is the one where I do the chubby bunny. So I have the C-Think Wonder video filmed. I need to film my three scientific method videos and experiments. So I'm gonna be doing that this morning. I really wanna answer a ton of your guys' questions. So here's what I've been doing the last two days that I've been here at work. I've been sitting down at lunchtime between 12.15 and 1.15. And I've been doing like a teacher's lounge moment where I just go live on Instagram and I answer like questions that you guys have. I really wanna go through and answer questions that you guys have put in my comments here on YouTube because there's some really good questions. I should address though that I do have grid view installed on my computer. I did try to do Google Meets with and without the grid view and I'm still just not able to see all 27 kids. So I did create or sorry, I did end up using a second device. So I plugged in my work computer and my personal computer and I projected and filmed or sorry, video like me and projection from my computer and then the school computer I just looked at kids. That was okay, but I still didn't see all 27 of them. So I'm gonna have to figure that out. I feel like I'm going a mile a minute. I have my coffee today, this cute cup you guys. I'll link it down below. It's by the confetti. I forget it. I forget right now at the top of my head but confetti something. I also have my lunch today is sushi. I love sushi. I get it from the grocery store. I'm not trying to spend a bunch of money. It's like five bucks, but I like it because it's not super obnoxiously filling. This is just the threes company. It's like a filly roll and there's only about 440 calories in this whole lunch. That's not too bad. Chopsticks. And then I'm also gonna snack on some plantain chips today. So like I said, I'm trying to go live every day at school during lunch and I call it the teacher's lounge, the digital teacher's lounge because a lot of my friends on Instagram will join me. I also thought about making it a Zoom meeting so that I can see your face. My door wipers are here. You can hear them. Ooh, I also have some trail mix and I need to eat my breakfast which is just eggs and some cream cheese. Okay, so my camera's at 14% so if it dies, I'll switch to my phone but I thought I would show you guys what I do to get ready for a Google Meet. So a few questions I had in my comments were what are your times for your Google Meet and what do you do during your Google Meet? So I have three Google Meet every day. One for each period. First period is 850 to 920. Second period is 1145 to 1215 and third period is 120 to 150. Between period one and two, I have a really big prep time so that is when I film and edit video lessons which are completely different things. So every day the kids have from 8 to 850 to view all of mine so my period one kids would view all of my video lessons and do any assignments I gave them. And then after my Google Meet they move on to their period two teacher's stuff. So we try to make it so that they have quite a bit of time in between the beginning of their day and two period one so they have time to watch the lesson, do the activity and then they meet with me to ask questions for clarification. I like to make my Google Meet more of like a fun activity time and if I have any kids that have questions I always let them stay on for an extra 10 minutes after the Google Meet is supposed to be over. So if my first period class is from 850 to 920, at 920 I'll dismiss any children who don't have any questions and I'll say if anyone needs any help stay behind for the next 10 minutes. So the last 10 minutes of a Google Meet is kind of like an office hour or like a check for understanding if I need to. So what I plan to do for Google Meet once I start actually teaching content because I have only been really doing community building and get to know you activities I would like to make my Google Meet time more of like a check for understanding. And so for that I'm going to be using Nearpod. I'm gonna do a whole video on Nearpod it'll be for Sunday's video. Today I wanted to do just a vlog. Sunday I'll probably post a video on all of the technology pieces that I'm using to help with virtual learning. Nearpod is one of them. It's really cool. It's kind of like slides, but it's more interactive. So what I'm doing now is I'm just getting set up here for my Google Meet. So as I mentioned before my computer from the school I use to see the kids. So I don't have a camera turned on I don't have a mic turned on. I just log in so that I can have a screen to see kids on. And then on my personal computer, my MacBook I have for presenting or filming myself. So right now I'm actually working on editing a video lesson. What I use to film my video lessons is the webcam on my iMac or not my iMac my MacBook. And then I also use my iPhone and I use this really cool tripod. Sorry I'm like bouncing all over the place. I use this really cool tripod. It's from Amu Tech. But it's really cool because it extends and it has little feet and it holds my camera and I can face it down. So I use this for some of this stuff depending on if I want kids to write in their notebooks this is kind of how I film. Like if I'm writing anything or if I'm gonna do an experiment I wanna look down and show them. I use that. And then I just edit the lesson in iMovie. I know a lot of people don't have this technology but luckily my YouTube hobby kind of set me up for success for that. So I would say if you don't have this kind of technology I would definitely try to invest in some kind of I mean you don't have to but if you want to some video editing software of some kind maybe a webcam like I have this one that I could use I just take it off and then I could point it down if I wanted to. I have that in case I wanna do a demonstration live on Google Meet. But if you don't have some sort of like editing software you could definitely just film a video using your computer's camera or even your iPhone and then post that. A lot of iPhones have iMovie which is a great editing software that you could totally use on your phone. And so that is an option. So as of right now the things that I am pulling up are I always have my weekly agenda up on the screen so that I can look through and see what I'm doing in my Google Meet. My daily agenda always has what we're doing in the Google Meet and then what the kids need to do on their own. So I'm looking that up right now. I like to have it up on the screen so that the kids can see. I always put it up so we can talk through what we're gonna do. That way they kind of already know what's coming. And then I'm gonna pull up my near pod that I have for the kids today which is going to be a class rules activity. So I'm actually using Josie by Maniac in the Middles classroom rules music activity but I created a near pod out of it to get the kids to be able to type ideas. So I have that pulled up ready to go. I also like to pull up Spotify and for the first five minutes of the Google Meet which I always join five minutes early. So I have four minutes until I gotta join. I put on music and I take attendance using Class Dojo. So this is kind of like our little system that we created in our fourth grade team. We take attendance via Class Dojo and all we do is we pull up the list of kids and if the kid is in the meet, we click on them and give them a point. So every class period they get a point for attendance by the end of the day. If they have three points, they have been there all day. If they have two points, it means that they missed somebody's class. If they have one point, it means that they only showed up in their homeroom. So we wanna make sure that the kids are not ditching the other meets. We're only supposed to take attendance for our homerooms but we felt that it would make more sense to take attendance for every Google Meet to make sure that kids aren't like ditching Google Meet. You know what I mean? So the song that I like to play for the first five minutes while I'm taking attendance is the Star Wars theme song. Reason why I love that, A, Star Wars, B, Star Wars and C, it's a five minute song which means five minutes. Once the song is over, I start my Google Meet. It's the perfect time. So I pull up Spotify and get that queued up and then I'm also going to pull up the video of the song. So I actually filmed, I screen recorded the songs for the rules and then I edited them so that I could only share with the kids the part of the song I wanted them to hear, not the whole song because parts of like Ice, Ice, Baby, if you guys know this lesson by Josie Bensko on Maniacs in the Middle, then you know if you don't, you need to go check it out. But I've cut out the parts of the song I don't want the kids to hear. Not because they're inappropriate. Some of them are a little bit questionable. But the part of the song I want them to hear is not inappropriate. So I have that edited. I'm gonna share that video with them throughout the activity. So I'm also gonna pull up Google Meet. Obviously I need that to be out. And then, yeah, I'm gonna get started. So another thing I do is I use a morning song or like a welcome song in my Google Meet. That's like the first minute is I take attendance, I do the morning song and then we start. So I'm gonna get that cued up and then I'm gonna start with my first meeting of the day. Hey guys, so I am getting ready to start my second Google Meet of the day. And I am this close to being done filming all of my videos for this week. I wanted to be done today so that tomorrow I could start planning for the third week of school, which if we end up coming back in person, well this will be, I think there's four total online weeks. So I'll only have two more to do after this. So I think next week we're gonna start mapping skills and then after that we'll do another science topic. But I just filmed my little miniature lab here, my experiment. And so this is the Marshmallow Dissolve one. I'm thinking I might push them down into the mixture with a popsicle stick just to like submerge them. I don't know, I don't wanna like mess with it. But I did film this for my last class or for my last video, this is for Friday's video. I'm gonna check these on the 30th. And then I'll post, so the 30th, I'll film Monday's video because Monday I wanna be able to share the results with the kids. So even if we are doing a social studies topic, I'll first begin by showing them what happened, either that or maybe I'll do it in the meet. I'm not sure yet, but in any event, I am almost done with this week. Last week was hard because we only had three school days and two of those school days were really heavy on parent emails and tech support. So that's why I didn't have everything filmed for this week, but my plan is on Monday's I'm planning on filming video lessons, Mondays and Tuesdays, I'll film and edit lessons. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I will do grading and planning for the next coming week. So I need to put together like a written schedule for myself so that I can really stay on task. My ADD is like really heavy on me writing things down and sticking to a schedule. So I need to do that. But yeah, I'm getting ready to start my next meet in about three minutes. I'll be logging in for attendance and then we'll get this party started. Yay. Hey guys, so I wanted to jump in real quick and update you guys. My friend Darian over at Darian and Kaki Harris channel has found a way to take attendance every day on Google classroom. I'm gonna put a link down below in the description box that takes you to Darian's attendance magic stuff. It apparently you share it with your students on the day of and it takes attendance automatically for you. So you don't have to take attendance every day. Super cool. Getting ready for my third Google meet. It is starting in about 15 minutes. So at 1.15, I will be turning it on and starting to take attendance there. I'm gonna get going so I can prep for this meeting and I've got like a bajillion text messages coming in but I'll see you guys in just a second. Oh, I totally lied. I did not film anything else that day. So Scott and I are here. Super cool and really big news. We decided to create a family channel. So we've been editing like crazy people for the last like three hours but we wanted to share that with you. Slap it on to the end of this vlog since I'm so behind on my own channel but I am gonna go ahead and end the vlog here. So thank you guys so, so much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and of course, follow me on Instagram because I post there all the time and join me for lunch at 1220 every day. I've even got a couple of my teacher friends from my school who are planning to come in and join me for lunch. Super exciting. So you guys will be able to ask questions and do all this fun stuff but as always thank you guys for being here. We really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. It's gonna be hard for me to like separate mine and yours like we and I. That's okay, I'll get used to it. So anyway, sorry that this is like such crappy video. It's from my computer but I love you guys so much and I will see you in the next video. Bye.