 my name is Charlotte Valdez and I am a fourth grade science and social studies teacher in Arizona. So today is Friday the 6th of January and I am just here in my classroom and today I'm going to be just prepping for the first week back of school. I have a couple of things that I need to prep for so I think the first thing I'm going to do today is make a to-do list and then I'll kind of just talk about what those things are what I'm planning on doing and then we'll get started. So if you guys are excited for this video give it a thumbs up grab a snack and let's get to it. I always kick myself when I forget to erase the board and then leave it for a few weeks because it's so hard to get off and that is just taking down the Christmas decorations and falder decorations so I have a lot of like leaves up and around and then I have some Christmas stuff out like the tree and stuff like that so I need to take all of that down first. I probably should have put that at the top of my list but it's fine. I do have a hallway kindness tree that I'm going to be making. It's one of the projects that I decided to do as a bulletin board and it should take me through like the rest of the year maybe through March. I am going to be getting a not getting but I have a student teacher starting with me on Monday and so I want to kind of prepare a space in the room for her where she can like put her things down she can sit she can kind of make herself at home she can kind of make it her own little space a space for her to work a space for her to just have that's hers because I know I really appreciated that when I was a student teacher and then I also need to move the tables and stools to their next new spots and then organize everything so this is the current state of my room this is left over from the last day before break all of the tables are moved kind of in this like I don't know weird formation and they're obviously not going to stay that way so I do need to move them and then I want to organize as much as possible just kind of like clean everything like move things around just get everything to a state where when the kids come back in everything is done put back where it goes that way there's no confusions no questions and I don't need to worry about anything like that so I think what we're going to start with is just taking down Christmas and fall putting those back in the boxes that they came in and then we'll go from there all right you guys so some time has passed and I have been a very busy bee um wanted to show you guys what I have accomplished so I have moved all of the tables back to where they go and they're kind of messy right now because I'm trying to like do a little bit of organization what I did do is I created a little sweet corner for my student teacher and so it's just this little corner right here I moved my Chromebook cart over here because I hated that it was right by the door and like when the kids came in they were like getting Chromebooks out people were trying to come inside like it was just kind of a hot mess express so I moved it back here I moved my um fridge and this thing out of my little pouch here because I wanted to free up this table for Jessica my student teacher so I'm kind of just shifting some things around like my like personal teacher tools things that I like need to keep back here um and then I'm also transitioning this little table into like a chill out spot um this is where cash kind of sits and plays in the morning so this is the perfect place for a child who might need like a break from the group or who needs a quiet space to work without being disturbed I think this is a great spot it ended up being where some kids were kind of gravitating to anyways at the end of the year last year not like the school year but like the physical year they were starting to gravitate over there anyway so I thought it would be a great place for them to just kind of relax chill out and then I also have a student aid who comes in at the end of my day so they can work there as well so there's just one more empty space for people to get stuff done um so now what I'm going to do is just continue cleaning and then I'm going to take a break at 12 30 eat lunch and then my goal is to start on my bulletin board out in the hallway after I eat lunch because that's probably going to take me some time um and I'm just like finding my library books all over the room anyway that's what I'm working on I'm gonna try and finish organizing by 12 30 because that's my lunch so I'm hoping I can get all of this kind of like hot mess express sorted out before then we'll okay lunch has been eaten copies have been picked up and brought upstairs a couple of other little projects have been done the next project I'm going to try and do is my hallway bulletin board I'm going to put a little picture right here of the inspiration that I got so I printed out all of these little hearts I'm going to cut them out and give each child one of them there will be 90 ish hearts and so I've never made a tree like this actually that's not true I think I've made like one before and so I'm gonna kind of just show you guys what I'm thinking how I'm gonna make it and if it turns out like garbage then I'll try again um I've looked at lots of pictures of them online and I feel like I have a good idea of how I'm gonna do this so I'm gonna give it a go and if you are a pro bulletin board tree maker please don't judge me I think it turned out pretty good I mean you know it's gonna be covered in little hearts and it's gonna be super cute I do need to fix the border on this board the lovely children like to pull the borders off so I do need to fix that so I'm gonna do that real quick and then um the hearts are gonna be all on the branches here and here and then they're gonna like bloom up and above and then I think up across the top I'm gonna put the words kindness makes us bloom um so we'll figure that out and then that'll be my bulletin board for the next two months okay so I thought of a really cool idea that I'm gonna give a try this first week back um so I went through my classroom library and I pulled out all of my informational texts like pretty much anything I could find that was like either a scientific topic or history anything I could find that was informational what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put them on each table so I put five books at each table and they totally vary in themes so like this table has wonders of the world finding the titanic underground penguins swim but don't get wet and then I also have Henry's freedom box and I think I put an extra one on here an extraordinary life so each of the tables has like a pile of informational texts that I'm gonna start using as a warm-up tool in the past I've had my students working on boom cards as a warm-up and I just find that having the kids warming up on the computer just allows for more like they're just messing around they're not on the websites they're supposed to be on they're talking they're just not doing what I want them to do so I'm gonna try out this new warm-up routine and see how it goes if I like it I'll keep going with it and what I'll do is I'll start checking out books from the school library and putting them on the tables and I can even rotate the books so like whatever books are on this table this week I'll rotate them to that table so that like that'll take me like six weeks that's almost the whole quarter by the time I rotate all of the books from table to table so I'm gonna try this out and see how it goes I don't even care like because this is great for my sped kids because they can just look at pictures you know they can try to read but if not they can just look at pictures you know I think it's gonna be great so wish me luck fingers crossed okay um I've gone around and I've organized everything as pretty organized as I can be I've gone through my first couple of days of lesson plans to make sure I have everything prepped and ready to go the only thing I have left to do is clean up my front desk area I'm actually taking the tablecloth home to wash it and then I need to cut these out these are just the words that go on the bulletin board which I don't have to do right now I could totally have like a student aid do it because we're going to be working on this project throughout the week I'm going to cut these out so that their individual sizes the kids will cut them out individually and then I'm done and I'm ready for the first week back to school I did pull a couple of my Martin Luther King books out as well because next Monday is Martin Luther King day so I have Martin's big words these are the only two Martin Luther King books and then happy birthday Martin Luther King what I might do with those is just throw in a quick read aloud or like if a kid's done early they can go and read one of those I also have my what should Danny do and my what should Darla do books out so if I have a kiddo that's maybe not making the right choices or they're struggling I might say hey go grab the Danny book go sit in the hallway and read for 10 minutes or like like again if they're done early and they have nothing else to do they can read one of those so anyway I'm just kind of like putting stuff away up here kind of moved everything that was on this table onto this table so I could like wipe it and clean it and so now I'm just kind of moving things back and forth um because I need to organize my teaching area get it situated and then I'm pretty much done for the day all right you guys so it is now 3 30 um I'm gonna run downstairs to grab a couple of other printed things that I need put them in my mailbox and then I am out of here so I think we're ready we're ready for Monday um I'm gonna give you guys a quick pan the classroom and then I'm gonna wave goodbye and I will see you guys on Monday