 Monday today's April Fool's. Oh my gosh I can't believe it. I'm starting out my vlog in the car today. Yes I'm out of stoplight. Yes I'm being safe. I am part taking in the ever-famous Brown E teacher prank. Basically I tell my students if nobody pranks me all day long they will have a juicy big thick brownie waiting for them on their desk after recess which is at the end of our day. You cut out a bunch of the letter E brown letter E's and then you put those out when they come back from recess pranking them thinking that they're getting brownies like the kind you eat although they don't get the brownies and then when they come in all sad all disappointed then you pull out the real brownies and it's a double whammy prank. So I've seen a ton of people getting ready for it on Instagram. I've been doing it for the last five years of teaching. I don't know. I don't even know where I thought of it. I'm sure someone showed it to me five years ago but anyway so in preparation for the brownie prank today I am having to run to Walmart this morning just because I didn't remember to get it a couple days ago the brownies. So I think I'm just gonna get the little Debbie's ones because they're prepackaged and they're delicious and then I will be on my way to school. This week is a super important week for me. I have AZ Merit testing beginning tomorrow. We take the writing test tomorrow April 2nd. So I will let you guys in on all of the things that I do to prep my students for testing when I get to school. This is my first year doing an AZ Merit third grade class where it's their first year taking the test. So I'll be interested to see how things go differently with third graders than they do with fourth graders who have already taken it. So I'm gonna invite my principal in today just to talk to them about the importance of the test, the purpose of the test because they've heard it from me but I feel like if they hear it from him then they'll take it a little bit more seriously. So I'm gonna invite him in. Hopefully he will be available. He mentioned something about talking to the entire grade level about this but he hasn't yet and doomsday is tomorrow. So hopefully he'll be able to come in. Anyways I'm gonna go so that I can be a safe driver but I'll see you guys at school. Hello. It's Sunday night and it's 8.53. Cash went down at 8.30. I just got finished doing dishes and they are now drying. I hate that I dry my dishes right here because it makes my whole kitchen look messy. Guys I promise my kitchen is clean. I just have stuff everywhere but this is the life of a working mother. At least the sink is empty. You know we don't we don't have too much going on. I need to like clear this off. It's just kind of like a landing spot or like random stuff going on here. Did my nails today that's why I have nail stuff out. This is my project before I go into my room. So we're gonna do a quick cleaning montage for y'all. Only took me 10 minutes and it looks like he you guys see him sitting up. So I don't know if you guys follow my Instagram. Last week was really rough. He was like teething and he had a sore throat and now he's got like congestion. It's been like basically HE double hockey sticks for the last seven days. So right now I'm just letting him soothe himself because that's how we do it in our house. We really won't go in there unless he's like screaming and crying for like usually I give him about three minutes three to five minutes and if I really know that he's like losing his mind in there then I will go in but usually he's just upset and he's gonna go back to sleep which it looks like is the case. So that little cleanup took me about ten minutes and now my living room is clean. So for that that's my husband's clean laundry that he could spit away tomorrow. Other than that here's the living room. Now we did have all of our toys. We were hoping all of our toys would fit on that thing. This is a home of a toddler and it's just not going to happen. So back to your regularly scheduled vlog. Hey guys so we are now in the classroom obviously. So I'm gonna show you guys what I got this morning at Walmart for testing. So I usually provide my kiddos with like a snack or some kind of treat for while they're testing. So I grabbed two bags of pretzels, a box of goldfish, and then this is like my top see it's not a secret but this is like my go-to. This is the big bag of assorted hard candies and I like giving them hard candies to suck on because it kind of acts as like gum. It's like a distraction for the mouth. Helps them process things. I don't know. It works for me. So I'm gonna give those to my kids tomorrow when they do their reading test. Sorry writing test. I also got some bowls. So what I was thinking is maybe I would put the kids names on these and have them keep them for the next three weeks and have them put all their snacks because every time I give them a snack I want them to put it in a bowl instead of just like on their desk because that's gross. So I was thinking if I had them put their names on them and then I don't know put them like somewhere when they're done using them after every test. Somewhere where they can stay like clean. I'm not sure. My thinking was that. Okay so for April Fool's Day I did cut out my brownies. I just have plain old brownies and then I did get them some cute plates to put the brownies on and then I just got like the little Debbie's brownie cake things. I do need to cut out a couple more brownies that didn't really make it in the bunch and then I need to get prepped for this morning. So first thing this morning we're going to be working on cursive writing and then we will go to music which they haven't had in forever. Then we will flip to reading which we will be doing an AZ Merit practice passage and then which we will be doing the AZ Merit reading practice test since today is our last day with our computer cart so I wanted to get them on that just so that they could actually take the practice reading test practice getting logged into AZ Merit reading with their actual cards and then for math we have a bunch of AZ Merit math review stuff that we're doing. I have an AZ Merit test booklet that the kids are working on. Nothing super exciting or engaging about it. Guys it's just kind of like a last-minute throw together and I wish I would have had more time to plan something extravagant but I just simply didn't and as Hope King would say what if you did have time. So I'm gonna try and put something together for the rest of this week but I just didn't have the resources or the time this weekend to do anything for them for that. Then this afternoon will be their very last time practicing opinion writing and everything should be good to go. I do have some progress monitoring that I need to do as well and I just got a note from a parent saying that they're officially opting out of AZ Merit so I don't remember the percentage but I think it's like five percent. You can have opt out which is where they just don't take the test and they just don't do it like they have the right to opt out of it and so I did just get a letter so this student will not be coming in all five days that we are testing AZ Merit. They will not take the test and they will not be counted as part of my percentage, proficiency percentage and stuff like that. So anyway I'm gonna make some coffee because I really need some coffee. I'm gonna get my objectives changed on the board get my date on and then write up a little tiny schedule for them just so that we can keep track of what we're doing today and it is 7.57. I have about 25 minutes to do all of this so I'm gonna get rolling. I caught up with you all day but it is recess time the kids are outside and I just got finished placing their brownies on their desks. Some have actual cutout ease and some have the like outside edge because they weren't there weren't enough and I didn't want to go back so I think what I'm gonna do is hide this camera and film their reactions for you guys and see how they respond to the brownies. Let's see if I can find a good place to prop you. So it is Tuesday morning I'm not planning on doing a whole lot of vlogging today since today is our first day of standardized testing. Today we take the AZ Merit writing test and so I'm just really just setting up my room and getting things ready to go. As you guys can see we are now in rows so we are full-on testing mode. We have our testing controller up on the board. I stole this idea from Pinterest and then I actually traced the controller out on the smart board and then the kids actually put together their strategies so I just filled in all of the blinks with their own strategies that they came up with and then I also have a little note on the board I'll just go on it like this and then you guys can pause the video if you really want to read it. I thought this was really funny I printed this out and put go on and rock this test. I had this picture on the board yesterday and the kids totally got it so I thought that would be funny. I'm gonna get everything set up here. I do have three kiddos that will not be testing in here because they are sped kids with IEPs so they will go off to another room and test with the resource teacher and then I still need to take some things down I don't really have to take a lot down because I don't really have any visual aids for writing. However I probably will cover the calendar and then I think I might have to cover that because I'm not gonna cover the alphabet because they're third graders they know the alphabet that's not really gonna help them and then I am gonna take down my ELA and my math posters just for now what's nice is I can actually just pull that whole thing down and then I only have two anywhere else. I'll take down the idiom poster back there but I pretty much don't I don't really have any silent teachers I'll probably take these two things down too and just put them on that table back there and then it's done with but I really don't have that many visual aids in here at all I don't think I need to take these down hopefully not if so someone will come in and yell at me and that's fine this is our motivational board I hate how it's a little wrinkle I think that came from humidity but we're all set guys for testing so I'm gonna get to it so I hope you guys enjoyed this video I'll see you next week and I hope that if you are starting standardized testing that you guys have I hope that you find a way to motivate your students and to make them feel good about testing and not afraid and I hope that you can just love on those little babies because they just they need all the love they can get and so I always tell my students that I love them because they do they're my kids if you guys enjoyed this video please don't forget to like and subscribe to my channel also if you're not already follow me on my Instagram at apples and tiaras to see more updates throughout the week and I will see you guys in the next video