I have been a teacher for 19 years now, and I still love getting new ideas from others.

Soooooooo I am a 2nd grade teacher in Western NY, I've been watching your videos for awhile now, one because you are a teacher and two because my teacher friends say you and I would get along like 2 peas in a pod cause of our personalities. Anways, I love seeing your Safe Space sign near your desk. Makes me happy to see that in high school classrooms. Thanks for being an ally!

I love the idea of first chapter Friday. It is an interesting way to introduce new books to students. Reading for fun is not emphasized for students. -B

Oh, elementary kids these days definitely ask "why?" ALL the time, and always remind you of how what they're doing in your class is not what they want to do (which is actually the reason why they're asking "why?". I was actually shocked when I experienced that because I thought that line of questioning would come from much older students!

Hey Mary - If paper flow is an issue for you I would suggest looking into the 31-day file system or sterilite draws for every day of the week (depends how far in advance you want to plan)

Interesting that you don’t have desks; is that how all the classrooms are in your school? It’s nice to see such a motivated gifted teacher like you.

I love your channel!! I just started my teacher channel. :)

I am obsessed with your videos! I am a 9th grade Family and Consumer Sciences (formerly home economics) teacher in East Tennessee and you are such an inspiration of creativity! I am always looking for new and engaging activities and your use of flip grid for presentations with coffee house mode is GENIUS! Also, is the beginning of class slide something that you made? I would love to use something like that to show our daily agenda/objectives/ and behavior expectations.

@TheCaffeinatedClassroom

5 жыл бұрын

Oh my goodness - thank you so much! I love getting ideas from other teachers and then mixing them all up to fit my class! The slides are something that I make about a week ahead of time - I used to make a more detailed list of what we were doing, and then realized it overwhelmed a lot of my students. Now I just make a To Do list for each day and it keeps us on track!

+The Caffeinated Classroom Mrs. Mary , Back in my days as an autistic student in school if I did not see what you were teaching me as working in my life or working with interests in life you're done and I am mentally gone so it way better to present the why of what you are doing to your students and connect it to how it would work in their life so that they do not feel that they are having their time wasted listening to a lesson that leads to nothing . Keep right on doing that because it will benefit you and them in the end . - Dwight

@TheCaffeinatedClassroom

5 жыл бұрын

Thank you very much, Dwight!

Love first chapter Friday I will be doing this with my year 10 class. This is my first year teaching so I am so grateful for all of your ideas and tips. Have you included the list of prompts that you used for this anywhere else as I would love to have it ready to go especially as I have just had my hard drive wiped with a whole years worth of work on it :-(

Questions about Lord of the Flies companion lit circle books: Do you choose books that tie in with themes for students to choose from? Does your school have a huge selection available? How do you decide which parts of LotF to teach? Do students only read it in the classroom, or do you assign reading for homework too? So glad I found you in "YT land"!

@TheCaffeinatedClassroom

5 жыл бұрын

Great questions - I plan to write a blog post about this unit this week, but who knows if I'll finish it... All 3 books I am using for LOTF align with the themes of "coming of age/loss of innocence" and "human nature: peaceful vs. violent." One of the book selections is an adopted text with my district, so there are AMPLE copies available at the library. For the other two, my students cleaned the library out of all the copies they had, so we borrowed from another high school in my district! Some students also wanted to purchase their own copies, so that helped. :) I am teaching a portion of every chapter of LOTF - this way, students can use this story as an anchor text and to practice their analysis and annotation skills. I give students a lot of time to read in class, but ultimately they will have reading to do at home. Since they have a reading schedule ahead of time AND have chosen the book for themselves, most (MOST) students keep up with the reading... If only it were all!

I love how your desk is cornered! Did you make that yourself or did you buy that somewhere? The two angled sides looked like they were cut maybe? I absolutely love it!

Love your videos I currently teach 8th grade United States history any tips for increasing reading comprehension skills?

@TheCaffeinatedClassroom

5 жыл бұрын

Thank you!! Reading comprehension is something I've been working on this year. A great tool I've been using is CommonLit.org - they have TONS of free texts available for grades 3 and up, and have phenomenal tools that will support student reading comprehension. I also encourage students to listen to audio books as they read to help them stay focused on the text. CommonLit should have texts you can use for history!