 and welcome back to Apple's NTRS. So today I'm doing a very highly requested video and that is my teacher tips for starting the school year. So in today's video, I'm going to be discussing quite a few things that you guys have asked me about since beginning of the school year. Just a little bit of background information. I do teach fourth grade science and social studies in Arizona. My school district is currently on week three of distance learning, so virtual learning. Next week will be week four. Today is August 5th, so next week will be the beginning of week four in virtual learning. I do work from my classroom. I am not required to work from there, but I like to go there and work because I feel like I can really focus on teaching and also all of my teaching materials are there, so it makes it a lot easier to get everything done in my day if I work from school. So my friends, that is teacher tip number one for returning to school. If you are capable of working from school, I highly, highly recommend that you do so because it can help you really focus on teaching and you can treat it like a normal day at work. The kiddos are able to see the background behind you as your classroom and it can really help motivate them to keep going, give them a little bit of hope and also see you in your classroom environment so it makes them feel more like they're in the classroom. There are going to be way less distractions if you work from school. I have had so many of my friends tell me that they are working from home and they're working until 7, 8 o'clock at night. I get home at 3.30 and I'm done for the day, so I feel like working from school helps me to get everything done that I need to do and then when I get home, I can really relax. It's a great way to separate work life from home life. Obviously, if you have children at home and you're a teacher, it's a little bit harder. You could consider asking your school district or your school administrators if it would be possible to bring your children with you to work depending on where you are that might be an option. At my school, the teachers are able to bring their school age children with them to work. They can work on their school work in the classroom with their parents. Tip number two is going to be film everything. Something that I found to be really frustrating in the first three days of virtual learning was the amount of parent emails and phone calls that I received from people not knowing how to log in or log on to the systems that we were using. So I decided to film how-to videos for my parents to help guide them through the process. Our district required us to send out parent letters and instructional forms to our families to help them get logged in. Let's be honest, not everybody reads every single detail. So I found that it was really helpful to film videos showing families everything they needed to do to get logged in and get started. I also made a Meet the Teacher video that had all of the expectations explained in the video from my mouth. The parents and families could see me talking about the expectations, attendance, grading, Google Classroom, Google Meets, all of the expectations that we had for our students. I filmed it and had it live said from my mouth. So not only did parents receive a written form of all of this information, they also received a video form. I felt that once the videos were put out, everything moved a lot faster and smoother, so make sure that you do film everything. Okay, tip number three. Let's talk about Google Meets and making Google Meets super exciting. So depending on the district or school that you're in will depend on the type of video chat software that you're going to use. We have Zoom, Google Meet, we have WebEx. I'm not sure the other ones. Those are the three that I've used in the past. I am supposed to be using Google Meets, which I don't really like. I like Zoom a little bit better. I like that you can scroll through the screen and see everybody on camera. You can do that with WebEx as well. Google Meets, I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I don't think you can. We'll see how it goes. But let's talk about some things that you can do in your Google Meets to make them more engaging. First tip, I always play entry music and I have my camera turned off for the first five minutes. I also joined the Google Meet five minutes early and I tell my kids that I do this so that they can get settled and in and be marked in attendance before the Google Meet begins. This ensures that I have the full 30 minutes to do any activity or teaching that I need to do in my Google Meet. During those first five minutes when I'm playing entry music, I am taking attendance using Class Dojo. Because of our school, we are not supposed to take actual attendance until 3.30 in the afternoon. To take attendance in the morning or during each Google Meet, we use Class Dojo. I am a departmentalized teacher, I need to have two teammates. One teaches ELA, one teaches math. The students have to go to all three of our Google Meets throughout the day. So when one of us has the other's homeroom class, we take attendance in our Google Meets using Class Dojo. Every student gets an attendance point for being in the Google Meet. And at the end of the day, if a student has three Dojo points, they have been to all three Google Meets and their attendance is taken. The students only need to have one Dojo point though throughout the day to have their attendance count. Another thing I like to do during Google Meets is play music throughout. So anytime there's wait time, if I'm waiting for students to log in to Nearpod or if I'm waiting for students to answer a question in the chat, I'm always playing music. I also like to do activities in the last five minutes if I have time like Simon says, guess that song, finish the lyric, anything I can do to keep the kids engaged and having fun, I will definitely do it. In the beginning of every Google Meet, I do a welcome song. It's a song that I learned from me from teaching and so forth's morning songs. And I also have one that I learned to get your teach on, which I cannot share because it does not belong to me. But if you've been to get your teach on, then you know the welcome song. It goes to the tune of All I Do Is Win. So that is the one I am currently doing with my students in the very beginning of every Google Meet. During every Google Meet that I do, I am standing up in the camera. I am never sitting down in a chair. I'm standing up in front of the camera and my whole entire classroom is behind me. I'm not supposed to be teaching or instructing. During Google Meet, I'm supposed to be checking for understanding and answering any questions or concerns that the students have. I'm also clarifying any information that the students need me to clarify. Tip number four, let's talk about Nearpod. So I actually filmed a little screen recording here that I'm going to pop in. But basically Nearpod is a Google Chrome add-on for Google Slides. It's a whole other entity or website. So my district did purchase the add-on and is allowing us to use it in Google Slides. And you guys, I love Nearpod. It's amazing. It's a super interactive and engaging Google Slides system that provides students opportunities to engage during a lesson in real time and is also available in student-paced version. So let's go to the screen recording now. Okay, my friends. So I am here in Nearpod. Now I want to begin by just explaining that some school districts have not purchased Nearpod the add-on. It is technically an add-on through Google Slides and I will show you how to do that. But basically this is what Nearpod looks like. Students can have their own account and then they can join Nearpods using a code. But they do not have to have an account to be able to participate in this. My district did purchase the Nearpod licensing for their teachers. So I know that my students do not need a login or any code to participate in any of my Nearpods. So basically this is like PowerPoint or Google Slides. But it is interactive for students. So for example each Nearpod you can create and then do a live participation with Zoom. I always do live participation and then I copy the link for my students and I post it in the chat of our Google Meet. So I would basically click the link button. I would copy the link and I would paste it in my Google Meet. Now there are other ways to use Nearpod. You can also share it with students to do student paste which would be a great check for understanding or great assignment. Nearpod also gathers data for you so that you can use Nearpod for grades. So this is an example of the Nearpod that I did last Friday with my students for community building. Basically I ask a question. The students share their ideas. So I would say friends, you can change the setting on this to where you need to approve the student answers or not. And as the students type things in, they pop up on the screen. Now obviously I'm the one typing these in but if students were there, their answers would be popping in on the screen. Students are able to like each other's posts. They can like them more than once. They can unlike them but they can't dislike them. They can also put images. So let's say a student wants to put a picture of their favorite show. They can post a picture of their favorite show. So I would see that they like friends. Now down here in the bottom you can see how many students are here and participating. So that's kind of a fun way to know that all of your kids are there. If you have 27 kids, this will say 27. It tells you the name of the slides. And then you can also hide student names. So if you don't want anybody to know who's posting you can just hide their names. Now this is a approval notice. You can approve student comments before they're posted. Yes, so that means that there would be a bunch of it would be like an orange number here saying hey, you've got things you need to approve. I would click on it and then I would just approve each post. That can be a lot easier or I would use that more for like an academic near pod. But for a fun collaborative near pod I would turn the approval off. So students would just type in their ideas and they would flash up. So when you're done you can end the lesson or you can view the report and it gets sent to your email. So that's really cool. You can kind of check data that way. Yes, I'm going to end the session. You do end the session between each class. So if you're doing this with one class of students like I have three sections I do need to end my session because each session will have its own report and that is something that I want to have separated. So a couple of other near pods that I've used like this week I'm going to use near pod to check for understanding. So I've created this parts of a map. Now what's really cool about near pod is that if a student does not make it to your Google Meet like let's say I use near pod during Google Meet but Johnny didn't make it. I can create a student paste link for Johnny to finish this near pod on his own. I can share it with him on Google Classroom. I can share it with a link. I can send it on Remind. I can send it in an email and then I can require his submission and then I can view his work. Which is really cool. I haven't had any kids use this yet but I am planning to use it this week. So in my weekly agenda I just zoomed in here because my meeting code is in this slide but basically I have the link here for any kiddos who missed the Google Meet. They will need to do that near pod on their own. So back to near pod. We're going to just take a look at this one. We're going to preview it and I'm going to show you all of the things that I'm asking my students to do during a near pod in Google Meet. So during Google Meet is when I check for understanding and answer questions for kiddos and then some days I just do really fun engaging collaborative structures in there or get to know you, SEL, things like that. So parts of a map I have a poll. So students are going to participate in a poll which means that they're going to tell me what type of map this is. Now the kids can choose an answer and then they submit it and then I can see how many kids chose physical or physical. They can unsubmit or unclick and resubmit but I can see anytime they do that if they change an answer. So then the next one is another poll. Again, this is just me checking for understanding. I've already taught the lesson in a video and I'm checking to see what they remember from that lesson. So again types of maps and then another poll. Now you have different engaging activities. So this is a multiple choice question. So I have three answers here. They're going to choose which one they think this is. They can click on the photo see it larger before they pick. Super cool. Super fun. Trying to see if there's another type of question in here. Okay. So this one is a drawing interactive slide. So I ask them to please draw in the directions by putting the letter abbreviations north south east with. You get it. So north has been done for them. Basically they come in here with their pen and they draw the directions. Now obviously they have editing things. I'm going to give them lots of time for this but it's another interactive thing for the kids to do. They can type. So let's say they want to put north west or NW. They can type it in instead of writing it in which is really cool. Now kids will start to figure out what these tools are and they will start to really utilize them and it's kind of cool to see. They can also erase so if they made a mistake they can erase it. And then of course I will check for understanding. All of their drawings will be submitted separately and I can see them. So again another poll question. This is an open-ended question. So this is one where they have to type in an answer. What would a good title be for this map? They might say a map or the United States map. Then as they submit their answers I can physically see what they're typing. So super exciting, super cool. So I'm actually going to go through Nearpod and show you how to create one. Just all of the features in Nearpod that you can use. So I'm going to make a new one. Now you can also edit these in Google Slides. So if you have a Google Slideshow that's already made you can actually embed it through that. It's an add-on and you just and it will pop up on the side of your Google Slideshow where you can add different engaging activities and things in your Google Slideshow. Now I'm not going to do that here. I prefer to make it in Nearpod but I'm just going to show you some of the cool features. So basically just like a PowerPoint you can add a video. You can add pictures and sound basically like a slideshow. You can add web content. There are so many different things you can add. I personally like the activities. This one is more of like a question set. So you can use this for math. Check for understanding. And as they get questions right or wrong they move up the mountain. Kind of cool. Open into question. This is where they have to type in an answer. This one would be more multiple choice. You can do a matching game. You can give a quiz. The flip grid is cool because they can record themselves. There's a memory quiz. There's a fill in the blank. A pull. The collaborate is the one where they type it in. It shows up on the screen and then the draw is where they can fill in answers with the pen, pencil, and the typing. So these are all the interactive activities that you can use in Nearpod. Super cool. And it's all live. So as you are doing your Google Meet if you want to check for understanding or get the kids engaged in an activity you can totally do this through Nearpod. Okay guys. So that was Nearpod. I am so obsessed with it. I've been using it in almost every Google Meet and the kids are loving it. So the next resource I want to talk about is PBS Media Library. So this is an online library of videos and interactive lessons that your students can be assigned either in Google Classroom or you can send them the link to the videos and the students can access it all. Because I'm teaching science I don't have a lot of visuals when teaching online that I have like currently in my possession. So I really love using the PBS Media and also YouTube videos to help me show students content while I'm providing my own commentary and teaching. So a couple of other media resources I wanted to share with you about was a couple of YouTube channels. If you've never heard of Dr. Bynox you need to look him up if you teach science or social studies. You need to look him up if you teach science. He is awesome. He's like this little floating brain who wears glasses and he teaches scientific topics. He's great. What I love about these YouTube channels is that they have really good graphics and visuals for students to see when I'm trying to teach a specific content. Another one for social studies would be the Studies Weekly YouTube channel. This is directly linked to the Studies Weekly Social Studies and Science curriculum if your district has purchased that for you to use or if you have it on your own. And then my other favorite one for science is called Crash Course Kids. Again another YouTube channel that provides really good visuals and graphics for students to be able to see certain topics and content. So tip number five is going to be another system that you can use to help you present and teach your topics and content. And that is Loom. I wasn't super into it at first but when I started using the PBS and YouTube videos to help me with graphics and visuals I decided to start using Loom so that I could record myself within the video that I was showing to students. This is really cool because I'm able to put myself in the video that I'm showing to kids and I can pause the video and add my own commentary or teach anything that I want the kids to have specifically that the video may not cover. Loom is really cool because you can change the size of the video that you're filming. It can be really small and in the corner or it can be really big in the middle. You can change it throughout the recording so that kids can focus on you if there's something behind it. You can also record the screen so if I'm showing a YouTube video I can have the YouTube video and then my little video in the corner and it's really cool. So the last tip that I want to share with you is organizing your Google Classroom. Right now you are looking at my Google Classroom an actual Google Classroom that I use for my students. So I want to show you what I was doing in the previous weeks. So in the previous weeks I would post everything kind of in its own space. I hate how everything is like going but that's okay. I would put up material and I would put the lesson video in there and then below it I would put the assignment. Now they all are kind of jumbled right now because they have been moved since this was last week. But basically I would put the video lesson as material and then directly underneath it I would put the daily assignment and I was having a lot of trouble with kids not knowing where the video was especially if they didn't click into the video. Like if you know regular classroom or classwork you can't actually see everything unless you click on it. See now this is what it would look like. So the agenda would be there and then specials and then it would say video lesson Tuesday assignment. The kids were not clicking this. They just thought that it would pop up. So instead of having everything laid out in a different section I decided to change it up this week. This week I have a daily button. I have the agenda at the top and then I have everything that the kids need to do on Monday. So this week they will be doing their Monday check-in. They will watch the lesson video. They will complete the activity. There's also a vocabulary slide show there to help them and then I remind them to click turn in when they're finished and then I say join the Google Meet and be ready to show me what you learned today. My students are expected to click on this before they see me. So most of them at 8 o'clock in the morning should already be clicking in here watching the video and starting the activity. So this is marked as an assignment. So when they're all finished with all four of these items they will turn it in and I will be able to grade it. So I also put these specials in there and I have them scheduled per day of the week that they would normally be at their special. So on Monday I have this posted live at 8 o'clock. They do their library assignment on Monday. Then Tuesday, same thing, everything that I want them to do on Tuesday is posted in here in this one assignment button so that they don't have to click around different places finding things. Hopefully when they click on these they will all open in a different tab and they'll be able to use all three items when they're working. So then again their PE is on Tuesday and then again Wednesday everything is in one place. Everything I want them to do Wednesday is here and I have a basically to-do list posted for them. This I'm hoping will be more helpful for the kids because they'll only have to click one button per day instead of clicking two to three buttons per day. So we're going to cross our fingers and hope that this works better and see another thing that I really like to do another thing that I really like to do is I like to post in the stream a place for questions. Now the reason I do this is because when the kids are asking for help on an assignment or have a question for me those questions can sort of get lost through the assignment and through all the comments. So I put this week question place here and I have taught my students that when they ask a question they need to be very specific like I need help with the Monday assignment. That way I know exactly which one they need help with. So if they have a question they can put it here rather than in the comments of an assignment or in the comments of like their actual work. I asked them to put their questions here that way I do not lose track of them. I also realize that using Google Forms is so much easier than trying to create a google slide which I'll be honest with you I was trying to do those really cute google slides where the kids can like move boxes here and there and around the square everywhere but they're having a really hard time clicking and moving boxes. So I decided to switch to Google Forms for two reasons one no moving of any boxes. Different types of questions like multiple choice, click boxes, short answers, paragraphs anything you can think of that's the first reason. Reason number two I can make it a quiz and it can be pre-graded for me so I don't even have to grade it. If I make everything multiple choice or check boxes it can be a lot easier for me to grade and since I have 82 students that's going to save me a little bit of time. Okay guys so that is all I can think of right now as far as my back to school tips that I have for you. If you guys have any questions or want any help with any of these things put it down in the comments below and I will do my best to respond to those questions or comments as quickly as possible also if you're not following me on Instagram make sure you do that because I do like to answer lots of questions there and I do go live for lunch around every day at 12.20 on my Instagram during my virtual teachers lounge. Also if you're still here and you're interested my husband Scott and I did just create a new family channel it's called Apples and the Badge. We will be posting there every week multiple times a week basically anything we want if you want to be involved in our family adventure go ahead and click the button down below it's in the description if you want to go and subscribe to our new family channel. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button in case you want to see more videos from me and be alerted when I post and of course I will see you guys in the next video