Teacher Vlog | How I Know My Students Are ACTUALLY Reading During A Quiz

Duration: 10:41 1467 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

In this teacher vlog, Charlotte, a fourth-grade educator in Arizona, shares a glimpse into her typical school week while balancing the challenges of parenting an eight-year-old son named Cash. She begins by acknowledging the common struggle for working parents and teachers to maintain consistent routines, noting that family needs often take precedence over personal projects like starting a new vlog channel. The video provides a detailed overview of her classroom activities, highlighting her focus on equivalent fractions in math using number lines and fraction strips, as well as introducing vocabulary related to comparing fractions to halves. In reading, she prepares students for Common Formative Assessments (CFAs) that evaluate their understanding of character descriptions, settings, events, and point of view, while science lessons involve interactive sorting activities where students identify interactions between Earth's spheres using scenario cards. Charlotte emphasizes her specific strategies for ensuring students are genuinely engaged with the material during assessments, particularly in reading. For her first online reading assessment, she requires students to highlight evidence directly from printed stories and write the corresponding question numbers on their tests. This method allows her to effectively review student work by identifying exactly which questions were missed and examining the specific textual evidence they selected, facilitating targeted reteaching sessions. She also mentions integrating "Six Minute Solutions" into her word work block to train students in problem-solving skills, alongside daily morphology reviews and spelling tests that occur every Friday. The week includes various routine events such as dojo stories, assemblies with local firefighters and police officers on September 11th, and morning exercises for her son to help him settle into the school day. As the vlog progresses toward its conclusion, Charlotte reflects on the successful completion of her scheduled assessments and activities, noting that the students performed well on the quick five-question science quiz. She expresses a desire to get back into a consistent vlogging routine but remains open to viewer suggestions for future content topics, such as detailed dojo store videos or insights into classroom setups and teaching routines. The video ends with her thanking her audience for watching and encouraging them to subscribe and follow her social media channels for more updates. Throughout the episode, she maintains a relatable and honest tone about the realities of teaching and parenting, offering practical examples of how she manages multiple curriculum standards while keeping students actively involved in their learning process.

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[music] Good morning everyone. Happy Thursday and welcome to another Apples and Tiara's vlog. If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I'm a fourth grade teacher in Arizona. I'm also a boy mom. Today is Thursday, the week after Labor Day. Um, I have been trying to start this vlog all week long. Um, but as you know, um, hi, good morning. U, but as you know, um, if you're a teacher or a mom or both or any working mom, um, when you try to start something, [sighs and gasps] a lot of time, especially if it's for you, a lot of times you just don't finish. and it's usually because there's children involved and their needs come first. So, if you guys are in my boat, um, put a boat emoji in the comments. Um, but anyways, it's Thursday. A lot has been going on this week. Um, nothing major, nothing scary, nothing life-changing, just, you know, all the things. Um, so, let's do a quick little recap and then I'll kind of take you guys around with me today, um, and finish a vlog. [laughter] So, um, let's, uh, let's take a look at what we've been up to. Okay, so this is my whiteboard that is right next to my teaching area. And so, this is kind of like the landing space for where everything goes. Everything ends up here. Um, so we have our learning targets. Um, we've been working on equivalent fractions in math, using number lines and fraction strips to, uh, find equivalent fractions. Um, and then I've been kind of dipping my toes into h having the kids compare the fractions to half just to kind of get that vocabulary into their minds before we even get to comparing fractions. Um, and then I also taught them how to multiply by a whole number as a fraction. So like, you know, multiply by two on the top, multiply by two on the bottom. You guys get it. So anyway, um we were talking about, you know, what do you already know about equivalent fractions? Um you know, and so yesterday was kind of like our first day working with equivalent fractions. So we just kind of talked about what we already knew. Um and then in reading, we are going to be taking a CFA today, common formative assessment on describing characters, settings, and events in a story and also point of view. Um this was yesterday's learning target. So I'll change it to CFA today. Um and then in science we are working on um explaining how earth systems interact. So I'm using this really cool sorting activity um where the kids get I don't know how many of these little cards there are. There's a ton of them. But essentially they work with a partner and they get all these scenario cards and they have to sort them based on which two spheres they think are involved or interacting. Um so for example, water liies clean the water they live in. Water lily would be a living thing and they're cleaning the water. So biosphere and hydrosphere um is where that card would go. And so that's what we're working on in science. I do have to give a science CFA, but I might wait until tomorrow because I want to give the kids time for this activity before they take that test. And the CFAs are only five questions each. Um, and they they just assess whatever standard we've been teaching. So, um, yeah. So, I'm going to do I'm giving two CFAs and read in and reading today. Um, but I did print the stories that go along with it because I do require my kids to highlight evidence um in the text and put the question number that it goes with on their test. This is their first reading assessment. So, >> um, so yeah. So, that's what we've got going on today. This is my 8-year-old son, Cash. He um is in [music] third grade here in the building, and he um is doing his morning exercises. [music] These are just to help him move his body in the morning, kind of get his wiggles out. That way he can be super amazing and chill during class in the morning. So, okay. So, the curriculum that we use for math in this district are [music] or is Amplify uh Desmos math. And so, I'm just pulling up my lesson for the day. We are on lesson six. We're going to do lesson six, which is a digital lesson today. Um, and I'm thinking I might just let them kind of cruise on their own on this assignment. Um, I feel like they're probably [music] very capable of doing it on their own. So, we're going to assign using a single code. [music] Okay. And then we'll put that code up [music] on the screen and then Okay. So, yeah, today they're going to do lesson two [music] on their Chromebooks for math. We're doing two CFAs in reading. We're doing [music] uh scenario sorting in science. We're doing six minute solutions during word work. Okay, so that's pretty much my whole day. [music] Um I'm training my students on how to do 6 minute solutions [music] during our normal word work time. This is when we would be doing our daily morphology and daily language review. [music] Um but we do have to train them on six minute solutions as well. That is the third activity. Hello. That is the third activity [music] that we do during our word work block. It's a 40 minute almost uh 45 [music] minute block of time and it's all for foundation and then we do a 40minut [music] actual reading block um which is where we teach our standard for the week. Um, but anyways, [music] I'm gonna get all my other slides up for the morning and [music] then I will probably catch up with you guys as quickly as I can. All right, you guys. So, I was able to give my first reading assessment. And something that I like to do because these tests are online, I like to print out a copy of the story and I just put it on plain paper and then I require my students to go and highlight evidence for each question and then they actually have to put the question number that their highlight matches. That way when I'm grading or when I'm reviewing how they did on their test, I can see which question they missed and I can go look and see what they thought the evidence was. This will help me when I go to retach them later. I can go over the test with them and just show them uh what mistakes they made. So, I'm actually looking at the results right now and I'm going to go fish and find their scratch paper from the inbox so that I can see why they missed that question. Hello, friendos. Happy Friday. I just wanted to make sure that I actually came back and talk to you guys about the ending of yesterday. Um, nothing crazy. Uh, nothing really insane to report. Just, you know, doing the thing. Um, today's Friday. It is September 11th, and we had a cute little assembly out on the black top with some firefighters and some police officers, and it was just grand. [music] Um, we did our dojo store, which we do every Friday. We did our spelling test, which we do every Friday. And then we took a quick science CFA, which is just a quick five question quiz. Um, and it seems like they did pretty good on it. So, we're gonna just move on with our lives. Um, so anyway, I figured I would close today's vlog. I know it wasn't that interesting. I've been trying to like get myself back into the routine of vlogging at school. Um, so yeah. Um, if you guys want to see anything specific, I know we need to do a dojo store video. Um, but if there's anything you guys want to see from me on this channel, any questions about teaching, um, routines, classroom setup, anything like that, just drop it in the comments below. And, um, maybe if I have like a specific purpose for filming a video, it'll be less rambly and less random. Um, so yeah, thank you guys for watching. I'm glad you're here. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and follow me on all my socials, and I will see you in the next one. Bye, guys. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. [music] >> [music] [music]