Virtual Classroom with my Bitmoji!

Who’s teaching virtually? What can you do to keep students interested and engaged?

We all know that this year is already crazy. There are so many options, changes, and infinite questions about this school year. One thing is for certain is that almost every district that I know or have read/heard about it doing some type of virtual learning. Whether it’s full time virtual or a hybrid of in-person and virtual. So the question: How can we capture the kids’ interests when their not in our room?

BITMOJIS! If you are unaware (or live under a rock when it comes to social media apps), Snapchat has basically dominated kids’ lives. I will confess, even mine. Bitmoji is a type of avatar that specifically connect with Snapchat, keyboards, and even Chrome (extension to add your Bitmoji anywhere!).

I usually add my Bitmoji to slides or handouts just to add a bit of fun. The kids love it because you can completely customize a Bitmoji and actually make it resemble you quite well. Plus some of them are shocked that I even know what it is! Somehow they think I’m 50 years old and not someone who actually grew up with Snapchat when it first appeared while I was in high school myself.

Bitmoji example!

With all the virtual teaching happening, the newest trend going around is creating a virtual classroom using your Bitmoji to stand, sit, or hangout in your “classroom” as if you would in a normal class. The possibilities with this creative class is endless. As of now, I’ve created a HQ class with a whiteboard that I can write messages on and a relaxing classroom with books and a couch. Almost all of the items I’ve put in my room are linked to YouTube channels, fun websites, or information for my students. It’s all interactive and editable for almost anything!

I had a lot of fun making this! I’ve even made one for my husband to use for his classes. I’ve had a few friends ask me to show them how to make one, so I decided to just make a tutorial video using Loom! Loom allows you to record your screen and add voice/camera. If you’re interested in making one of these, you can watch my tutorial here! There are plenty more videos or pages out there to learn how to create your classroom, but here’s another for you to check out!

Got any questions or suggestions for me? What else can I do with my classroom?

Organizing a Classroom

As of right now, what is the plan for returning to school for your district or area?

This week and the next coming weeks, I’m going to be working on moving into my new classroom. I’ve been assigned to teach English IV this year. Luckily the room I’m moving into is literally around the corner of my current room! 🙂

As I’m thinking of getting everything organized, I wanted to hear from other teachers how organization in the classroom works for you? And how will it be different this year?

For my district, we are currently still planning to start like our original plan. Teachers will return August 3rd for PD and work days. And the students will begin school on August 17th. My district is giving the option of in-person or online schooling. Since we still have to social distance within a classroom, our administration is working on getting every classroom filled with as many desks that can fit with all of them being spaced six feet apart. That also means that any extra furniture or tables we have in our rooms will possibly have to be taken out or moved to fit the absolute max number in a class.

Some surrounding school districts have made the decision to push back the start of school completely for 2-3 weeks so that schools can spend more time training teachers in the procedures and discuss how exactly this will all work.

I’m not a teacher that does too much extra furniture in my class or extreme classroom makeovers, but I’ve always had a table near the door to my class that I’ve used as a “student center”. It had all handouts they needed for the day so that each student could take one before they sat down. And I used it to hold materials for students: stapler, pencils, pens, pencil sharpener, tissue, hand sanitizer, etc. I’m sure to limit contact with other students, I may have to get rid of this space entirely.

Today I have successfully moved half of my old room to the new one! And I literally mean just moving it. Everything is either piled on the floor by the bookshelf or on tables. I’m still unsure of how our classrooms will have to arranged so I don’t want to do too much rearranging right now. I’ll continue to move the remaining “junk” from my old room in the next coming weeks.

Feel free to respond with your thoughts, ideas, or how you’re handling organizing a classroom with restrictions.

Follow my Instagram for more updates! –> iteach_iwrite_iread

Classroom Libraries

If you have a classroom library, how much do you actually use it?

Since I started teaching almost 4 years ago, I’ve been trying to build my classroom library. Currently, I have quite a collection, and I allow my students to “check out” books from me. I created a slip for them to fill out before taking a book from my classroom with the date of check out, name, grade level, and book title. I then transfer the info to a Google Sheet to keep track. I periodically remind students that they have a book checked out from my library so that none get lost or forgotten. It has worked out pretty well, and some students have even discovered some great books that sparks their interest in reading more! Oh, I’m also investing in a custom stamp so I can mark all of my library books in case they get misplaced in another teacher’s room! 🙂

The only downside of my library selection is that most of my books have been handed down, found (free on a curb), or given to me. This is great simply because I haven’t had to make many book purchases for my library. However, because those types of books are typically ones that are outdated or being thrown out for one reason or another, a lot of my books are old, worn, or not complete series.

So! I have started a campaign through Scholastic! It’s a way to collect donations and none of the money is taken by Scholastic. 100% of it is used to purchase online. I am using the money solely on new books, but you have the option of buying school supplies or items for your classroom too.

If you have the time, please check out my current campaign! ❤ Any donations are greatly appreciated and will go directly to building my classroom library with more current, interesting, and completed series of books for my students!

Please share your own classroom library and any successes or downfalls you’ve found with it.

Lesson: How to Revise

In my class, we’re are just finishing up their imaginative stories and since it is the month of Halloween, we had them writing scary/horror stories. Some students have gotten really into it, but others put in little effort. With this particular lesson, I created a Google Slides for the students to learn the acronyms “ARMS” and “CUPS” (found on Pinterest) for revising and editing prospectively. I think this somewhat helped the students understand the difference, but they still struggle with it. Although there were a few students that, before we even began the lesson, already had a very rough idea of the differences.

My supervisor liked this lesson and suggested that I print out the acronyms or create a poster for them to be hung on the wall. This way the students will constantly see it and be aware of it since they will be using revising and editing throughout the year. In my own classroom, I definitely will but since this isn’t my class, I won’t do it now.

I got the idea of modeling my own writing from an instructional coach that works with the district. She comes to help out our department a lot and is close with my mentor teacher, so she’s helped me out a few times. When I was doing this lesson the first time, I just had the students raise their hands and tell me what to fix. But I realized that it worked a lot better if I had them come up to the board and correct it themselves with a marker. It gets them active and more attentive.

After my supervisor watched my class period, she also suggested that instead of giving them an entire 20 minutes to work on their own (after a while a lot of students were off task), I should give them sections of time and stop in between to recap or use a student’s revisions as an example.

This exact lesson was for revising only, but we did the same concept for editing the next day. Of course, there are students that paid no mind to this in their own writing, but it’ll be evident in their final grades.

As a new teacher, there are still a lot of things I need to fix and learn to do better, but overall I think this lesson went better than my first. Plus the actual content of this lesson was better.

Adjective Clause Taboo

Here is my lesson plan that I created for a fun game covering adjective clauses!

This was really fun to do with my classes, but we discovered that the cards they create may need to be monitored because we ended up with a lot of multiples. Also, it works best if you take one teams cards and give to the other team to guess, and vice versa. This keeps them from guessing their own cards because that’s too easy. We were keeping points for each team (we didn’t give any prizes but you can), and if they didn’t give the hints in the form of an adjective clause but their team guessed it, we DID NOT give them points.

From this lesson I learned that it really makes the day run a lot smoother if you are over prepared for everything. A lot can go wrong in a new lesson, so I need to be prepared with a back up! Always!

Half way!

So, I haven’t been keeping up with this blog whatsoever. But here’s the dealio, the fist 9 weeks (my school uses a 9-week grading period… weird) is almost over. The kids are great but some of them can be frustrating. A few are struggling in class but it’s not because they don’t know the information or can’t learn. I know this because when I discuss with them one-on-one, they get it. They struggle because they refuse to listen when instruction is happening and they either don’t pay attention to note taking or are just bad at it. Some kids crack me up! I love this career that I’ve chosen and I can’t wait to have my own classroom!

My mentor has rules in her classroom, some that we don’t always follow, but I’m most excited about having my own room because I’m already developing my style. As I’m teaching along side her, there are certain things I can already tell that I’ll be approaching differently in my own classroom. For example, we just recently had a Unit 1 Grammar Test. We reviewed for the entire class on Thursday. I instructed them to take their journals home to study if they needed it because they weren’t allowed to use notes on the test, which none of them did. When they came in the following day asking if they could use notes on the test, I said no. And I had no sympathy for them because I had warned them the day before. But my mentor has a major soft spot for these kids and allowed them to use notes for 5 minutes then continue the rest of the test. I honestly probably wouldn’t have done that. I told them the previous day to study if they needed to and in my own classroom, they would have been stuck if they didn’t do so. Retesting is always an option after attending tutorials to relearn the material. Am I mean? Ha.

My first observation is done. My second is coming up in two weeks. I’ll upload my first lesson plan so maybe I can get some feed back.

I want to post again on, or before, Friday because I’m making the lessons for Friday and Monday to begin our imaginative story unit! Since it’s Halloween, we’re doing horror!! I’m pretty excited about this! I’m planning on introducing it with Goosebumps!

One last thing! I’m graduating in December and I can’t believe my semester is almost half way finished! It’s going by way too fast. These kids are going to make me cry when I leave!

Excited pre-service teacher!

Hi there!

This is my final semester at UNT and I’ll be finishing up with my student teaching! For those of you who may not know the process of student teaching, I’m basically living the life of a real teacher but without getting paid. It’s kind of a messed up gig but I’m still excited for it!

I’ll be in a 7th grade English classroom with my mentor, Mrs. Robbs. For the sake of professionalism, I won’t be using anyone’s real names on here. I’ll mostly use this blog for posting my own reflections, teaching strategies for later use, and my own lesson plans. I would like to get advice and reviews from other educators so that I can grow as a teacher when I actually have a job and get paid for doing what I love.

School starts on August 22nd! I’m looking forward to meeting all of the students, especially since it’s the beginning of the year I can really have a chance to connect with them. At the same time I’m really nervous since this semester I’ll actually be teaching on my own at some points. Being a pretty introverted person, I have to call upon my inner extrovert and pretend that I like it! But teaching is really a passion of mine and I want to be able to make a difference in kids’ lives just like my past teachers have for me. It really does make a huge difference when a teacher does really care about their students.

Any educators that happen to come across my blog, please follow! And lend your wisdom to me!