Hey y’all! Welcome back to the blog! The first week of school is always the hardest for me, especially in 2020. One of my least favorite parts of the first week is going over rules and procedures. It’s something that has to be done with every class, but it definitely isn’t the most fun lesson in the world.
This year, however, I knew it would be especially important because of all the COVID regulations. Check out my blog post about preparing for in person teaching during COVID here!. So I decided to do something that’s been on my list for a long time! I created my own video to teach classroom procedures to my students!
Not only does this save my voice (that I always lose the first week of school), but each class gets the same information and I don’t forget anything! You can make the video fun and silly so it will be more engaging for your students than just listening to you talk.
Process
To start this process, make a list of things your students need to know about your classroom. Here are some examples:
- How to enter and exit appropriately
- Where they sit in the classroom
- Proper uses of flexible seating
- Procedures for using materials/instruments
- Classroom Rules/Expectations
- About the teacher
- New this year:
- Hand sanitizer on the way in and out of the classroom
- New seating to allow for distancing
- Proper mask wearing procedures
- What portions of the classroom aren’t available (flexible seating)
- Where to put used materials for cleaning
When you are creating clips for your video to teach classroom procedures, be sure to think about how long you want it to be. This year, my video ended up being a little longer than I intended. Including the new COVID regulations brought it to almost 10 minutes long when I was shooting for 5-7 minutes. In years to come, though, I know this won’t be an issue.
You might also consider doing different videos for certain grade levels (i.e. a K-2 video and a 3-5 video). I could explain recorders and after school chorus to my 3-5 kiddos and not worry about telling the K-2 friends that it doesn’t apply to them. I didn’t do that this year, but in the future I may consider it.
One of the most important things in the video that I needed to tell/show my kids this year is where to sit. Normally, I use flexible seating and when they come into my room, they are only on the rug for about 5 minutes before choosing their seat for the day. This year, however, I’m not allowed to use my flexible seating materials because of COVID. Instead, I have sit spots spaced out around the room as far as possible (3-4 feet) and each student will have an assigned seat.
Filming/Editing
For one portion of the video, I decided to show them how to come in and sit down rather than just tell them. As you know, modeling new procedures is the best way for our kiddos to grasp them quickly. Filming this took a few extra steps, but it was helpful for them to see how to enter. In order to get this effect, I just set up my tripod in different areas to get the angles coming into my room. Then, I put them into iMovie and spliced them together. I also added a voice over to explain what I wanted them to do.
The only tools I used for this entire video were my phone, a tripod and iMovie on my computer. As you all know, I firmly believe in working smarter, not harder. You don’t even need a tripod or iMovie. You could prop your phone up on something and film the whole video in one take. Filming it this way means no editing! Once I finished editing, I uploaded my video to my YouTube channel and made it “unlisted.” This basically means that you can only view it if you have the link. So of course, I showed it to my kiddos in class the first week and I also put it up on my Canvas page for students who aren’t in person learning yet.
Teacher WIN!
We just finished up our first week of in-person learning (after 3 weeks of virtual) and I can tell you that this video was a huge success! My students did great watching it and gleaned all the information I needed them to! It was definitely too long for some of the younger kiddos, but I showed it to them in two chunks with a brain break in between. This helped them be able to digest it a little better.
I would absolutely recommend using a video to teach classroom procedures for your students in the future. It was so nice to be able to save my voice and not forget anything! I think it was definitely worth the work on the front end and I’ll be repeating this process next year. Hopefully, we can go back to “normal” procedures and expectations then! If you decide to make one of these for your classroom, comment below and let me know how it goes! As always, you can follow me over on Instagram (@musicfromb2z)! Thanks for stopping by!
