 Come back to Apple's NTRs. If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I am a fourth grade science and social studies teacher in the East Valley of Phoenix, Arizona. So today is Thursday and today is my formal observation day. So I wanted to take you through a few of the things that I do to mentally prepare for a formal observation. If you're not a teacher, let me just educate you for a moment. All teachers have at least one formal observation every school year where a principal or an administrator will come and watch a lesson. And this is in most schools. I'm not sure about private or charter schools, but public schools, every educator will have some sort of formal observation where someone will come and watch them teach, whether it's through a planned walkthrough on the admin side or a scheduled observation like this one. So my principal and my vice principal will come in, they'll sit in the back of the room, they'll observe, and then they will grade me as a teacher on a rubric. They're looking for things like student engagement, learning targets, standards aligned, activities, collaboration strategies, like a whole list of things. There is a rubric that I as a teacher am evaluated on. And so they come in, they observe, one person will usually type as much as they possibly can of what I say, what kids say, and then what's actually happening in the classroom. And then the other evaluator will look for these indicators. Does the teacher do A? Does the teacher do B? Does the teacher do C? And then they rate us on a scale from three, four, and five. Three is developing, four is something else, and then five is like exceeding. So they assess us the same way we assess our students. Anyway, that's a formal observation. Day is my formal observation, and I've been waiting all year for this because I really wanted to do a specific lesson for my formal observation, and that is my electricity day. So I bought this T-shirt last year, and I've been dying to wear it, but it just says let's get lit, and it's a light bulb. How fun is that? So one of my fourth grade science standards is allowing students to or students being able to understand that energy flows through a circuit and that it's electrical energy. And so I get to play with light bulbs, which is really fun. The kids get to build circuits, they get to understand how electricity flows through different conductors, it can't flow through insulators, things like that, so it's really fun for the kids because they get to be really hands-on. And this is deep within my energy unit, but as you can see here I have all the like nerdy stuff. We're going to build some circuits tomorrow, but for my lesson today, we're going to do a little bit of mystery science, and so the kids will be making their own flashlights using LED lights, watch batteries, note cards, tape, and aluminum foil. That's it. So I'm going to take you guys through a couple of ways that I make sure that I am ready for a formal observation. Now I'm not saying that I don't do all of these things on a normal school day. I'm just saying that like I really make sure that I do these things so that my mind is in the right place. And I'm mentally prepared because as soon as the administrators walk in, pretty much everything you planned goes out the window. Your nerves kick in, you forget everything that you normally do, and it's just a hot mess. So a couple of different things that I do to mentally prepare. First thing is I clean my classroom at least the day before. So right now my classroom is pretty much at its peak in cleanliness. All of the tables are organized. The back table is organized. It has all of the things that are going to be going out to kids. And the reason why I do this is because personally I can't deal with clutter and I can't deal with mess. And I also don't want my administrators who are sitting back here to watch. I don't want them to be focused on how messy my room is. I want them to be focused on how bright and then welcoming my room is for my students. I want them to be focused on their reactions to my room and not their perception of me as a teacher because it's a messy. Another thing that I like to prepare the night before is all of the materials that are going to be used for the lesson. So yesterday I spent a few hours. I actually built all the circuit kits for tomorrow because I wasn't sure if part of my supplies was going to come in time. So I ordered these LED lights a few weeks ago for this lesson specifically. They came with or they were supposed to come with these batteries. The batteries came no problem. I got foil, but these LED lights were supposed to come in the mail. Well, they were taking a really long time and I started to panic. So as any regular teacher would do, if you're not going to have the materials needed for your lesson, you have to adjust and change things. So I fully prepared to, instead of having the kids make flashlights with LED lights, I was going to have them build circuits because it still assesses the standard, it still assesses the learning target, but it's not as fun and it's not as investigative if that makes sense. This flashlight one is going to be way more fun and it's also the activity that my mystery science lesson for the day suggests. The other one wasn't mystery science, but it would have done the same thing. So I'm really happy because I found these LED lights in one of our science buckets. So I did find them and there are enough for all of my students to make one each so they don't have to share. I can still work with a partner and collaborate and work together, but they each get to make their own. They won't get to keep it. They'll have to tear it apart before the class is over, but still really cool. I also preview the lesson and completely practice it the day before. This isn't for any particular reason other than I just want to make sure that I don't have any surprises, especially because I'm using a program that the lesson wasn't really written by me, I'm just delivering it. So mystery science is this really cool program that provides students with super high engaging discussions, activities, and they do a really nice job of assessing our students as well. So because this lesson wasn't created by me, I'm just delivering it and facilitating it, I have to make sure that I don't miss anything prior to my students seeing this lesson. Because if I miss something and I'm not sure what's going on, then they're not going to know what's going on either. So I preview everything. This lesson in particular is supposed to take about 80 minutes-ish. So I have an 80-minute block. I'm hands down, we're probably not going to finish. At least the assessment, we might get through the wrap-up, but we'll definitely get through the exploration, which is the discussion portion, and we will get through the hands-on activity part, which is the whole juicy middle of my lesson that I want my administrators to see. Another thing that I do is I get up really early, and I take a shower, and I get myself ready for the day, and I just allow myself wiggle room and cushion for anything and everything that could go wrong. Anything and everything. Because I don't want to feel any stress at all the day of my observation. I also always treat myself to a Starbucks coffee, and a Starbucks breakfast on the day of my observation, because it's just one of those feel-good things. I'm just going to walk through and make sure I have everything right. The date is changed and ready to go. I do have my learning target or learning goal, objective, whatever it is, it's up on the board. We will design and observe a flashlight and investigate how they turn on and off. So within this investigation, students are going to learn that the positive side of a battery and the negative side of a battery connect to the negative and positive charges in electricity, so in the flashlight. They're going to be drawing some pictures of the flashlights that they're making and drawing pictures of their batteries. They'll be answering a few questions. Now, I don't have ink at my school, so the worksheet that came with Mystery Science that I would have printed will be digital. However, I'm going to have the kids make a version of this in their notebook so that they can actually draw. Drawing on Google Slides is a complete nightmare and it just drives me and the kids insane, so I'm going to let them draw in their notebooks that way. It's something I can collect and they really like drawing rather than using Google Slides anyway. I feel like I've been talking a million miles per hour and I'm sure you would all agree. In addition to my formal observation today, we have parent-teacher conferences this afternoon. So I'm going to be at school until about 7pm which, love that for me. Luckily, my parents are coming into town and so they're able to pick cash out from school and take him home so that he doesn't have to sit here with me until 7pm because that doesn't sound like fun. You guys are going to totally kill me but I did not film myself teaching today. I got in such a groove that I just completely started without even looking at my camera, touching my camera. It was a pretty really fun and exciting but very draining day. Anytime I do hands-on, it is exhausting because there are so many directions. There are so many fires to put out between kids not listening to directions and things like that and like talking during directions and so it can be a very trying task to do hands-on which is why I think so many teachers don't do it. It's expensive and it's very tiring and it takes a lot of prep work so. But yeah, the day is over. My observation is done and so my admin was there for the majority of the lesson. They were there for about a third of it. They were able to see the discussion section of the mystery science lesson and then they left right before we started our investigation. Hello, come in. So yeah, so they left right before they could get to the really good part and I always hate that because I feel like they don't get to see the true lesson when they leave early. They don't get to see the wrap up. They don't get to see all of those different parts. So that was frustrating but I was able to send them some pictures of the outcomes and so that is really exciting. So anyway, I'm gonna sit here and plan for a little bit. I do have parent teacher conferences starting at 4.30. It's three right now and so I do need to email a few parents just the meeting links that they need and so I'm gonna do that and then work on planning for tomorrow. So I'm gonna end this vlog here. I hope you guys enjoyed. If you guys have your observations coming up, let me know what lesson you're planning on teaching down in the comments below. I really would like to know what you guys are planning on using for your big observation and maybe what you do to prepare and make it a little bit less of an emotion bomb for you. So anyway, thanks guys for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.