I have created this blog in an attempt to provide a place for teachers and parents of children with special needs to find positive strategies that promote academic, social and emotional growth. I believe in early intervention and in positively addressing both the challenges and strengths of students with disabilities.
My friend Bev came up with this brilliant idea years ago. I didn't need it for a number of years, but last year I had several students who benefitted from having more interaction during their story time.
We simply took an inexpensive paperback book and cut it apart. Next we ran the pages through the laminator. We then took a targeted vocabulary word from each page and created a Boardmaker document with a picture. Next we used the hole punch binding tool that we have in our teacher workroom to bind the book back together. Finally, we used velcro dots to make each page interactive.
This has been a great way for us to create inexpensive interactive books for circle time.
Our district has had a plan in place in case we had to have specific classes quarantine. I was hoping my class wouldn't have to do this, but alas, we had a direct exposure and we were moved to remote learning for our quarantine period.
I searched for social stories to help my students understand what was happening, but didn't find one that directly supported our situation. I adapted Going Back to Distance Learning from Autism Little Learners to create one that made sense for our situation.
I also made some simple visuals on our calendar to help the students see how many more days of zoom lessons we would have and when we would return to school.
Sometimes students just need to "see" how the changes of a schedule will affect them.
During our standardized testing window, specials and lunch changed school-wide, which prompted a change in my reading and math blocks. I had one student this year who mainstreamed for a large portion of the day, but she started her day with me to organize her schedule and any known changes, and then returned to me in the late afternoon. Under normal circumstances, she knew when she would have time to "hang out with her BFF."
Although she is very bright, she didn't "see" when she was going to be able to have time with her best friend within all of our schedule changes. This particular child is very high functioning on the autism spectrum and we have found that often writing things down helps her process information. She was quite anxious about the multiple schedule changes and started to move into her "whiny" voice. This is usually a pre-cursor for more intense behavior (throwing books, tipping chairs, yelling), so if we can catch her during the "whine," we can usually prevent the major meltdowns.
I loved this intervention because it was "quick and dirty." There is nothing pretty or fancy about it, but we completed it in about 3 minutes during our morning check in and it resolved her anxiety. When she started to whine about when she was going to have time with her friend, I simply asked her, "Would you like me to write down both afternoon schedules so you can see when you have time together?" She said yes and then added her comments on when they could "hang out."
As this school year draws to a close, our principal has sent out our "most likely" assignments for next year. She calls them "most likely" because, as we all know, things can change over the summer. If the needs of our students change, then staff assignments sometimes have to change too.
My "most likely" assignment for next year is back with the pre-k special needs population. I'm ready for a change again, but I LOVE my school, so I didn't want to change that! One of our pre-k teachers retired this May, so an opening came up at our school. I love the language development and developmental play aspects of pre-k, so I"m excited.
I've started culling through some of my old pre-k files and rediscovered a blog from a pre-k teacher, Christi Seward in Cobb County.
She hasn't posted in a few years, so perhaps her teaching assignment changed or something else in her life changed, but she has a WONDERFUL collection of picture books with essential vocabulary and comprehension questions that she discusses. She also has created many power points to support her lessons.
One of the books she highlights is "Bear Wants More" by Karma Wilson.
In addition to Christi's resources, there is also a YouTube read aloud with the book, too. (This version is really sweet. A boy received this as a birthday present and his family recorded him reading it out loud for the person who gave him the book.)
This has been a busy year and I haven't completed too many posts, but hopefully that will change this next year coming up!
Last week one of our social skills lessons started with a read aloud of "Interrupting Chicken" by David Ezra Stein.
This is a great book to help children learn about controlling those impulsive moments of wanting to interrupt or blurt out during our whole group time.
We completed our read aloud, had a class discussion and then also completed some activities similar to those found at Happy Teacher, Happy Kids.
I can also be a little bit goofy and I want our social skills lessons to be fun, so the kids can really practice the skills and enjoy the results of prosocial behaviors. Not just dread one more lesson with a bunch of rules that are hard for them to follow. So as a result of my Pinterest addiction, I found a link to "Chicken Names" from Tilly's Nest and thought it would be fun to pair with this book.
The rules of the activity were pretty simple. We were going to practice NOT being interrupting chickens. If we could work on that, we could make a list of everyone's chicken name. (I'm Yolko Scrambledore, by the way.) It was fun. One of the little girls in my class has the same birthday month as my assistant so she dubbed my assistant as her "Chicken Cousin."
There is also a YouTube video that has a read aloud. I like to use the videos in addition to my read aloud because it gives my students one more way to access the text.
With a simple Google search, you can find many, many online resources and ideas that support this book. These were just a few of the ones we used.
