 Welcome back to my channel, Appleton Tiaras. So today I am doing the New Year's Teacher Tag created by Jennifer from Genuine Teaching. There are five questions in this tag, so I'm gonna just go ahead and start going through the questions and answering them as honestly as I can. Question number one, what are some challenges you have had this year? Okay, so one of the very first challenges that I wanna talk about is just moving grade levels. I have been teaching fourth grade for the last four years of my career and I took a step down to third grade and where it really isn't a challenge that big of a difference and where the age difference really isn't that much, it really is a big difference. Third graders are way, way more immature than fourth graders are. There are still babies, they still love you which is a really, really awesome thing but they're also much, much lower than I am used to so that has been a challenge and an adjustment. Another challenge that I have faced has been just more responsibilities placed on my shoulders. For example, I have lesson plans that I need to submit every week and that is just one more step that I need to do, one more thing that I need to do in addition to grading, in addition to planning, in addition to prepping and where I would normally just do a standard and objective and activity and then maybe write down an assessment. I am now having to actually type up lesson plans and they are a little bit more detailed than just those things I listed so that is quite a challenge. Ooh, so that is quite a challenge as well. I have had a lot more behavior issues this year than I have in the past. Not really a huge deal, just very chatty and it has been a challenge because I noticed that my students don't really pay attention as well as I would like them to which shows in their performance level so that has definitely been a challenge and something that I would like to work toward improving in this next year. Question number two, what are some successes you've had this school year? Well, one of the successes that I would say is definitely top five is working with a team that I absolutely love. This is a team that I got to work with when I was a student teacher, when I was an intern and when I was service learning so I know my entire team and it is just wonderful to be able to work with people that I love and adore and I know I work well with. Another success that I would have to share is being able to create a community within my classroom where all students feel safe and loved. That is part of the problem. My students love each other so much that they just wanna talk to each other all day long. I would absolutely count juggling being a teacher and a mom this year as a success because my son and I and my husband, we are still living and we are surviving and we are getting through the school year so I think that I would count that as a success. Question number three, what has been one of your favorite lessons or activities you've done this school year? Okay, so in the beginning of the school year I taught my students all about plants, the third grade standards for plants, that is plant structures, parts of a plant and the plant life cycle. We had a lot of fun, we did a jigsaw which students were collaborating. Basically, you start out in one group which is your home group and then you branch out into your expert group. This is where you learn about one of the parts of the plant. So I would have four students in each home group, they would branch out into the four different parts of the plant and then each one of them would learn, each group would be a different part of the plant so they would learn about that part and then they'd go back to their home group and teach their home group about their part of the plant that they learned about. These students take two column notes on the part of the plant that they're being taught about and then they teach their teammate the rest of their stuff and it was super engaging. My students had so much fun doing it. It was at the beginning of the year so it was more of like a training period but I'm getting ready to do another one of those with Arctic animals and I'm really, really excited. So it's just really fun and engaging. It's a great way to get kids collaborating and communicating and being able to learn from each other. Question four, what are your must-have items for the classroom? Hmm, I'm gonna have to think about this one while I go to question five. Question five, what are your goals for the remainder of the school year? For the remainder of the school year, I really wanna focus my attention on small group instruction and making sure that it's really, really valuable and intentional. I've noticed that I've been pulling my students back and just trying to do comprehension, comprehension, comprehension and I really wanna branch out and do a little bit more with them. I'd like to incorporate more sight words in there, vocabulary, maybe even some grammar. I would really like to introduce literature studies to my students for the rest of the school year. I haven't been able to really do that quite yet and I just feel like my students haven't been ready but I feel like at this point in the school year they are definitely ready for a literature study and I think I might start with Charlotte's Web. I absolutely love Charlotte's Web. Okay, going back to question number four, what are my must-have items for the classroom? So I'm gonna just take the time to describe five must-haves for the classroom. The very first one, I actually happened to have one here at school and it's one of these log tech keyboards I guess and I like this one because it has a mouse pad on it as well. I just put a pop socket on the back of it and I just carry this around and I can control my computer when it's in the back of my room even from the front of my room or anywhere in the room. So I can just kinda use the mouse pad, click around and it's really nice to go all the way back to my computer to do anything. Even though it's a laptop and I can physically bring the laptop up to where I'm teaching, it's just nice because it doesn't clutter my teaching desk and it's out of the way. Jennifer actually got me hooked on this last year. It was a different one, but that one actually lost a little thing for but you just plug it into your computer and then this will hook up to any computer you plug it into. So that's must-have number one. Must-have number two is definitely the Class Dojo app. I cannot live without the Class Dojo app. Number one, it keeps track of my student's behavior. Number two, it keeps me communicating with my parents all day long, all of the time and it's totally stress and worry free. Number three, I have to have go noodle in my classroom. My students need brain breaks all the time and I need brain breaks all the time. It gives me two minutes to take a breather, transition to the next subject and get my kids up and moving around, getting their energy out. Must-have number four is definitely music. Without music, I don't know that I could survive in my classroom. First of all, my students and I, we march to the Imperial March from Star Wars, that's the Darth Vader theme song and they never walk better than when that song is on. Number two, music for transitions. Number three, you gotta have music for quiet work time. My students tend to work way better when I have soft music playing or any music playing. It's a great noise monitor. If you tell them that they can't talk louder than the music, then they keep their voices down because you're gonna turn the music off if it's too loud. Music is a complete game changer. We love music. And number five, my must-have for the classroom is definitely my wax warmer. I just realized that none of these items are academic related, but that's okay. I still need to have them in the classroom. My wax warmer is a definite must-have. That room can get really stinky because guys, I teach in Phoenix. The kids are sweaty. The kids fart on me. I need that wax warmer to keep my sanity. So yes, I have a wax warmer right behind my desk where I do my guided reading and my small groups and then I have one over by the sink. So I have two of them going at once and I always, always, always get compliments. Okay, I'm gonna sneak in a must-have number six. Alternative lighting, Christmas lights, lamps, anything but those stinking fluorescence. As I'm talking to a fluorescent ring light right now. Yes, alternative lighting, you gotta have it. All right guys, so those are the tag questions and I'm gonna go ahead and tag my friends, Darren Nakakihara, Megan from Tukul for middle school, Kate the sleepy teacher, and then I'm also gonna tag Marie from the caffeinated class. CJ Reynolds, you better be doing this too. Latonya from Smartiesyle, get on this as well. Fernanda from That One Happy Classroom. Is that it? And Shelly from Early Adventures. Make sure you guys, I think they're doing this tag. If they are, I'll link it down below. Anyway, if you guys have a New Year's tag video that you'd like to share with me so that I can check it out, link it down below. Don't forget to follow my Instagram at applesntiaras and I will see you guys in the new year. Bye. Now it's- You want a bun? Yeah, please. Oh, okay. What are you doing? I'm just filming. Who are you talking to? The camera. I'm gonna edit this out or put it in the outtake. Hi. You're welcome. Come on, one and two. Come on. You can leave them. Okay, bye.