 We are back. The condition of the classroom is actually pretty good considering where we left it. Let's see if the frogs are still alive. I have a feeling. I think the snail's dead. It's been in that spot for a while. That one's alive. Oh they're together and they're both alive. Perfect. Okay, we're gonna feed them real quick. I brought this bag of stuff back from home that I need to get rid of. These were gifts from my little nephew's girlfriend for Christmas. So I'm gonna put these away and then the rest of this is all like Christmas candy that's left over and then some jingle bells that I borrowed from a co-worker that I need to give back. So I need to go through this bag and either throw some stuff away or just store it. I'm gonna just like empty it on this table and then I'll probably just put whatever into the cupboard. I just stick my Christmas tree in here because I don't know where I put my box which sucks. I feel like maybe the janitors threw it away which isn't a big deal. I mean it can stay in there but I don't know I just prefer to put in a box somewhere. Cabinet, I organized before break so it's pretty organized and I don't think I need to pull anything out for the first week because okay so when we come back from winter break on Monday I'll be starting to teach a writing lesson or a writing unit on informational writing because I am the informational writing teacher since I cover most informational topics and then after that I'll be doing another unit or two in science and I won't be doing too much social studies this quarter. In fact I might assign a take home project which will be a small research project on a European explorer. Something that they can do at home for homework because it is my last quarter here for the year since I'll be going on maternity leave. I just want to make sure that I cover everything that is super duper important and that is mostly science standards since they do get tested in science in fifth grade. I just want to make sure that I have all of my science standards covered before I leave or as many as possible and then I can have the substitute do some social studies while I'm gone since I do have only around a unit and a half left like I'm almost done with Miss America and then all that I really have left is European expansion or exploration rather so I don't have a ton left social studies wise. I also have mapping skills that I didn't totally cover this quarter or this year which I can have the subdue. There's a lot of really fun like mapping activities that I've done in the past with like making your own maps and creating your own country and stuff like that so I'm thinking I'll probably leave all of that kind of stuff for the sub to do. Try and have the sub do as much fun things as possible. Okay so I'm just gonna show you guys what I left here on my desk for what I wanted to try and accomplish today. So a couple things I printed the final three months that I'll be here worth of whose absent calendars and what I like to use this for is I just every day in all three of my classes whoever's not there that day I write their name down and then that way if we're doing something that's very specific to that day and they're not there I can excuse them from it so I've been doing this all year and it's been great for grading like I said if we did a lab that I'm taking a grade on I just excuse that child from that day and then I found some New Year's stuff that I wanted to put into like a packet to just put out on their tables so that they have something to do these are all from TPT I could not tell you where I found every single one it's just kind of stuff I had this one looks like it's from the Aplicus teacher it's just a name tent and they write four goals underneath the flaps and then there's a couple of super teacher ones that are just like word searches that are like super simple they can do when they come in I didn't bring a ton of water or any food with me today so I really do only plan on being here for like maybe an hour or two just to get things kind of like started and then come in on Friday for majority of the day and get as much as I can done I also have a doctor's appointment on Friday so I thought it would be the perfect day to come in since I'm already gonna be in this area I thought this was so cute of her to get me it's like a get things done to-do list thing and they are little ripoffs so I can use each of these throughout the week to put my to-do list on and it's cool it's got a work life and a home like life side I wouldn't even know where to tell you to get these they were just a gift I'm gonna put that right there and then this one is sticky notes but they're like on a like a background so you could like staple this to the wall or pin it to the wall and then grab a sticky note as you need it which is what I might do and then some more little sticky notes these are her cartoon that she made or her little anime character that she created so I thought that was really cute there under my calendar I am also getting two students two new students in the next quarter so I've already put binders together for them so that when they come they have everything that they need to get started luckily we just completely cleared out all of our binders and we're kind of doing a big reset so that will be nice like cookie crumbs on it all right friends so a couple of things that I've done so far today are update my procedure slides which are pretty much the same as they were at the beginning of the year I just kind of take out all of the like beginning of the year stuff like how are you getting home that kind of stuff I take all of that out and I just keep the things that the kids need to remember to do I'll show you guys that in just a second I use Canva to create my slides for procedures I'm gonna kind of go back and forth between Canva and Google I think Canva's way cuter to be honest and so anyway so this is what my procedure slides look like they're just kind of like fun and they move and it's just a quick reminder of what to do in certain situations and then I also have my school-wide procedures and an activity that we can do for that and it just goes through like each area of the school and like the expectations in that area just so that they don't forget and then I've also updated my weekly agenda which is here and I have a new slide for the new year it's winter theme I just have to do list what they're gonna be doing when they come in I always do a little announcement like if something's weird for the day schedule wise do that and then I always have one of the daily hype slides from Miss R but I figured for this one I would do a kid president hype I'm just to kind of get them back in the groove I want to actually branch out from doing just Miss R slides and doing more like motivational stuff and then so the schedule for the Monday back from break we have I always have to have a learning target so today I will review classroom and school-wide expectations so that I can have a successful quarter three I'll know I've got it when I can sign a new social contract for quarter three and then this is our to-do list we're gonna do a new year selfie project I'll show you that in just a minute we'll share good things we'll do put a finger down welcome back edition we'll review our classroom procedures and expectations and practice those and then during their wind time which is just an extra hour we will review our school-wide procedures which this is getting covered in each homeroom by each homeroom teacher so during actual homeroom time we will do this one which is just my classroom expectations I want to make sure they have those before the school-wide ones and then after specials in recess we will do the school-wide ones and then throughout those slideshows I do have little like community building activities like I have this one which is fun where the table has to list as many fruits as they can within a time frame and the one that lists the most gets extra five dojo points things like that I also have this get to know you spinner which they can do this is from TPT or wholehearted school counseling and then I have all these put a finger down activities from teachers be teachers as well so that's what I'm planning on doing the first day back I will see all three of my classes the first day back we decided we did want to start rotating right off the back because we don't want to really waste any time this semester is the last one that I'm going to be here like I mentioned so we want to make sure to use as much time as possible so then day two I'm going to jump right into informational writing so I guess the last thing I need to do for this day is photocopy all the things so I'm going to be giving my students a calendar of January so that they can see all the dates for the month and we have some special things on there like you know no school days field trip days days that I'll be out with a sub and then I will make four copies of this and this is just a weekly planner for the kids to use in their binders where they can write down things that they need to finish at school and things they need to do at home and then anything that comes up that's a reminder for the week like hey remember on Tuesday to bring in a stuffed animal or whatever like whatever the reminder is to do so each kid will get one January calendar and then they will get their like little planner for the month and that was grade level wide and then I'll be doing this new year selfie project as a come-in like a welcome work kind of situation where each day they can work on it for the first like 10 minutes of class they just draw a selfie picture of themselves and decorate the phone and then they carry on a conversation with someone what is your new year's resolution and then what are your new year's goals and in my agenda slide I do have a quick blurb about the difference between a resolution and a goal so we'll talk about that together and then I was gonna make these as their name tense so when they come in I'll have these copied on colored paper and then I'll put their names on the back so that they know where they're sitting for the beginning of the school year or the new year and then that way there's no confusion they can also write their goals on the inside of this if they'd like but since they're doing that selfie project I don't they don't have to write it twice if they don't do and then I also have a word search that I will put on the inside of their tents that way if they finish their selfie project early they can have something else to work on and this is just for in the morning when they get here because we do a soft start which means that the kiddos can come in between 745 and 805 that's the tardy bell and between that like 25 almost 30 minute time frame kids are getting to school they're unpacking their stuff they're getting their things ready to go and they're coming in and they're working on something quietly at their seat I typically don't care if they like have a conversation have a conversation with the people at their seats at their table but they can't like get up and run around the room and all that like they can work on their seat work while having conversations like they can be social and then the other thing that I did was I kind of moved a few things around and just created a few spaces in my room to make things a little bit easier I'm thinking that these new systems may help the substitute when they're here so this area used to be kind of cluttered and crowded with like random stuff this is my learning target space and so I want to make sure that this space is completely clear because I will use it to write learning targets on and since it's a three-part learning target I need lots of room it's also right behind where I stand when I'm like teaching directly and then we are going to make a new social contract we are capturing kids heart school and so I want to make a new year social contract where the kids all sign it our old one is over here but I just think that it's a good idea to refresh what we need from each other and have it out and like visible for a good amount of time just so that we can refer to it when there's like a consequence and then I also have this new I'm done what do I do poster here and this will be something that is changing they used to just be able to pick anything on clever to do when they're done but it got a little bit crazy and out of hand and so they only have these five options now which is gonna be great because hopefully it will slow them down and then the last thing that I added is this I'm gonna take this Wonderwall down because I just honestly haven't been using it so I need to take that down next time I come in but I have my week laid out so that when the kids come in they can look at this and see what we're doing each day of the week and if they're absent one day they can see what we did the day prior so on Monday we will be doing procedures and expectations and just community building and then Tuesday we're gonna start our informational writing unit we'll discuss the prompt resources and we'll look at the writing guide so that they can kind of see what is coming in the next two weeks because I'm hoping that this writing assignment will take us two full weeks I'm hoping next Friday they're done with their draft at least then on Wednesday we will organize our essay I'll teach them how to make graphic organizers and how to use those graphic organizers so that when they're doing their state test they know how to make a graphic organizer and they know how to use it and then we will discuss introductions and what elements go in an introduction and hopefully there will be time to actually write one if there isn't then we will write our introductions on Thursday then I'm hoping fingers crossed if we're not writing introductions Thursday I will teach them how to cite information from a resource appropriately for their grade level this is a skill that they do not know how to do per our district writing assessment this is something that they struggle with using quotation marks citing text evidence and using the text evidence to support their ideas instead of just rewriting and then if we're done with that I'm hoping to take a break from the writing unit and do a quick social studies activity which is cracking the Mayan code I'll show you what that looks like finish our Mesoamerica unit before we left for break which is fine because I am going to continue doing it this quarter and small increments and then next quarter the students will do more independent research with the substitute because I have a whole European Explorer thing that I can give the sub to work on with them it's also testing season so I imagine it's gonna be you know there's gonna be a lot of days where they can't like where they'll be able to work on something independently rather than like a whole class lesson stuff like that so the breaking the Mayan code is a resource that I have used for years absolutely love it and it's made by oh gosh I can't even remember who makes it I'll have to look and link it down below but it looks like this and basically what it is is it's a series of like four different puzzles and the kids go through each puzzle and through the puzzles they are reading information about Mayan culture it varies from where the Mayans lived to the calendars they made to the gods that they worshiped to the decrease in population and what happened to them and it's more like escape room type vibe so I wanted to do that on Friday so I think that's everything that I've accomplished today I do have some things that I need to do when I come back the next day which will be Friday and that is make all the table tents I'm gonna copy them today but I'm gonna put all their names on their table tents and then I need to what else is on here I need to make a daily assistant to do list so I have two new assistants this quarter and I want to make them a list that when they come in in the morning they do this to do list and it's like something like a daily to do list like they have to do it each day just to give them a little bit more responsibility so I want to do that and then I will actually on Friday map out my whole writing unit so I will gather all the resources and type sort of like a plan for each day that way I have a map to follow and I'm not getting off track or off-task with science I've taught it so many times now for the last four years that it's just drilled in but I haven't taught writing in a long time so I do want to make sure that I have like everything ready and dialed in so and then at home well I don't really need to work on my slides at home now that I've updated them here so I don't have to work on anything at home unless something pops into my brain so also I had to put this on the wall on my vocab wall because before we left for break several kids would just like come over here and draw and I didn't really address it because we weren't really doing much or like you know it was like the end of this the semester but I don't want kids drawing on this board because it is a vocabulary board so I want to make sure that it's reserved for that anyway I think the room is in a good state I feel good about my plans coming back I still need to unload that bag of stuff I'll probably just do it Friday because I want to just get these copies done and made and get out of here go get go get some lunch and then go relax before I pick up cash from honeybee so I'm gonna go do that and then I will see you guys in the next one so thank you all for watching so much don't forget to follow me on Instagram take talk all the socials they're all linked down below don't forget to subscribe and I will see you all in the next one bye guys