SMD Teacher

Novel Studies

2011-11-17T20:40:00.001-06:00

Every year we do novel studies in my classroom. We have read Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum, and Nim's Island and Fish whose authors I can't recall at the moment. Currently we are working our way through Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. After reading this post on Maggie World, however, I think I have found our next book. Out of My Mind is the story of an eleven-year-old girls who finally finds a voice everyone can hear. Sounds just about perfect to me.

A Unique Perspective

2011-09-03T22:12:00.000-05:00

Hello All!
I know I've been very lax in posting on this blog. Life has been extremely busy and finding time to blog has been challenging. Kate (Ahern--Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs) posted on her Facebook that she was deleting blogs that hadn't posted in a year from her RSS. Got me to thinking I probably needed to update my blog, huh? HAHA Wouldn't want to be dropped from Kate's wonderful collection. Then Kate posted about her class's use of Unique Learning Systems this year. I had been planning a similar post since we are also using it, but hers is so much better than my poor over-stressed and sleep deprived brain could devise. So go here and read what Kate wrote.

Now that you've done that, I completely echo Kate's statements. I appreciate how ULS has stepped up their game this year, especially for kids with more severe and complex disabilities. The online supports and activities are fantastic for most of my students and they are much more willing to participate in preassessment activities. I also like that the activities align directly with my kids' state assessments this year (primarily History/Government for my current group). I love that they have added a Level 1 checkpoint/assessment. My paras are excited about using both the online and print materials with the students. They can easily see definite progress and how to extend learning on their own, giving them needed ownership of the instruction. And the transition piece at all levels has fit in well with my cooperative's need to make major improvements in compliance in that area.

In addition to Kate's wishlist, I have a couple of my own:

Definitely would like more auditory supports for students with vision impairments (I have two with no functional vision but the profile still kicked them into assessment activities that require vision; neither of these students are able to use Braille so auditory content is very important for them).
I would really like to be able to analyze data from the checkpoints and skill assessments more closely. For instance, does the student consistently miss a certain type of question (quantity over 5, -ig family words, etc.)? Does the student have a history of "no response" rather than wrong answers? Does the student perform better at the start of the assessment or at the end? And so forth. The score at the end is nice, but I would really like to see what exactly we are measuring, which skills need more work, and where improvement has occurred.
I would also like to see more games and maybe a greater variety of games (card games, matching, physical activity, in addition to board games).
Out-of-the-box arts and crafts activities would be good too (in addition to the cooking and science activities Kate requested). It would be really neat to see a sub-study of sorts on a particular artist or art technique that went along with the theme.
Suggestions for community connections would be good.
I would also note that the majority of folks around my area who are using ULS are using it in categorical self-contained settings, not inclusion settings, so Kate's point about the math activities in particular, is very valid for us.
It would also be nice to see activities directly aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy and labeled as such. Even (or especially) "participatory/Level I" students should have opportunities to move past the Knowledge and Comprehension levels to demonstrate learning on all levels of Bloom's. They are very capable of "higher order skills" when given appropriate supports. (Hmmm...makes me think I should write a post soon on how we are using Bloom's in my program....)

All in all I am very pleased with Unique this year and am excited to be using it in my classroom. Hopefully the company will continue this trend of listening to the requests of their consumers and make even more improvements and advancements over time. If you haven't checked it out, or looked at it lately, you should.

Game On!

2011-05-17T15:21:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year...almost at the end of the term, finished with all our units and not wanting to start anything new, with a few days left to fill up with fun, engaging, learning activities. Our class has ~~resorted to playing~~ opted to demonstrate our skills with games. We went on an outing to pick some new games since our current stock was getting a bit boring. Uno and Scene It will remain among our favorites but we have really enjoyed playing our new finds.

1. Apples to Apples, Jr.: This a great game for kids who are able to make some level of choice, even if it's random. I love the vocabulary development we can do with this game as well. It would be very easy to adapt the game with visual cues by creating and attaching matching pictures using the icon-making program of your choice to the red apple cards. Green apple cards could be a bit more challenging as they are more abstract concepts. However, this box is pretty well out-of-the-box ready for most players if they have partners.

2. Imaginiff: This is another game we have had a lot of fun with. In this one everyone answers a question like: "Imagine if Alicia were a zoo animal. What kind of zoo animal would she be?" There are choices and you throw out a number card that matches your choice. Those who won the vote get to move forward on the game board. This game incorporates both vocabulary development and math (more/less, numerals, counting) and is a lot of fun besides. And it's another one that is pretty well out-of-the-box ready for most players with partners if needed.

3. Whoonu: I love Cranium games and this one is as high quality as the rest. And it is one that ALL of my students can play, unlike the Cranium games that require sketching or sculpting or acting things out. This game is all about favorite things. One player is "it," also known as the Whoozit. Everyone else is dealt four cards and picks what they think the Whoozit's favorite thing will be from their cards. The Whoozit then reviews the choices and places them in order from least to most favorite. Points are scored with tokens. The best thing about this game, besides total involvement from everyone including my "random guessers" is that the game moves really fast.

4. Sort It Out!: This is another game I really like as teacher for its academic possibilities. Unfortunately my students weren't as thrilled with it the one time we played it, I think because it took too long and was dealing with concepts they know nothing about. In this game you are given a topic such as "Sort these things by length" then choices like "average female sea lion, anaconda, giant salamandar, yardstick, bootlace worm." You then arrange matching colored tiles in order and compare your answers to the answer card. This game holds lots of potential for my gang, but I think I need to 1. go through the cards to find things they understand; 2. modify questions to match up with familiar concepts; and 3. play with only 2-3 students at a time (we played with the whole class and had to wait way too long for everyone to make their choices so the kids kept losing interest).

If you have favorite board or card games, especially for age-neutral or for older students, please share in the comments. I would love to see what others are playing.

Note: Neither Amazon.com nor the publishers of this game endorsed this post. They most likely don't even know I exist. My opinions are simply that, opinions. Take 'em or leave 'em.

A Royally Good Time

2011-04-29T11:23:00.000-05:00

Today we celebrated the Royal Wedding Day in style. Earlier in the week we read all about the wedding using the Royal Wedding edition of News-2-You. We started by catching up on all the news and watching videos of the celebration on the official royal wedding website. Then we found pictures of the wedding cake online and decorated our own wedding cupcakes to eat as dessert after lunch. Lunch was a variety of simple to make and eat appetizer-type snacks contributed by the staff as well as a baked potato bar. In the afternoon we had fun making bride puppets using wooden spoons and extra art supplies and then creating toilet paper veils for everyone to wear (yes, even the boys got into this :-) ). Fun times!

Green

2011-03-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

Thursday is usually our day to go out and about in the community. However, tomorrow, due to a bunch of unpreventable circumstances, we are stuck at school. And that's a real shame because it's supposed to be 80 degrees tomorrow and beautiful.

Because tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day we'll go Green instead. We'll have fun with the Great Green Food Taste Test, which incidentally fits right in with some state assessment items. And I know we'll listen to some good Celtic music on either Pandora or iTunes radio (awesome free resource if you haven't checked it out). Not sure what else we'll get accomplished as my kids are still struggling with adjusting to the time change. Who knows, we might all decide to go out for walk around our (very inaccessible) neighborhood to enjoy the spring weather.

Spa Day

2011-03-07T12:31:00.000-06:00

Aaaaaahhhh! We have been pushing really hard to get through state assessments and were all ready for a bit of a break before the final push to the end. So we decided to have an impromput spa day in our room last Friday. Everyone had a BLAST and it was just what we needed to reenergize ourselves. Even the SLP had a good time, especially since I made communication boards for him to use (can't be all play around here; after all, we ARE a "Communicating Classroom") and of course it was perfectly set up for the PT.

We set up different stations around the room and had calming music playing all day:

Massage chair (vibrating mat attached to switch in a recliner; added mood lights and ipod)
Calming music with the Windows Media Player visualizer projected on the wall (this was a favorite of most of the kids); beanbags and other comfy chairs available for "meditation" time
We set up our Homedics foot spa in the same area (bliss!)
Manicures and pedicures were available (or hand and foot massages for those who didn't do nail polish)
Massage table with our Sparkle Flex lights (actuallly the mat table and the lights were on a switch for participation plus whoever was using this area could also see the visualizer projection)
We moved the swing temporarily to a new space (and liked it so much we actually ended up permanently rearranging that part of the room!) and added some mood lights to the area
The bathroom became a "beauty salon" where several of the kids (mainly the girls) opted for hair styles, facials, and make overs

A highly recommended activity that could be adapted for a variety of needs and purposes. This would be great as a peer activity too.

Seriously....

2011-02-14T23:36:00.000-06:00

This is one of the toughest school years I've had in a long long long long time. It just doesn't STOP!! First we had a very very short summer school session (4 hours a day for 16 days in June), and while that is better than nothing it KILLED my kids. We were still in recovery mode into November and had just started moving forward again when Christmas break hit followed by crazy inconsistencies in the schedule due to weather, inservices, and days off. BLEGH! Then for some reason this year my para staff has been extremely unstable. We started off the year with 5 students, 3 paras and myself, and we needed a 4th para. My favorite para of all time left us in the spring but was able to come back in September. All is well, right? WRONG! Here's the run down: I started the year minus Para A but Para B and Para C returned and we inherited Para D. We were still one para short. Then Para A returned in September (fully staffed at this point) and we added another student (oops, need another para). Para C left the first of October (make that 2). Hired Para E to replace Para C. Para D's deficiencies became very obvious at this point and I started gathering the plethora of information required to terminate a para in our agency. Still one para short here. Then Para C was able to return after Thanksgiving (yay! fully staffed!) and ended up resigning again almost before she (re)started (boo! so done with that!). During the process of terminating Para D, she decided to walk out and not return two weeks before break (yay! the stress level in the room went waaaaay down even being so short handed) leaving us again short 2 paras. Hired Para F to replace Para D with a January start date (now short 1 para). Meanwhile Para B had a family emergency that required her to take a 4+ week leave in mid-January and to have to work half days for a few weeks after that (back to being short 2 paras). And Para F is in nursing school so has class two afternoons a week. I am now in the process of hiring Para F to re-replace Para C, but she also has college classes so is only available the second half of the day most days (which, incidentally, is when we really need the help; plus she's in school for music therapy so how awesome is that?). Confused much?

We gained two new students this year, for the first time in almost 5 years. One was expected (moved up from elementary school) and one was a surprise ("we just had a family move in to our district and one of their kids is one of 'your' kids; they'll be there this afternoon to enroll and they don't have time to meet with you to discuss their very complex daughter and we don't have the IEP yet and they want her to start tomorrow"). WHAT?!?!?! This was the day after I had taken custody of our new three-month-old son and was planning to work half days for a couple of weeks while integrating him into our family, loving on our then-17-month-old daughter, and dealing with the very very needy three-year-old living with us at the time. I was only at school that day because ALL my IEPs were scheduled for September and I needed to do paperwork and my home computer was dead. So ended up waiting all day for the family to show, baby in tow. Thanks to a snafu from the sending district they didn't show for 3 more weeks. We DID get the intake meeting (yay) but I lost out on hiring a potentially awesome para who was also an LPN who could have handled all the (extensive) medical issues arising in my program (boo!).

The months of August and September were entirely blown with IEP meetings, court hearings (I had three, one of the paras had one for her child), numerous doctor appointments and other planned absences, and chronic short-staffedness. I don't think the kids noticed, however, as they were all still struggling with summer break recovery. I have had times before where I felt like we were barely treading water, but we were in full out drowning mode until December. And now we are into state assessment season, which requires more of my time to do paperwork than to work with students. And it seems the more paras I hire the more staff absences we have. UGH!! And I'm not even going to go into the nightmare dealing with the transportation departments of five different districts has been (I know you can't please all of the people all of the time, but COME ON! Give me a break already!). Or the extreme challenge of dealing with a difficult team member once a week who is constantly finding fault with something we do (or don't do). Certainly hasn't made it easier to fight my very strong desire to just stay home with my babies (oh, if only I could afford to do that and could bear to leave "my" kids at school and the program I've worked so hard to develop). To say I've been a bit unmotivated to be innovative and creative is putting it lightly. Thus the reason for no blogs since, what? June? July? I never really understood "burn out" before. And no, I don't think I'm suffering from that malady, but I can certainly see where it comes from. I've been doing this for 16 years, year-round, with almost no extensive breaks but I still love my job (mostly). God called me to this work and thus far I've had it fairly easy. He's putting me to the test right now and I just need to have the patience and fortitude to work it through (breathe in, breathe out).

It hasn't been entirely awful, though, and we have had quite a bit of fun along with the headaches. We did a literature study on Nim's Island which was very enjoyable and are now deep into learning about pirates while reading Fish (great book with lots and lots of potential for extensive lessons in all subject areas). We did another Mad Science party. We found some fun new paras to liven the place up. We had a penguin party. Several of the kids are succeeding with new communication systems (when they choose to talk to us anyway) and learning programs. We are excited to be getting expanded digs in the forseeable future (right now we feel rather like sardines and I'm slated to get two more students; they'd like for me to have them now but I just don't have space for them). Now that "grouchy para" has left we spend more time laughing than complaining/grousing/moping/being miserable. It's mid-February and while we've only touched the tip of the state assessment iceberg, that's also just a few weeks until spring break and shortly after that the end of regular school (I have no idea if we will even have summer school, how long it will be, or where, but we'll cross that bridge after we hurdle state assessments). We are excited to be doing a pirate party when we finish our current literature study. As far as state assessments, my high schoolers are almost to the point of NEVER HAVING TO TAKE THEM AGAIN! They will all have two to do next year then they are DONE DONE DONE!! So that work load will go down tremendously, just in time for all the changes I know 2014 will bring. My oldest student (homebound) is graduating this spring so we'll have some fun planning a celebration for him too.

I'm not going to promise to blog more. Life is just too overwhelming right now for me to make any more commitments. But I'll try to drop a line now and then. I hope some of you who used to follow me are still out there somewhere. Those rare comments really mean a lot (except for you spammers; you are just a bunch of bummers getting me all excited about someone liking my blog then turning out to be junk and can stay away!).

Planning for 2010

2010-07-24T21:41:00.003-05:00

Tis the season. :-) For once I actually got a summer break since my cooperative cut our summer days and hours in half. I've enjoyed the "forced" vacation and have had a blast spending it with my daughter and our foster son. All good things must come to an end, however, and it's time to start thinking about organizing for the coming school year.

Things will be a bit different in my room this year. Four of my five school-based students will be at the high school level. That means we need to think about how high school will look different than middle school for them. Four of my seven total students will be taking state assessments this year. That means we need to maintain a strong focus on academics. Not to mention that we have access to three curricula: Equals for math, ALL for reading, and Unique/News-2-You for science and social studies. Since we spent the money to get them, we should probably use them, huh? haha Seriously, I'm looking forward to having the structure of curriculum to work with instead of constantly flying by the seat of my pants.

Last year community outings were pretty much limited to a grocery shopping trip once per week for a couple of kids, a group outing once per week, and one student who had community based jobs or other training every day. We had planned to go swimming every week as well, sending two students each time on an alternating schedule. For a variety of reasons that just didn't work last year but we are hoping for a better outcome this year. Outings happened rather randomly during the day, which made scheduling classroom activities challenging. This year I want to push the majority of outings to the afternoon, leaving the mornings for academics and other classroom activities. Students not going into the community will work on vocational, therapy, and other activities.

I will also be adjusting Morning Meeting to be a little more streamlined and with higher participation expectations from the students. I'm planning for each student to have a binder or other display where they can record answers to questions targeted to their individual needs. I haven't quite figured out how this will work yet but am aiming for Morning Meeting to take about 15 minutes to cover topics such as day, date, month, season, holidays plus one Question of the Day (we've been using an adapted version of the game Would You Rather...) or other voting opportunity so we can work with data.

Our day should look something like this:
7:30: early staff arrive and start set up
7:40: students arrive; put away belongings; choice of breakfast (for those who need it) or peer buddies (can choose hallway, gym, music videos, music); peers go to class a couple of minutes before 8:00
8:15: late staff arrive; bathroom/hygiene, reposition; "check in" activities (still working on)
8:30: Morning Meeting
8:45: Group instruction (Monday: Reading (novel study); Tuesday: Math (Equals); Wednesday: Science/Social Studies (Unique/News-2-You); Thursday (open; group community day); Friday: Game
9:15: Overlap time (in case we are running behind); bathroom, reposition; drinks, small snack
9:30: Rotations: students will have two 30 minute rotations per day for individual and/or small group programming. Monday: Math/Science-Social Studies; Tuesday: Reading/Science-Social Studies; Wednesday: Reading/Math; Thursday: sensory/leisure (for those not going into community); Friday: Make up work/SLP-PT
10:30: Break (leisure choices), positions, bathroom, lunch prep
11:00: Lunch (4 students prepare their own lunches, 1 is tube fed) and Leisure choices
12:00: Vocational and Daily Living Skills/Community outings (1-3 students per day except Thursday)
2:15: All groups return to school; bathroom, home prep
2:30: Departures begin; early staff leave; late staff prep for next day and do clean up

My oldest school-based student also has two morning commitments per week. He goes to the Skill Development Center one day per week to work on daily living and vocational skills he can't work on in our classroom. He also helps do some tasks for the classroom like binding books, laminating, etc. We are also looking for a volunteer opportunity for him in the community. In the past he has worked at the school library (helping to check in and shelve books, where he was very successful) and the local public library (they only allowed him to dust shelves; not a successful experience for him as he grew bored quickly); he also volunteered briefly at a local food pantry (where they only allowed him to pull empty hangers off of racks). I'm hoping either the public library in his home town (nearby) will let him do more or that we can find a food pantry that is open during the day at least one day per week that will let him do more. This student is capable of quite a lot and would be highly successful in any job with repetitive motor tasks like shelving books, filling bins, stocking shelves, fetching and carrying, etc.

That's it for now. I have a bunch of other plans floating through my head like starting a small classroom-based business (making decorative candles), Coffee Shop with some peers from another special education program in another district, Circle of Friends opportunities, and oh so many other things.

Equals

2010-05-14T21:25:00.007-05:00

I received the Equals curriculum from AbleNet yesterday and have eagerly been going through it. It came in two huge boxes plus a giant tube. So far I'm impressed. They provide everything needed to implement the basics of the program including a step-by-step and an All-Turn-It spinner. There are a ton of manipulatives and they seem really high quality. They are the kinds of things I've seen at educational supply stores for the most part, although I've never seen the nifty hands-on/manipulative numberlines included in the package. There are lots of posters and other print materials. While I think I read somewhere (the website?) that the printed materials came laminated, these were only poster-quality paper and I will definitely be laminating everything, hopefully with 7-10 mm laminate to help them last as long as possible. I've only read through the Overview manual so far and it looks really good. I like how they've differentiated for all levels of students and all the helpful hints and suggestions for adapting for different needs and activities. The Action Dictionary is very comprehensive and will be great for my paras to refer to. I also liked how they found unique ways to use the manipulatives as well as multiple uses for the different items in the kit.

I haven't had time to read through the curriculum guides but am really hopeful that I will be just as pleased with them as I already am with everything else. It looks like they've even differentiated for low vision, or at least made it easy for me to do so. There is a CD which appears to contain a whole bunch more print materials (communication boards, Super Talker overlays, worksheets, etc.). There is a comprehensive assessment piece as well that again appears to accommodate a wide range of needs and abilities. The curriculum itself is even contained in one of those fancy boxes "real" curriculum comes in (basal readers, etc.; harkening back to my student teaching days). It truly looks like we finally have a curriculum for the severe/profound population that actually meets the needs of students with the most severe disabilities. YAY!

At this point I think my only suggestion for AbleNet would be to provide a la carte pricing for the items in the kit so replacements can easily be ordered. Over time posters will get worn or torn, work mats damaged, manipulatives lost, etc. It would be nice to be able to replace them as needed. And there might be programs that would like to order multiples of the manipulative kit to be able to spread the wealth between multiple classrooms.

I'm looking forward to implementing the program this fall. I'm having to hold myself back from starting it now. We only have three days of school left, after all, and one of those is a promotion celebration for three of my students who are moving from the middle school level to the high school level. I really don't have to push my kids that hard do I? They are all just glad that we finally finished the Hatchet unit. I'm sure I'll be writing more about our experiences with Equals as we add it to our daily activities.

Disclaimer: I am writing this review under my own volition. AbleNet has not provided me with any kind of remuneration or compensation for sharing my thoughts nor do I seek such. My desire is simply to share information about a program others who do what I do might find interesting.

I Have Not Dropped Off the Face of the Earth!!!

2010-03-22T19:52:00.002-05:00

Truly I haven't. Between state assessments and new mommy-dom, life has been a wee bit busy for me lately and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat to all my other commitments. Rest assured we are still plugging away at our Hatchet unit and having a lot of fun with it too. We've just finished up Chapter 9. Thanks to several days off for a variety of reasons (snow, teacher days, holidays, illnesses), it has taken us awhile to get really moving on the book. We are about halfway done now and WILL finish by the end of the school year if it kills me. HAHA

Meanwhile we will be finishing up state assessments this week. Or at least the kids' part. YAY! I still have to do all the paperwork and compile the portfolios, however. BOO! On the plus side, one of my homebound students should be returning to school-based services in another week so that will free up one afternoon per week that I have been spending with her. WOO HOO! We've really missed having her at school.

And yes, you read right above. I am a new Mommy too. My husband and I are in the process of adopting a beautiful baby girl and she's been demanding quite a lot of my time lately. One year olds tend to do that. We are beyond excited and feel so blessed to have this precious little one in our lives.

So no promises from me for more frequent posts but I will try to do better about showing up periodically to share more about the Hatchet project as well as about our cool Summer Camp summer program plans.

Hatchet--the first three chapters

2010-01-22T14:58:00.003-06:00

Well, we've managed to make it through the first three chapters of Hatchet. Since these are probably the three most boring chapters the kids' interest should increase (can you really call a plane crashing "boring?" HAHA). We've introduced a lot of vocabulary over the last couple of weeks and that has taken some extra time.

We just watched "My Side of the Mountain" which is a survival story similar to Hatchet. I think we'll watch it again when we've read further in our book and then do a comparison between the two. The kids really seemed to enjoy the movie so I'm sure they won't mind seeing it again. I'm also looking for a copy of "A Cry Into the Wild" which is based on Hatchet. Right now we're watching YouTube clips, when YouTube cooperates. And having the audio book available too is nice for additional reinforcement.

We also did an art project/modified writing project related to the first three chapters. The kids could choose if they wanted to tell about Brian flying the plane or the plane crash. They could choose a background (sky, forest, mountain, lake) and elements to put in their project. Then we gave them simple subject-verb-object choices to write a sentence about their project. The projects turned out pretty neat and every one is different. I'll post pictures when my camera is working again. For assistive tech we used battery operated scissors and a switch adapted hair dryer (to dry glue and paint faster) as well as Boardmaker pictures and/or communication devices for choices.

It also occurred to me that, quite by accident, the book ties into both our previous unit (Unique's October unit on Biomes/Ecosystems) and the Winter Olympics. I truly didn't plan it that way (but it doesn't hurt to let others think that does it? :-) ).

Hatchet

2009-12-30T23:17:00.003-06:00

We had so much fun doing a mini literature unit based on Little House on the Prairie from the October Unique unit that I decided we should do another one. Our librarian recommended Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and I think it's a good choice. Short chapters, lots of action, and age-appropriate (for the most part). And everyone should enjoy having a boy as the protagonist as the last couple of lit studies we've done have starred girls. This is also one of the audio books we purchased last spring that we haven't listened to yet. That will be a nice support piece.

This will be an ongoing post as I develop the unit. Feel free to add ideas and/or join in the adventure.

So for the chapter reading I'm going to do like I did with Little House and provide a 1-2 simple sentence synopsis of the chapter ("Laura was scared of the wolves." "The family was sick.") that we will use for context reading (I identify 1-2 key sight words per sentence and put the sentence onto communication devices; students read the sentence using communication device while following along on the sentence strip). Our sight words and phonics words (ALL curriculum) will be pulled from the chapter with an emphasis on simpler CVC words and high use words. These are matched with picture symbols and/or photos to enhance understanding and build vocabularies. As needed key concepts are also represented through multi-sensory modes (tactile, olfactory, gustatory, auditory). A list of props we used will be added as we develop them.

A few support activities I'm toying with:

Nature Guide: picture and brief description of animals and plants Brian encounters and/or uses for survival

Survival kit: what are the most important things you need to survive? What would be good to have? What are luxuries/not needed? Emphasis on basics as well as how our disabilities change those essentials (someone who uses a g-tube for instance vs. someone who eats by mouth).

Paper airplanes: choice of pattern to follow; give directions via communication device; decorate; have races; make predictions about how far plan will fly

First/then and cause/effect activities

Water play: (based on the episode where Brian learns to fish with his hands) Reach in and pick up objects placed in water; observe how water distorts vision

Exploration bin: various nature items like stones, sticks, leaves, dirt, pine cones, pine needles, etc.

Write-Your-Own Adventure story: I did this with Wizard of Oz using WoOz characters, simple choices, etc. The kids did a great job last year making choices to write their stories so I think we might try it again this year (where were you going? how were you getting there? what happened? where did you end up? what tools did you have? where did you live? what did you eat? etc.)

One class did a project they called a "jackdaw" where they collected/created artifacts from the story as the story progressed and created a final class project at the end. Something like that could be interesting.

We probably won't have time but mini studies on topics like: heart, airplanes/flight, turtles, shelters/houses, radio communication/telecommunication/forms of communication via technology, morse code/smoke signals/etc., Canada

Anybody else curious?

2009-12-10T11:00:00.000-06:00

I've been looking for a structured, standards-based math curriculum to add to my curriculum "collection." AbleNet recently released Equals. Anyone out there have any experience? It looks promising what with a comprehensive program that covers everything from pre-numeracy skills through grade level support including all the manipulatives. Is it worth the $1700 price tag? Would sure love to get my hands on some materials samples or a demonstration kit. AbleNet has an awesome reputation (they are my "go to" source for assistive tech; excellent product quality and excellent service). BUT will the curriculum truly meet the needs of my students with severe and multiple disabilities or is it geared more to the moderate-high severe range like so much of the other curricula out there "geared" to this population? Will it meet the needs of my sensory impaired students (blind, deaf, and/or deaf-blind in addition to severe physical disabilities) or is it primarily visual and/or auditory in nature, making it fairly useless for most of my students? Unfortunately my ability to acquire the curriculum will have to wait until grant season this spring. Hopefully one of my available grants will come through with the funding.

For those curious, the other pieces to my curriculum, all new to us this year, include:
ALL--reading/literacy from Mayer Johnson
Unique Learning System--science and social studies from the folks at News-2-You
News-2-You--current events (not new to us but we haven't actually had time to use this yet this year)
The Life Skills strand to my curriculum is individualized to the student and I don't have a formal curriculum for it. I have considered looking at the Next Transition Skills System also from AbleNet, however.

50 Best Blogs for Special Education

2009-12-09T22:14:00.002-06:00

I'm not big on self-promoting my blog but wanted to share this resource. SMD Teacher is listed along with other wonderful bloggers, many of which can be located in my Blog List, including Kate, Patrick, Michelle, and Lon (and 45 others). It's a great resource for anyone in special education. Take a look. I must say it is exciting to have my efforts recognized even though I didn't start this blog for that purpose.

A Christmas Carol Part Deux

2009-12-04T12:41:00.002-06:00

Part of this post is a repost from last year. Part of it is new stuff. So enjoy!

Repost: (Background: at this time last year things were CRAZY in my program between absorbing the high school students and all their stuff, rearranging the room, and staff changes plus all the usual Christmas chaos)
Because I knew the adults were going to be pretty well tied up, as far as programming goes, I needed to come up with some activities the kids could do with minimum assistance but that were still meaningful. Then Kate posted this article about Speakaboos including the link to A Christmas Carol. Perfect! Then I remembered that Pete's Stuff had a sensory story about Scrooge (for another fun Christmas activity from Pete try Norbert the Green Nosed Reindeer). And I found an AWESOME unabridged recording of the book on itunes read by the phenomenal Jim Dale (who reads the Harry Potter series, my kids' favorite audio books; mine too). So we're using the sensory story and Speakaboos on the Smart board during morning meeting and then letting the kids listen to the audio book at times when the adults are tied up with the multitude of other things going on right now. If we have time on Friday we'll watch the movie too. Other activities you could quickly put together to do with this book: Make a "humbug" (scroll down to "undirected craft time) Recreate the characters with paper sack puppets Make paper chains for Jacob Marley Make a Christmas wish list for Tiny Tim (we would use Boardmaker PCS and pictures from toy catalogs) Discuss the emotions of the various characters (happy, sad, scared, mad, etc.) Compare Christmas traditions from the Victorian Era with today (presents; family get togethers; Christmas trees; crazy shopping days; dancing; etc.). If I were to do this with my students I would create representations of major traditions using Boardmaker. Then we'd create a chart or Venn diagram on the Smart board and help the kids decide if the activities should go in Christmas past, Christmas present, or both. Vote on your favorite character from the story and make a bar graph using pictures (Scrooge, the ghosts, Jacob Marley, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchitt, etc.) Make Victorian bonnets or top hats Use some of these ideas for Victorian Christmas crafts Or play some Victorian era Christmas games Gee, all these ideas, that I found and/or came up with in about a 15 minute search, make me wish that we had time to do them! Maybe next year...

...Next, ahem THIS, year....
Kate at Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs recently posted her wonderful adaptations of Pete's Christmas Carol sensory story. They, and some support activities, are all available on Adapted Learning. We'll be making our own sensory characters. We'll read the audio book again as well as play one or two of Kate's games. We are having a Christmas get-together with our compatriot elementary class so we'll do the sensory story that day as well as watch one of the many versions of the movie. If we have time we'll add in some more of Kate's fantastic ideas (thanks Kate for saving me a ton of time and work!!!).

Our Class Video of the Day

2009-11-02T10:41:00.002-06:00

Kate posted about her class's new Video of the Day blog. We watched today's video during morning meeting in my class today. The kids were excited to vote on like/don't like and to comment back to Kate's class about our thoughts. Then I asked if they wanted to make their own VOD blog and the overwhelming response was YES! So we quickly set up our VOD blog, made a choice, and learned how to embed YouTube videos into our blog. Hopefully we'll be able to do this every morning as part of our morning meeting routine (sometimes YouTube works for us and sometimes it doesn't). So check us out at Alicia's Class Video of the Day.

Works for Me Monday: Balloon Stamping

2009-11-01T21:06:00.002-06:00

It's time for another Works for Me Monday. Last week I had a great idea for a post. Of course, I didn't write it down and now I can't remember what it was. So instead I'll post about one of my favorite art techniques, balloon stamping. I learned about balloon stamping from a video produced by the folks who make Biocolor paints. The video contains examples of lots of fun way to use these paints and is worth checking out if you can find a copy.

To balloon stamp, you need a partially inflated balloon, at least three colors of paint, a paint pallette (we use paper plates), and your project. Put a small pool of each color of paint (approximately dime size) on your pallette right next to each other so they are touching and form a triangle. It is preferably if the pools touch. Then dip the end of your balloon into the paint, dab off a bit, and stamp onto your project multiple times by bouncing the balloon. You get a really cool marble or tie-dye effect. We have yet to find a color combination that doesn't work.

I particularly like this technique for several reasons. I work with kids with little to no fine motor control. However, even my most involved student can bounce a balloon with help. They also like the feedback they get from the bouncing. In addition, this technique facilitates multiple opportunities to make choices, an important part of any art project for us. It also lets the kids show their individuality both in the colors they choose and how they stamp (lots of stamping close together or a little stamping far apart and everything in between). It is also a nice "no fail" technique. No matter what the student does, the project will come out looking nice

We use this technique all the time. We have made backgrounds for bulletin boards, t-shirts, greeting cards and stationery, as well as too many art projects to count (check out the constellations we did in this post). Using balloon stamping works for us. What works for you?

Our Unique Adventure--October 09

2009-10-27T22:00:00.000-05:00

(Wow! Is it time to plan October already?!?!?!?)

As I'm sure I've stated before, we are using the middle school level of the Unique curriculum this year. I am just finishing up the May unit on Sounds, which took us from mid-August to the end of September. There was so much for us to learn that we won't be able to finish it before needing to move on. Sorry, Alexander Graham Bell, guess we'll have to try learning about you later. And we really don't need to know how to protect our ears and hearing, do we?

So now I'm on to planning for the October unit (notice we skipped September's unit which was mainly about Abraham Lincoln as well as our freedoms as U.S. citizens; this was a team decision as my staff are really excited about the October unit; in addition our state assessment emphasis this year is on science; plus silly me thought we'd get through the sounds unit in August, only to learn that each chapter takes us at least a week). This one, at least for middle school, is about the plants and animals around us and focuses on biomes, specifically the 5 primary biomes of the United States/North America (tundra, deciduous forest, taiga, grasslands, and deserts). This looks like a really fun unit. I haven't made it all the way through the provided curriculum materials yet but have lots of ideas for things we will do. I'll add more to this post as we come up with them. I'm planning on this taking all of October and probably most of November too (6 chapters plus an introductory set of lessons). There is a lot to learn with this unit. I wish the overview section was a little more detailed about what future units will cover so I know how to pick and choose and schedule. In addition to watching my blog, keep an eye on the blogs in my Blog Roll as a number of those folks also use Unique and will be posting their ideas too.

First of all, we will be learning to differentiate between living and non-living things. I just posted an activity on Adapted Learning to that effect (a simple book; search on living vs non-living). We will also do sorting activities using magazine pictures and photo cards which I just happen to have already. I may throw in a quick lesson on things found in nature vs. man-made things too. And we'll do some work on the seasons, especially as we're in the middle of a seasonal change here in Kansas. I love that the easy reader story is about a migrating robin as many of the birds in our area are starting the annual migrations.

Added 10/4/09: We had fun at the nature center checking out living and nonliving things. The museum actually encompasses several different biomes so that was neat too. And we explored a grasshopper we caught and released as well as brought back a few plant and seed samples. They are going into our sensory bin for exploration next week along with a (very dead) locust we found outside the school on our way in.

For seasons we did a fun art project based on the book A Tree for All Seasons. The kids drew four trees (we did the trunks then supported the kids to hold the marker and draw the branches); we left the winter tree bare, lightly balloon stamped light green on the spring tree, balloon stamped darker green on the summer treee, and chose fall leaf colors to balloon stamp on the autumn tree. The kids really liked doing this.

The first chapter has a companion activity about labeling a map with biomes, plants, and animals. We are adapting by using a black-and-white outline map of the US. We will trace on the boundaries for the different biomes. Then the kids will use tactile materials to fill in the boundaries (glitter or cotton for tundra; raffia or shredded paper for grasslands; fall leaf confetti for forests; sand or yellow glitter for desert; mini stamp of pine tree for taiga). We'll also find a way to make our state (Kansas) stand out (maybe outline with dimensional paint?) so the kids can start to recognize that too (we've worked on that before). We'll mount the map on a big piece of construction paper and then have the kids match colors to add the pictures of the biomes, plants, and animals in the right places. We'll use step-by-steps to request materials, switch adapted scissors for cutting, and have lots of tactile fun with the glue and materials.

Added 10/27/09: Support videos for the Seasons topic: Wintermood on YouTube has some beautiful videos based on Vivaldi's Four Seasons (Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall). My kids' favorite is Autumn. Wintermood has a number of lovely videos using a variety of classical and instrumental music. We've been projecting it onto the wall over our swing/sensory area with the music through the surround sound for a fun and relaxing sensory experience. It shows well on an IWB too. For those who can't access YouTube at school, try using Media Converter or Zamzar to convert to .wmv or whatever format works best for you. YouTube also had a number of decent videos related to ecosystems, biomes, forests, etc. available. Many of these were linked from SchoolTube and TeacherTube so try those sites as well.

We will also be taking a few field trips related to biomes. The science center in Wichita has a whole section that is essentially about the Kansas biome/s, including an area where you can explore making rivers (complementing one of the provided supplemental activities). There is also the zoo, the nature center, and the pumpkin patch. If I can find a nearby orchard that has apples on the trees (seems there was a problem with the apple trees around here this spring), we might also go apple picking and do a related cooking project.

One of the companion activities is to make a desert plant terrarium. The website referenced by the curriculum also describes how to make a couple of other types of terrariums. I think we'll take the kids to a nearby plant shop that sells really cool plants cheaply and specializes in terrarium plants and try to make a couple of different biomes. Not sure if we can pull off the tundra, but I'm sure we can do desert, deciduous forest (OK, not the trees but the kids should ge the point), grasslands, and maybe taiga. And we might get adventurous and try some water plants too.

The unit also suggests making dioramas. This is right up our alley since it involves lots and lots of choices and we can make it tactile and multi-dimensional. And 5 students means they can each make a different one (hopefully they each LIKE either all different ones or more than one so we won't have overlap).

If we have time we'll do reports on our favorite animals and/or biomes.

I need to go hunting for various smallish manipulatives related to the plants and animals of the biomes we'll be studying to use as math manipulatives, etc. And hopefully we can score some old nature magazines to cut out pictures in order to do same/different, more/less, and sorting.

We'll be using simple and high use words from the reading material as sight words and phomemic awareness prompts to build our vocabularies and work on reading skills.

And there are all the sensory things you can do related to the biomes: cold (I'm thinking about getting some of that "insta snow" stuff; expensive but really neat), water, grass, rocks, dirt, bark, leaves, sand, cacti (not too spiky), etc. And we can certainly tie in weather concepts (yay as that's on our science assessment this year).

Adding all of that to our second annual Mad Scientist Party (check here and here for what we did last year), a birthday party, some inconvenient days off, IEPs, Thanksgiving, and whatever else crops up and it's going to be a B U S Y fall. Just the way I like it.

It's Party Time!

2009-10-26T20:45:00.003-05:00

Mad Scientist Party Time, that is. Yes, we are once again doing a Mad Science party for Halloween. We had a blast last year and are looking forward to another fun time. The beauty is that all the planning is done (yay me!). I tweaked the Monster Lab sensory story I wrote last year just a bit (comment if you want a copy; my 4Shared account closed because I didn't use it enough). One of my paras is donating some very cool decorations to the cause and everyone is busily preparing their costume ideas.

In preparation for the Big Event we are taking a brief break from our Unique unit on ecosystems/biomes to indulge in some monstrous fun. Today we watched a couple of episodes of the Goolies on YouTube. Tomorrow we will start reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on audio book (courtesy of iTunes). Wednesday we will design our own monsters with both Boardmaker and as an art project. Thursday we are spending the day cooking/preparing the food and decorating the room for Friday (and having a birthday party for one of the kids while we're at it). And then there's FRIDAY!!

This year we are going to do the sensory story, do a couple of experiments (probably cornstarch/water goop and vinegar/baking soda explosions since most of my kids this year can see), dissect a pumpkin, play with the sensory toys I purchased last year, design our own costumes (complete with make up and hair dos), and jam to some appropriate Monster Mash music. If we have time we'll watch one of our Mad Scientist videos (Igor, Young Frankenstein, Little Shop of Horrors, Mad Monster Party, Flubber, The Nutty Professor, The Absent Minded Professor). As an aside, we had to cancel our pumpkin patch trip because of rain/mud so went to the video store to rent some fun, campy "B" "horror" movies. Can you believe the store didn't have anything? No Blob or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (or anything else that wanted to attack in weird and funny ways) to be found. We finally found an old copy of this obscure movie which we all about fell apart laughing at. The kids LOVED it and so did the adults. Made for a very fun rainy afternoon. I'm going to have to go hunt for more by these people (evil laugh--evil laugh--evil laugh--I sleep now --watch the movie, you'll get it).

Menu for this year is:

Sloppy Joe (poor Joe, I hope there's enough of him to go around)

Monster Fingers and Toes (green beans)

Wiggly Pumpkins (one of my paras has a jello mold shaped like a foot so we might use that)

Pumpkin Mouse (minus the tails of course)

(If you can't tell, I love Taste of Home recipes; most of what I cook at home and what we cook at school comes from these wonderful people; there are lots of classroom friendly recipes available so go check it out!)

Works for Me Monday: Old T-shirts

2009-10-11T20:43:00.003-05:00

I am working with students who are learning to either eat by mouth or to feed themselves. This can make for messy mealtimes. When they were younger, the kids typically used bibs. However, I feel like bibs are a bit babyish and make the kids stand out even more than they already do. A solution that was actually mentioned by one of our peer buddies was to use old t-shirts to cover up the kids' clothes. Since I'm married to a coach we have tons (I'm not kidding) of t-shirts. I make my husband down-size every fall before school starts. The t-shirts then go into my collection for school. They work perfectly for cover-ups at meal time as well as for smocks when we do messy art or science projects. They pretty much look like what everyone else is wearing so the kids don't stand out, wash easily, and are a renewable commodity (at least for me) so when they get too stained, torn, or ragged we just toss them. They have the added benefit of allowing us to work on some basic dressing and undressing skills several times a day.

Old t-shirts work for me as clothing cover-ups. What works for you?

Unique post update

2009-10-04T23:49:00.001-05:00

Updated my post on the October Unique unit. Anybody know how to bring a post back to the top?

Works for Me Monday: Parent Communication

2009-09-28T21:49:00.005-05:00

Those of us who work with nonverbal students know just how important good communication between home and school is. One of the earliest lessons I learned as a teacher was the value of writing detailed notes home. As one parent put it, her child can't come home and tell her what happened at school that day. It's all well and good for the teacher/staff to write "good day" on the note, but what does that mean exactly? What did she learn? What made her happy? Did anything make her upset? Did she eat well? Take a nap? See a therapist? Make a new friend? Go out in the community?

Throughout my career I've used a number of different methods to communicate with the parents of my students. I've used SOP (summary of progress) notes on NCR paper (expensive and challenging to store), spiral notebooks, and, my current favorite, photocopied checklists (I adapted mine from one Kate Ahern posted to the Boardmaker yahoo group and later to adaptedlearning.com ). My checklist, with full credit to Kate, is copied front and back. One side is School to Home and the other is Home to School. It contains boxes for information like mood, meal times, personal and medical care, reminders and "need-to-bring" lists, daily activities check list, and notes. Daily notes used to take me at least 30 minutes when I had to write everything out in the spirals. In addition, because of the repetitive nature of our business, I often felt like I was writing the same things over and over. With the checklist I have cut my note writing time in half and it's easy for parents to scan through for the essential information while still knowing what their child did that day at school. In addition, my paras are much more comfortable filling out the notes themselves and even related services providers have been seen to use them. We send our notes back and forth in three ring binders (the same used by the kids' peers in class). If there is a note I need to save for documentation I simply photocopy it.

My second favorite method of communicating with my parents is via text messaging. If I have a quick question they can quickly respond without disrupting their activities or playing phone tag. Often times they will get a reminder via text message that they might not see on the home note, or in those rare (ha ha ha ha) instances where I forget to note that a student needs personal supplies or snacks until after they leave for the day. Parents text me all the time with questions or for information too. And since I can print transcripts of my text messages I have documentation just in case of misunderstandings or difficult situations. Before texting a parent, however, it is a good idea to make sure it is OK as not all parents have text-friendly cell phone plans. It is also a good idea to let them know that it is OK to text you as well.

I know of other teachers who use Twitter (I'm way too wordy for Twitter--grin!), instant messaging, email, and blogs to communicate with their students' parents.

Checklist-style home notes and text messaging work for me when communicating with parents. What works for you?

Creature Discomforts

2009-09-14T21:54:00.003-05:00

If you haven't seen it yet, go check out this site. Creature Discomforts is a disability advocacy group out of the UK. They have some awesome animated ads about living with disabilities. The website also has fun activities like games (some of which can be made switch accessible; I especially liked the Audio Only version of the Callum the Chameleon Game) and e-cards. Make sure to check out the behind-the-ads spots too.

Note: I know I've seen the games before on someone's blog but I read so many I can't remember who/where. So my apologies for not crediting you.

Leisure Skills

2009-09-07T21:52:00.003-05:00

Michie commented and asked if I would explain more about what I mean by teaching leisure skills to my students. There are lots of schools of thought on that. Do we focus on "age appropriate" or "developmentally appropriate" ? How much time should we spend? Active or passive? Group or individual? I think these are decisions teachers have to make based on the individual needs of their students and their families.

For my families, having their kids develop a variety of interests is important. So is being able to engage in leisure activities independently (in other words, being able to play without adult involvement for short periods of time so mom or dad can fix dinner, take a shower, or just get a short sit-down break). I have kids who come to me with very few, if any, obvious interests; kids who are stuck in interests way below their chronological age (Bareny is for 3 year olds not 13 year olds); or who constantly demand attention and cannot spend even a second "alone." We spend a lot of time introducing our students to new experiences, developing more age typical interests, and encouraging independent play. Some activities are active (games; cause effect activities on the computer; using an adapted remote control, or in our case a voice output device since we can't find a remote to work with our TV, to change TV channels; using an adapted CD player on the computer; interacting with sensory devices and toys) and some are more passive (watching a DVD; listening to music or an audio book with an mp3 player). It is all dependent upon the needs and interests of the student.

We are fortunate to have a large library of audio books on mp3 that are written for a mid to late elementary level all the way to adult. Sometimes students listen to them independently and sometimes we put them on the surround sound system and listen as a whole class. Our mp3 players are probably the most popular piece of technology in classroom.

We are "aging up" some of our students' interests. I still have SpongeBob lovers but have learned that a number of middle schoolers are still avid fans of the show. We also expose the kids to the plethora of preteen and teen oriented shows (Wizards of Waverly Place seems to be a current favorite) as well as game shows, the History Channel, science shows, etc. Now, don't let that lead you to believe that we watch TV all the time, because we don't. It is just one of the options available to the students in between other activities. When it comes to choosing "age appropriate" or "age typical" activities, I usually bow to my peer experts. If they say it's OK, then it is. And you'd be amazed what the average 7th grader gets a kick out of!

Sensory toys and devices are another favorite activity. My 16 year old has an extensive "sensory diet" and requires frequent access to a variety of sensory activities in order to regulate his system. He is now fairly independent in choosing how to meet his own needs and moves between our swing, watching blinking lights, "squishing" in a bean bag chair, listening to music, and "sensory deprivation" in our bathroom with the lights off and a flashlight on (I know, I know, but it's his choice and he makes it VERY clear that's what he needs--he has even problem solved to drag his bean bag chair in there, around equipment, people, etc., and has to come to us to request his flashlight be turned on; we're mean and put dying batteries in it to increase interactions). I have other kids who use a Powerlink and a switch to interact with various light toys. And we use Active Learning with a lot of the kids which gives them choices of toys, positions, and equipment (we have a resonance board, a positioning bench, an ESSEFF board, and a HOPSA dress along with a huge inventory of sensory toys). I credit Active Learning with fostering independent play skills in several of my students who didn't have them before using these techniques.

For group leisure skills we play a lot of games. Uno is a top favorite as it is easily adaptable to the needs of each child and lets us apply our number, color, and matching skills. We also like the Scene It series of games, Sorry, Yahtzee, card games (Texas Hold 'Em is great!), and "noisy" games like Jenga. We go out into the community to participate in bowling and every quarter we meet up with our buddies from another special needs class to do a project or have a party together.

We also do lots of art projects, although I don't think most of my students view these as "leisure" opportunities. They sound more like "work" to them. :-) I have a couple of students who have started collecting key chains. They like to play with toys that make noise and key chains meet that need in addition to being age appropriate, a conversation starter, and available everywhere. They make nice reminders of trips and special events too.

We strive to make all the leisure activities we do as active as possible. Even watching TV or a video can be made more active by programming communication devices (we often use step-by-steps) with crazy comments and questions that promote interaction. Even when staff is too busy to be "hands on" available for every student, we can respond to communication attempts. I know my kids' parents are appreciative of the fact that they can step away from their child for a few minutes or that they are no longer stuck listening to endless replays of Barney or Blues Clues. And they love that there are ways to include their children in activities such as "family game night."

Works for Me Monday: Staffing Assignments and Scheduling

2009-09-07T21:13:00.003-05:00

OK, I know I'm not the best at keeping up with my blog post schedule. In my defense it's a super busy time of year between 6 IEPs in 7 weeks (and anyone who works with kids with multiple challenges knows those things can be monsters, especially as the kids hit transition age) and some BIG things happening in my personal life, which I may post about in the future. In any case, this Works for Me Monday is about how I assign duties to my paras, which I thought would be an appropriate post for Labor Day.

Paras are essential to success in my classroom. I am fortunate to have 1:1 staffing (including myself) for my students. This makes it so much easier when someone has to be gone (I have one para on maternity leave at the moment; she will return just in time for a second para to leave for the same reason). We also have a complicated schedule with at least one student out in the community every day. I'm still trying to figure out how to work in out-of-the-room inclusion opportunities as we have a huge burden for state assessments, making it difficult to find the time in the kids' schedules.

I firmly believe in every staff member being able to work with every student. They all know they are expected to not only know and be able to meet the needs of each student but also be able to conduct all of the various programs. This benefits the students, who learn to work with a variety of people. As adults they will seldom if ever be in situations where they have the same staff for long periods of time. They need to learn now that it's OK to work with new people. For the staff, this policy prevents feelings of "ownership" for one student. Instead we are one big, mostly happy, family. And the staff can easily "trade off" when struggling with a difficult or frustrating teaching session.

Last year I ended up with an entirely new staff so I started doing what I called "Rotations." Each staff member was assigned a specific curricular area where they showed special skills or interest: Cognitive Skills, Assistive Technology Use, Physical Therapy/Adaptive PE, Sensory/Nielson's Active Learning, Computer. I set up the lesson plans and after Morning Meeting the kids rotated between staff members every 25-30 minutes, depending upon the day. This seemed to work well for us last year and we were able to accomplish quite a lot. The drawback was that my paras started to become so specialized it was difficult to fill in when someone was absent. In addition, they started to get bored doing the same tasks every single day. I tried switching things up but had one staff member who refused to give up her territory. In addition, it was difficult for me to make sure the kids were working on all their goals and to get around to each staff member to make sure they were correctly following programs.

Over the summer my middle/high school paras were pretty much on their own as I had to spend quite a lot of my time working the elementary students in our summer program. They revamped Rotations a bit and started all working on the same tasks at the same time so they could support each other. They still rotated kids around though. After talking with them we decided to leave that schedule in place this year. This has turned out to be a good decision since the state made significant changes in our requirements for assessments this year. We have added two new pieces to our curriculum: ALL and Unique (I'm still looking for a good early math skills curriculum; ideas anyone?). That means I need to take back the "leader" role in instruction and provide much more direct and hands-on support to the staff since most of these activities are new to them. So now we do math and reading every day (last year we focused on math on Mondays, Reading on Tuesdays, and Writing on Wednesdays; Thursdays were community and Friday was Sensory Fun/Therapy Day) with either science or social studies in the afternoon (depending upon the Unique unit). The students are basically in three groups by ability/interest and two staff members "specialize" in each student, although so far everyone is doing a good job of working with every student. The most challenging student to staff is my 16 year old who is out and about every day as there are some limitations on which staff can go with him. So this year, so far, my schedule looks more like this:

7:40-8:30 Arrival, ADLs, breakfast or peer time, positioning, leisure skills
8:30-9:00 Morning Meeting
9:00-10:30 Academics: Reading, Math, computer time, assistive technology use, ADLs as needed; also several of the kids do positioning programs and/or walking within these activities; 16 year old goes on walk about if schedule requires or does Life Skills/work bin tasks
10:30-11:00 Repositioning and stretches for everyone; ADLs as needed
11:00-12:00 Lunch preparation (3 do this) or meds and tube feedings (2 do this) paired with leisure choices or finishing earlier work
12:00-12:30 Break time for students and adults (kids work on independent leisure skills)
12:30-1:00 ADLs as needed and classroom chores
1:00-2:00 Afternoon group activity (science or social studies); 16 year old goes on walk about if scheduled or participates in group
2:00-2:30 Journals, ADLs, repositioning, get ready to go home
2:30-3:00 Departures
Monday is "Hear new concepts/words/numbers" where I introduce new material, the letter/sound of the week, the number/math concept of the week, etc. This is more focused on listening
Tuesday is "See new concepts/words/numbers" where I introduce visual/tactile vocabulary and we start asking the kids to identify and differentiate new knowledge from previous knowledge
Wednesday is "Use new concepts/words/numbers" where we start asking the kids to apply their knowledge by answering questions, doing simple writing tasks, cooking, art projects, etc.
Thursday is Community day for the whole class
Friday is Sensory/Therapy day with swimming for two kids in the afternoon; I also use Fridays to assess kids on how well they are doing with new and old concepts so I can determine where to start the next week (do we need to stick with what we are learning now or are we ready to move on)
I'm still working out the kinks in all this new-to-us stuff and figuring out where everything fits in. However, the overall consenus from both adults and kids is that we like the new challenges.

So, that's What Works for Me when making staffing assignments and setting my daily schedule. What works for you?

Community Based Experiences

2009-08-20T21:00:00.002-05:00

Community experiences are a huge part of my curriculum. We love to go out and about and I have students in and out every day. We go lots of fun places. Our school is in a very small community so we frequently have to plan our trips to nearby communities or even the "big city."
Here is my CBE plan this year:

Monday: 16 year old goes to Skill Development Center to work on vocational and home living skills
Tuesday: two students go grocery shopping to stock up their food supplies for the week (they both prepare their own breakfasts, lunches, and snacks as part of home living skills)
Wednesday: 16 year old goes to public library for vocational skills/volunteering (he dusts shelves and runs the vacuum)
Thursday: the whole group goes somewhere, sometimes together and sometimes in smaller groups
Friday: 2 kids go swimming at a nearby YMCA

Our Thursday trips are the most fun. Some of the things we will be doing include:

Trips to Blockbuster to choose a video to watch and purchase treats (this is great for my two kids who are blind/nonambulatory and don't eat by mouth as they get to put together the "voting list" of videos; this is also where they go on those times they don't accompany the rest of the class to a restaurant outing)
Trips to Barnes and Noble bookstore (read books/magazines, listen to music, get a snack at the cafe; can differentiate easily for everyone's needs/interests and it's FREE, except for the snacks)
Bowling Alley (we have an awesome one with Cosmic Bowling all day that is completely accessible and very inexpensive)
The Mall (or course! We are teens after all)
Nature Center (ours has a great hands-on museum with lots of multisensory experiences and is attached to a nature park with accessible hiking paths; and it's FREE too!)
Periodic special needs showing of current movies at a local theater with other special needs classes (great fun to meet up with good friends and we go out for breakfast/brunch first)
Restaurant trips (we tend to do "sit down" dining rather than fast food; fast food is saved for shorter trips like grocery day; we've also done buffets which is a real adventure)
Local "spa"/beauty salon (girls can choose hair, manicures, pedicures; boys can choose to soak hands/feet or go next door to the coffee shop and get a treat and listen to music)
Special trips to museums when they offer hands-on exhibits (most of my students have significant vision impairments so can't see most typical museum exhibits)
The zoo (we have two to choose from in our area)
Target, Super Wal-Mart, etc.
When the weather is icky or too cold we will also do an "inside outing," usually a video we haven't seen or playing wii and other video games (a class favorite for everyone including staff; we are AWESOME at wii baseball!)

For more great ideas check out Building a Program That Works. Make sure to read the comments!

What Works For Me Monday: binder rings

2009-08-16T22:47:00.004-05:00

I've been busily adapting the May Unique unit on Sound. Between the books, picture symbols, word wall cards, sentence strips, and worksheets there is a lot of stuff to keep track of. The picture symbols are so easily lost, misplaced, or separated from their materials. Word wall cards and sentence strips get mixed up. And where is that worksheet when you need it? So....we needed some sort of organizational strategy. Here is what I'm doing:

Each of the books gets printed on cardstock, laminated, and comb bound. I put both the easy and advanced versions of the book in the same binding since we use both fairly interchangably. My kids can typically handle the content in the higher level material but need the lower level for vocabulary and literacy instruction.

I make a set of PCS symbols for key vocabulary to go with each book. Mine are 3" X 3" to accommodate groups and low vision issues. Each symbol has a hole punched in the upper left corner and are strung onto a binder ring. The ring is then clipped to the comb binding on the book. We use the symbols while we read to reinforce visual vocabulary as well as to talk about the book, answer questions, etc. The symbols are always with the book and I make duplicate symbols as needed for additional books so we don't have to "borrow." I prefer separate symbols to the preprinted communication boards (which are included with the unit) because it's easier to accommodate the needs of my students. I can attach them to a velcro board, hold them up in pairs, display them one at time for assisted scanning, remove incorrect answers for errorless learning, etc. Some of my low vision kids also require us to move the symbols to gain their visual attention. And some of my student prefer to pull off their answer rather than point/touch. Of course, those kids who have AAC devices will have appropriate overlays prepared as needed.

Sentence strips receive the same treatment as the symbols. I used the sentences from the simplified book for our sentence strips. This year we are learning about how words are used and how they make up sentences or messages. We are also working on our sight vocabularies. I used the Symbolate feature on Boardmaker for my sentence strips, reducing the symbols to the key concepts contained in the picture symbol cards.

Word wall cards are key words and sight words from the sentence strips. To some words I add a picture symbol to aid in recall. Other words (Dolch words) I want to teach as just sight words or the picture symbols are far too abstract so we might as well just learn them as words. We will use the word wall cards throughout the year, adding to them as we go. They will be used for vocabulary, sight word reading, alphabetics, phonics instruction, and anything else I can think of. These are put into their own collection on a large ring binder in alphabetical order so we can easily find and pull the ones we want to work on. I'd like to find a way to display them on a true word wall in my room but there are space issues as well as problems with my one ambulatory student constantly pulling them off to use for picture exchange (he gets the idea of exchanging a symbol for something he wants but he doesn't really care what the symbol is, any one will do; so we have to be careful what symbols we leave within reach, which would put the word wall way out of reach of the other students visually and physically).

I make a master copy of the worksheets that go with each activity and place them in page protectors. While we are within our copy budget we can copy them for student use. Eventually we may have to start writing the questions and answers into the kids' data notebooks. The worksheets go into a 3 ring binder. I also print and laminate picture symbols matching the choices on the easy worksheet. These are placed in a zippy bag and slid inside the page protector. I have two sets of questions: easy and advanced. The advanced questions are based on the question prompts at the bottom of the pages of the advanced reading material. These do not have picture cues as my students who use this level either use auditory scanning and/or yes/no responses to answer.

The 3 ring binder also contains the activity guide from Unique, my own notes on activities and adaptations, and any additional activities. For instance, with the sound unit we will be doing an experiment with vibrations, comparing loud/soft/high/low sounds, polling peers about favorite types of music, and traveling to Barnes and Noble to listen to different kinds of music. This binder will also contain assessment notes for the kids, notes on the activities for future use, photos, etc.

At the end of the unit all the materials will go into a 2 gallon (or bigger) zippy bag for storage and future use. We use picture symbols in our library cabinet for self selected reading so the books from the Unique units will be available through this format for selection. The picture symbol list lets us include physical books, audio books (on our ipods or CD), and computer books.

We also use binder rings to create portable communication symbols sets for our students. These might be transition cues, wants/needs, I'm upset and this is why, fringe vocabulary for particular activities, restaurant menu choices, etc. Most of my kids who use picture symbols have at least one set of cards with yes/no/more/stop and other important-to-them messages attached to their backpacks. We have also used them for "what to do when __ happens" cards to cue staff, to create photo dictionaries of sign language/gestures, etc.

So, binder rings work for me when I'm organizing materials. What works for you?

Some of my favorite cause effect computer programs

2009-08-11T21:09:00.002-05:00

I received a comment on my Smartboard post asking for recommendations for programs and activities to use on the Smartboard. I'm happy to share some of my favorites (and wish list too). The commentor of mention works with early childhood so most of what I will list here are primarily cause and effect and early learning. Also important to note is the fact that I am freely sharing my opinions with no obligations to the companies mentioned. I have received nothing in return for mentioning these products on my blog.

As I've said before, I've never used the Smart software nor have I had any training in using the Smartboard. The board itself is very straightforward and easy to use as it is essentially a giant touch screen. There are a number of good sources for more ideas on how to use the Smartboard: Talking Smartboards and Much More and Teacher Love Smart Boards are just two of them; check their resource lists for even more.

Some of my favorite programs that my kids love and/or that would work well for early learners include:
Big Bang by Inclusive TLC
The Choose and Tell series from Inclusive TLC (just be aware that the vocabulary is British)
The SwitchIt! series from Inclusive TLC
The cause effect videos and other activities available from Priory Woods School (student favorite and free))
The SimTech single switch collection--especially the Sights and Sounds series
SoftTouch has several titles that are good (Attention Teens, Away We Ride, Teen Tunes, etc.) including these specifically for preschool (which are available as individual titles as the bundle is a bit on the pricey side)
Switch Man from R.J. Cooper
Sensory stories from Pete's Stuff (loads and loads of fun! oh, and free!)
Itunes or Windows Media Player visualizers
And any of the kid-friendly websites out there are great to use as well (Kate at TLWMSN has a great post outlining some switch friendly sites, Power Point collections, and more special needs software )

I also use both Intellitools Classroom Suite and Boardmaker activities extensively

In addition I recently received My Own Bookshelf (SoftTouch) but haven't had a chance to try it (my LCD projector is on the fritz so no Smartboard and haven't had time to install the program yet anyway)

And Power Point books are also great on the Smartboard

As far as access, most of my kids use an AbleNet jellybeamer (or two if they are two switch scanning). I have two who access directly on the board as well.

Wishlist:
Kaleidoscope 2
Intro to Cause and Effect
Wheel of Sounds
Cause and Effect Cinema
More of the SwitchIt! series
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And a Big Blogland Welcome Goes To...

2009-08-08T22:24:00.002-05:00

Kate pointed out a couple of new-to-me blogs that I spent some time checking out today. They both read my blog (:-) ) so I thought I'd say "hi" and give them a shout out here as well (even though I'm pretty sure most if not all of you read Kate's blog, considering how many hits I get from TLWMSN).
So, welcome to the clan Monica from Building a Program That Works and Exceptional Paradise. I look forward to reading more of what you have to share.

The Plan for This Year (2009-10)

2009-08-07T18:44:00.003-05:00

Mel commented to ask if I would post about how I plan my year and if possible include a long-range plan/curriculum overview. When you work in a specialized program like mine, long-range planning and curriculum are a huge deal. I don't have a set curriculum to follow, no teacher's guides or text books, no "curriculum map," or any of those other helpful things that tell other teachers what to teach when. My curriculum is highly differentiated based on the individual needs of the students and is focussed around their IEP goals as well as alternate assessment needs. That being said, I do have a framework for our activities. Of course, anyone who knows me at all knows I've never done anything the same way two years in a row :-) but I'll give it my best shot to try to explain my planning process.

Last year our curriculum pretty well centered around the topics in the News 2 You publications as well as holidays and special events (like the election) that came up. And every spring I plan a lengthy thematic unit that we spend several weeks on. Last year I did The Wizard of Oz. The two years prior to that we did Rainforests and Oceans. And then of course, as I posted, things went pthhhthhh and deflated after we finished with Oz and state assessments, although it perked back up when we did our We Shall Remain unit.

I used to try to be really "theme-y" and ranged from a new theme a week (what was I thinking?!!?) to a theme a month. I would research on early childhood websites for ideas, since they are all about themes, and "age up" for my students. I like themes, I mean REALLY like them. But, man, all that planning and work gets old after awhile. And I found out that we don't like to repeat the same themes/activities from year to year. I work with the same kids and (hopefully) staff for multiple years and doing the same things over and over (and over and over) just gets boring. We need more spice than that. So themes worked for me for about half the year, usually getting disrupted in the after-holiday doldrums or madness of state assessment season. Now don't get me wrong, there are some themes, like Halloween/pumpkins/fall, that we do every year (check out the Mad Science party we did last year and will probably do again this year--too fun!). And I've done enough themes that I've collected extensive materials for some of them so we try to find ways to use that too (for instance, we did the Unique summer curriculum on Oceans and used all the stuff from a previous oceans theme during ESY). And I'm one of those middle-of-the-night-brilliant-ideas people too, so sometimes "the plan" gets scrapped for one of those or for a new idea I've come across (for instance the brilliant set of activities Kate did around The Princess Bride).

This year I'm changing things up yet again (surprise! NOT!). I was able to purchase this year's Unique middle school curriculum so that will probably be the central driving force of our curriculum this year paired with the News 2 You topics. So far I like what I've seen, even though I have to do quite a bit of adapting (no news there; it's a good thing I like to do that and at least I don't have to come up with much content). Now, just a note that this is really only a small part of our daily/weekly curriculum as I also have kids going out into the community for shopping, leisure, and vocational experiences. And then there are the therapy activities, peer time, daily living skills training, and all the other things that are part of daily learning with these kids. And if by some chance Pete Wells comes up with a new literature unit like the Wizard of Oz, we'll probably add that in (are you reading Pete? I have requests if you're game!).

So my "general" daily schedule should look something like this:

7:40-8:00 Breakfast/peer time

8:00-8:30 Personal care/hygiene

8:30-9:00 Morning Meeting activities

9:00-10:30 Academic rotations (Unique/News 2 You, computer, IEP goals/state assessment)

10:30-11:00 PT activities, leisure skills

11:00-12:00 Lunch programs (cooking/prep, eating, clean up, personal care/hygiene)

12:00-12:30 Leisure skills (adult lunch breaks)

12:30-1:00 Chores (dishes, laundry, dusting, etc. around classroom)

1:00-2:00 Whole group activity (game, literature, art, cooking, science experiments, etc.)

2:00-2:45 Personal care/hygiene, home notes, leisure choices (as needed), departures

Interspersed into this schedule are community outings (job sites, shopping, swimming, etc.) and therapies. A couple kids go out to inclusion classes and we have peer buddies who come in for activities as well.

So that's it, kind of. My curriculum plan is a dynamic, constantly developing process. My advice for others trying to figure out how to plan their year is to keep it simple. Start with your state assessment requirements and add in IEP goals. Then look at what kinds of activities you can do to meet those needs. And it's often fun to develop yearly class traditions (pumpkin patch trip, Christmas shopping extravaganza, Mother's Day brunch, etc.). A unifying factor like Unique, News 2 You, Weekly Reader, etc. can also be very helpful in guiding content learning. Have fun planning your year!

Works for Me Monday: Data Notebooks

2009-08-03T18:08:00.003-05:00

Some of the other blogs I read do weekly posts on various themes like Works for Me, Favorite Photo, Wordless Wednesday, etc. So why not do one of my own?

On my last post about Unique Learning Systems Michie commented to ask about my data notebooks. Oh, data, how I loathe thee. It is so essential to doing what we do, measuring student performance, looking for problems, proving successes, etc. Why can't it be easier to deal with? The customizing, revising, printing, copying, hole punching, filing, storing, interpreting, compiling, shredding, etc. can lead a teacher to drink (only S*nic limeades, however, we are at school after all)! I've spent years messing with different systems and none of them really worked for me. There's the "fill in the circles" type and the "mark the rubric" type and so many others. There are even websites that will let you print out data sheets. I think that's where I always run into trouble. If it's too labor intensive I just don't tend to get to it, and printing and/or copying daily or weekly is labor intensive in my book. Add to that the fact that my daily lesson plans usually make it through about the first 15 minutes of the day (30 if I'm lucky) before they have to be adjusted to meet the students' needs, and taking data had become beyond frustrating for me, until I came up with a solution that works for me:

Sprial notebooks. Yep. That's it folks. Simple spiral notebooks. Each of my students has one. In it we keep all of our documentation from daily lesson plans (which I do during breakfast) to communication logs to cognitive skills data to behavioral charting. They are sort of like a daily diary of each student's activities. I start a new page with the day's lesson plans for that student and indicate where I need data (how many times does he initiate with his computer vs. gesture? what did she score on the sorting task? what level of assistance did he need to complete the laundry task?). The notebooks follow the kids around all day and whichever staff is working with them at the time knows what to do and what to record. There is also an overview sheet that explains the basic type/s of data for that student where I lay out rubrics, when to do tally marks, when to use +/-, etc. If they are asking multiple choice comprehension questions (or giving choices of any sort), they know to write down the question, the presented answer choices, and the student's response. If I need a specific way to take data I can just make an example right next to the lesson plan entry. Staff can easily take anecdotal notes as well, which is very helpful to me when evaluating effectiveness, problems, etc. We can attach photos of projects, actual worksheets, printouts from computer programs like Stages, Switching On, etc., and "sticky note data" (don't we all wish we'd bought stock in that company way back when!). I glance through everything every day to look for glaring concerns and more thoroughly once a week or so to compile data to judge progress. This is relatively simple since I generally use averages, depending upon what I'm looking for. I should probably create a spreadsheet for this but usually just do it by hand on sticky notes which then get used as place markers. That way I can multitask during activities like faculty meetings (I am one of those people who cannot just sit and listen; I have to be doing something with my hands and the other half of my brain at the same time).

Types of data most likely to be taken in my classroom (I know there are others than these):
right or wrong/+/-
tally marks
anecdotal/lists
multiple choice (more than 2 choices)
levels of assistance/rubric:
0 = resists activity/refuses
1 = maximum assistance (according to student prompt system, generally hand over hand)/choices reduced to 1
2 = moderate assistance (according to student prompt system, usually a touch prompt, model, or other "large" prompt)/choices reduced to 2
3 = minimum assistance (according to student prompt system, usually a small visual cue, redirecting attention, etc.)/choices reduced to 3
4 = independent/no assistance/4 or more choices
For each trial the student can earn up to 4 points. I then create an average score based on points earned over points possible. So in a 5 trial activity the student could score 20 points. I can then estimate level of assistance:
90-100% = independent
75-90% = minimum assistance
50-75% = moderate assistance
25-50% = maximum assistance
Below 25% = resisting activity/need to reevaluate procedures
Now this is pretty general and I adjust the rubric depending upon the task. Sometimes we only use 3 levels, sometimes we use 5. I might also look at range (look at me using my fancy dancy math vocabulary) rather than average or otherwise interpret data. Is he always missing certain colors? Does she have a tendency to choose the answer on the right? Etc.

What I really like about this system is its simplicity. Everything is all together in one place for me. It's easy for me to pick up a notebook and write down what I want done as well as to make adjustments and changes as the day goes on. I can leave myself or the staff notes and they can do the same. Questions, needs, and concerns can be jotted down "in the moment" before they get forgotten or lost in the chaos, I mean shuffle. The mountain of loose data sheets is eliminated and the spirals are easy to transport from place to place. Plus spirals are a common tool used by all the students in our building so no one stands out. And because it's all "attached," nothing gets lost.

This is what works for me. What works for you? Leave a comment or link to your own blog.

Unique Learning Systems

2009-07-30T12:29:00.005-05:00

We used Unique's free summer curriculum this summer just to try it out. I had the opportunity to add the 2009 middle school curriculum to a grant so we'll be using it this coming school year too. Overall I think I like the curriculum but it took a lot of adaptation to meet my students' needs and interests. I don't think it will be a "stand alone" or "solo" curriculum in my room, but paired with News-2-You and some of the other things we do, it should help to flesh things out in the area of academics. My ESY hours were cut in half because of tight budgets so I didn't get to spend as much time working with the curriculum as I would have liked.

What I liked about it:

Two levels available, similar to the levels available for News-2-You. This came in handy this summer because I was working with kids age 5 to 16 and used the same curriculum for all of them. The younger kids couldn't sustain attention to the longer readings and needed more work with basic vocabulary. The older kids, who have been doing activities like these longer, did better on the longer readings and answering comprehension questions.
The question guide at the bottom of the chapter pages was handy. It meant I could make the assignment and my paras could formulate questions themselves using available vocabulary pictures and/or yes/no responses. They would record the questions they asked and the kids' responses in the kids' data notebooks. It reduced the amount of worksheet creating, printing, cutting, and pasting that needed to be done.
The length of the unit made it easier for me to pick and choose what to focus on. There were some areas we spent lots of time on (what is an ocean; ocean animals; beaches) and some we spent no time on (oceanography).
The combination of science and social studies was nice and leant itself well to extension activities.
PDF format was nice as well as being able to access the curriculum from an online account rather than needing to download it.

What I didn't like as much:

Some concepts were far too abstract for my students (Oceanography) and I couldn't make them concrete enough to gain their understanding.
More visuals would have been good such as actual photos of oceans, beaches, people engaging in related activities, ocean animals, etc. (I know I can go out and find my own, but having them included in the package would be very helpful)
More support for multisensory learning would have been good such as ideas for objects/ object symbols, tactile experiences, sound sources, etc. We needed ways to make the concepts real or concrete for the students. Being in Kansas we couldn't exactly take a field trip to the beach/ocean and few of my students have had those experiences.
Vocabulary access--I can't remember if the SymbolStix symbols for the unit were included or not; I tend to use Boardmaker but sometimes the SymbolStix symbol is better.
A source for extension activities and sharing (see Kate's post for more information on ideas for this).
Access to the illustrations separately would have been good for making discussion cards and flash cards without having to print out the entire page (I only have a pdf reader so can't edit).
A range of levels for the extension activities would be good. For instance, my kids couldn't do any of the math activities (all involved money) because they don't have a grasp on those concepts. Sorting, matching, simple counting, more than/less than, comparison, and classification activities would be helpful. I want more than simple participation like activating a switch to give a (prerecorded) correct answer. I want my kids to work on actual skills development. They can do so much more than cause effect responses.

Some of the extension activities we did with the ocean/beaches unit:

water and sand play including "clean the beach" where the kids dug through the sand to find "trash" and sorted "trash" and "good beach things" (shells, starfish, rocks, etc.)
numerous ocean animal art projects I've collected over the years
kids' literature like Rainbow Fish, Swimmy, Herman the Hermit Crab, etc. I also have several nonfiction books about ocean animals
Is It a Fish? activity (on Adapted Learning so log in first)
a number of computer based activities from Boardmaker/Adapted Learning and Intellitools
threw stuffed ocean animals into our ball pool so the kids could go "scuba diving"
discovery box filled with various ocean items and toys (shells, fish, plastic aquarium sea weed, aquarium "coral," scuba mask and snorkle, etc.)
various cause effect ocean themed toys (our speech path found several at Enabling Devices --this was a favorite-- and I have a mini bubble tube with fish in it among others)
listening to ocean sounds and "beach music" in our Somatron "music chair"
Moon Sand sand castles
Ocean in a Bottle (water bottle; choice of blue, green and/or purple food color; choice of glitter or sand; choice of small ocean themed items to put inside and stickers on the outside)

Overall I'm excited to have access to a true curriculum designed for my students. It's been a long time coming. With the addition of the creativity of others that is available out here in cyberspace, this promises to be an exciting adventure for us. I'm really looking forward to using it with state assessments this spring.

Happy Blog Birthday

2009-07-01T17:59:00.003-05:00

Wow! Has it really been two months since I've posted? Bad SMDTeacher! BAD SMDTeacher! I know I've been busy but not that busy and it's not like I have nothing to blog about. I have all the stuff to share about several of our end-of-year projects. Then I need to do a retrospective on our favorite projects/activities/accomplishments of the year. I should probably go back to my New Year's post and see how close I came to meeting my goals. And then there is everything that has been going on over the summer. And what about goals for the upcoming "regular" school year? Oh, and there are the promised posts about favorite children's literature, favorite music to use with teaching, etc. And what about those Wizard of Oz photos? What about those?

So, for those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for me to get off the stick and start posting again, I pinky swear that I will do my best to get a few things up soon. And, just to help that out a little, in honor of my blog birthday (which apparently is a big deal in blog land), ASK ME SOME QUESTIONS! What do you want to know? Your interest will probably nudge me into sharing more.

Thoughts on Macaroni

2009-05-05T21:17:00.005-05:00

Part 2 of my musings on Rob Rummel-Hudson's latest post...

As part of his discussion on the uselessness of state assessments, Rob also talks about what he terms as "macaroni art." I LOVE the term. My kids' parents tend to refer to it as "para art." You know what I'm talking about: the kid who can't hold a pencil and would prefer to eat a crayon rather than color with it comes home with a perfect masterpiece of an art project that in no way reflects the child's artistic abilities, lovingly created by a staff member at school so the child feels "included" and the parents don't feel "left out" or "burdened" by their child's disability and will have something "nice" to hang on the fridge. The parents mostly smile politely and quietly throw those projects away. They are meaningless. I have actually seen paras sit at a table alone and complete a project while the student whose name is on the project is elsewhere in the room doing something unrelated or worse, sits there totally disengaged, tuned out, or even ASLEEP! UGH!

One of the first things I teach my paras is the Principle of Partial Participation. Essentially, the mantra in my classroom is "No one can do everything but everyone can do something." We do NOT do "para art" in my program, although many of my paras do enjoy doing art and will often do their OWN project alongside the kids (thus the phenomenon of the multiplying dream catchers, HA HA). But, the projects my students do are wholy influenced by them. They might not be able to hold the marker or paint brush, but they can certainly pick the color or shape. We do a lot of "glue it on" projects. Those cute "follow-the-directions-cut-along-the-dotted-line" projects you can photocopy from teacher idea sites? Not for us. I choose techniques that are pretty "fool proof" like balloon stamping, finger print painting, daubing, mosaic, and decoupage. And I don't care if we have day-glo orange Totos or Dorothy has purple hair or the Emerald City ends up being more orange and brown than green. Projects of any sort MUST maximize choice making opportunities for the students or I won't even consider them. You won't find "coloring sheets" in my room (OK, except for one student who enjoys smashing the paint daubers onto them when she's working on color identification). Our projects turn out as varied and interesting as the kids themselves and I LOVE it. So do the parents, as evidenced by the numbers of our projects that I've seen hanging on fridges or lovingly displayed in rooms. For more examples of some of the projects we do, look in the side bar under "Curriculum" at posts about our News-2-You related projects. And I promise, Wizard of Oz project pix will be coming eventually.

I should also mention that my staff is forbidden to make choices FOR a student. I have students who don't particularly care to do most art projects and will communicate that by absolutely refusing to choose ANYTHING (we call it "staring through the wall"). Frustrating? You bet. But for me, "not choosing" is the choice and we honor that choice (even when the project is super cute and part of state assessments). There are consequences for not doing your work, just like for any other kid (I have really supportive parents). I can't stand it when people make choices "for" kids. All that teaches them is that their desires are irrelevant. A big serving of "learned helplessness" anyone? Seriously, if you want to see me lose my cool, go ahead and make that (non health and safety related) choice for one of my kiddos, I dare you.

So I say, "DOWN WITH MACARONI ART!" Unless of course, it's a macaroni collage that unquestioningly reflects the student--as in a big blob of glue in the middle of the page because the kid LOVES glue, with one little blue piece of macaroni stuck in it because he HATES making choices for art projects (or threw the other bits on the floor).

Can I Hear an "Amen!"

2009-05-05T20:51:00.003-05:00

I look forward to new posts on Rob Rummel-Hudson's blog Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords. He is a good writer who is not afraid to "tell it like it is." His latest post hit so many notes with me on more than one topic that I may well end up doing more than one post referencing it.

The first part of today's post talks about federally mandated state assessments (NCLB). I agree with everything Rob states in his post. I won't repeat it here (go read it for yourself). I most liked his comments about kids with disabilities and how they are affected by these tests. You mean a kid on an IEP "failed" the reading test? Well DUH!!! I cannot come close to explaining the frustration I have as a special educator to be forced to put students into a no win, sure to fail situation. And then to be held accountable as the teacher for the fact that the child has a DISABILITY that INTERFERES with his ability to learn like other kids, take these tests, and in general, "meet proficiency" at "grade level." And I'm one of the fortunate (she says tongue in cheek because this is soooo not fun) few who gets to give the Alternate Assessments, which gives me the flexibility to basically pick and choose what my students do for their assessments (no bubble sheets or computer-based tests for us, just a small forest of trees in paperwork and way too much time away from kids). Every year I spend countless hours devising assessment activities, taking assessment data, compiling assessment data, filling out the forms, and putting together portfolios. THEN we get to score the things in a team of three. And what are we testing? Is it really relevant for a deaf-blind 13 year old with severe CP to be able to label his shapes? I mean, come on! The kid can't effectively communicate his wants and needs, why on earth does he need to know his shapes? Worse, these are a "point in time" assessment and can't be used to compare performance from year to year. Not to mention that we are basing our ratings on 3 pieces of "evidence" of 5 trials each, which is SO not best practice for determining student performance. In the end, the assessments are not an indicator on how well my students are doing with mastery of the state standards. Instead, they are an indicator of how creative I am as a teacher in making the "indicators" (tested items) work for my kids with a minimum of disruption to them (other than the fact that I'm stuck with paperwork for far too many hours instead of actually working with my students). The procedures are actually designed so that I can manipulate the data to make it look really good (good thing I'm an ethical teacher, but I do know other teachers who are "encouraged" strongly to do just that). I could go on and on about the absurdity and uselessness of the state assessments as they currently stand, and not just for special ed. I think they're pretty much a waste of time for everyone, except the bean counters. And if the Powers That Be read this, go ahead, audit me. I'm not worried. I know how to follow the rules. HA HA HA HA HA HA

OK, enough for that soapbox....

We Shall Remain

2009-04-25T22:34:00.004-05:00

Hello all! No I haven't disappeared. Just been very very busy with a lot of things I can't discuss here. Plus, as I mentioned in my previous post, I've run into "teacher's block" (sort of like writer's block) and just haven't had too much to say. And of course, now that I'm in the mood to post, the little guy I'm doing respite for has decided that he MUST be out of bed and MUST have a snack and some playtime. It's waaaaaay past his bedtime. The stinker. :-)......

OK, problems solved with much giggling and even a couple of belly laughs plus a whole lot of cheese crackers on the floor, much to the dogs' delight. I LOVE this kid! Anyway, I mentioned that I was struggling with how to structure the rest of the regular school year for us and talked about doing something with the PBS series "We Shall Remain." That is indeed what I decided to go with. We got started a bit late so had to do two episodes last week (After the Mayflower, which is about the European "invasion" of America, and "Tecumseh's Vision" about Tecumseh's attempts to unite the Native American tribes into one nation separate from the white man). Both episodes were excellent although I will say we were all more fascinated by After the Mayflower (you mean the Pilgrims are actually the bad guys? How different would history be today if Massasoit had just decided to let those foolish Europeans die from their own ignorance). I'm using both the News-2-You and the website to create synopses of the episodes using Boardmaker which we read during Morning Meeting prior to watching the episodes (we watch during gross motor/standing time). One of my students, whose Dad is Puerto Rican, was fascinated by the pictures of Native Americans that I used and kept pointing to himself and then to the Smartboard, making it very clear that he thinks he looks like a Native American. Very cool. He got VERY ANGRY when the white men treated the Native Americans badly during the first episode and got really into it when the Native Americans fought back in the second. It was so neat to see him responding like this because he is usually completely disengaged from anything even remotely "academic."

We didn't do much of a project with After the Mayflower, although there are some nice Pilgrim and Indian crafts at dltk-kids.com and Kate also posted some great resources on her website. With Tecumseh's Vision we decided to make dream catchers. The project on dltk-kids did not work for us. It was designed by a teacher in the UK and we weren't able to lay hands on all the materials, particularly the mesh bags. We used this project instead. This is one of the most fun projects we've done, or at least one of the most popular. The kids enjoyed choosing colors and materials and the adults had a blast weaving (my group of students don't have the fine motor skills to do the weaving but had loads of fun checking the adults' work and criticizing, I mean commenting, on it). I think we have 20 or so of the things floating around the room at the moment. We made small ones. The challenging part was figuring out what to use for the rings. In the past we've brass embroidery rings but they are fairly expensive and we didn't have any in the supply closet (yes, this was yet another last minute project idea). What worked best was cutting the rim off of disposable plastic cups (the white, nearly transparent ones work the best). We also tried the rim off of plastic containers like cottage cheese and Cool Whip, but they were too flexible and didn't maintain their round shape. The rims off the LIDS however, worked great. However, the cups are cheap and there are lots of them available compared to the containers. For the string we used crochet thread (the kind used to make lace) for the smaller ones and yarn for the larger. We have a whole collection of various sized beads that we could string on as requested by the students. For the bottom the kids chose a feather (or 5) onto which we strung 3 pony beads (on the shaft end). These were then tied onto the bottom of the dream catcher either in a group or singly. They all turned out really neat. I forgot to take a picture of them but will add one later.

Next up we have The Trail of Tears, Geronimo, and Wounded Knee. I'm not exactly sure what projects we will do to enhance these topics as I need to keep things really simple. I do know we will be taking a trip to the Mid America All Indian Center which has recently reopened and is doing a bunch of stuff related to the We Shall Remain series. And there are more than a few good movies featuring Native Americans (and no, I'm not talking the John Wayne-type where the Indians are the bad guys). And maybe we can find someone from the Indian Center who would be willing to volunteer some time to come in and do drumming and storytelling with the kids. I also have a collection of Native American music we are listening to.

For those of you who would like to borrow my We Shall Remain Boardmaker adaptations:

Email me OR leave a comment with your email/contact information and I'll contact you about sharing. Some of what I have created uses copywrited materials owned by News-2-You so I have to be careful how I share. I plan to use this unit again in the fall closer to Thanksgiving with more activities.

Making Dust

2009-04-11T21:24:00.003-05:00

A a kid we often went to my grandparents' farm. My brother's favorite thing to do, and later all the boys/cousins, was to put his bike up on blocks in the big shed, peddle as fast as he could and "make dust." That's how I'm feeling right now with school, like I'm just making dust but not getting anywhere.

We finished giving state assessments right before spring break. Because we use an alternate assessment system, this took up quite a lot of our time and structured our daily activities. We also implemented and completed a very involved unit on the Wizard of Oz (check the side bar under Projects). I had a plan with a goal: read the whole book and do related activities; gather all the needed evidence for state assessment portfolios. And now that we're finished with all of that, we seem to be just spinning our wheels. The day-to-day routines have become the "daily grind." Everyone, kids and adults alike, are bored with the same old same old. On top of all that we have had a constant in and out with absences from both students and staff, had one student move away resulting in a slight case of "over staffing" (I know I know, I should be happy and believe me I am NOT giving up a staff person until I have to; plus one of my paras wants to go back to college full time and will be making that move very soon) and not enough to do for everyone all the time. Add in some plans that haven't come to fruition quite as expected and some not-under-our-control interferences that have kept us completely out of routine, and well, I think we've hit the "spring doldrums." You know, that place where everyone is ready to move on but we're stuck with 5 weeks left of school before a brief break and new opportunities. We're not even all that motivated to fo out on community day, how bad is that? UGGHH!!

I need inspiration. This is one of those times that I miss NOT having a preset curriculum (creating my own curriculum is one of the things I love most about my job, but wow is it a lot of work!). How do I fill the last few weeks of school with fun, engaging, and meaningful activities? We're pretty well at a maintenance stage with most of our IEP goals. Where do we go from here? Kate posted some fun looking activities to go with The Princess Bride which look very intriguing, BUT do I really want to jump back into another extended study so soon after the Wizard of Oz extravaganza? News-2-You has an article on Native Americans and the new PBS series called We Shall Remain that I could do a lot of things with. Maybe we'll go with that, especially since the Mid America All Indian Center is reopening here in April and they have worked well with our special needs in the past. But that will take quite a bit of prep work and I have a number of time consuming commitments coming up (summer school planning, observing new-to-me students coming to summer school, grant proposals due, student recertifications due, progress reports, helping with a couple of professional development activities, grading state assessments, ......). Do I have time to do adequate justice to a Native American unit?

Any ideas out there anyone? Throw me a nice life preserver please!

Voices From Outer Space

2009-03-24T20:18:00.003-05:00

We got to do the neatest thing this morning. A little background....

Every morning after breakfast we do Morning Meeting (here is my Morning Meeting routine posted on Adapted Learning). That usually takes 10-15 minutes depending upon what everyone has to say and how cooperative everyone is being. Which leaves us with 10 minutes or so before we start Rotations. During this time I usually put the CNN Student News on the Smartboard for the kids to watch while the grownups organize Rotations, finish bathroom trips and breakfast clean up, etc. Today there was a banner at the top of the Student News page indicating that President Obama was getting ready to speak to the astronauts on the International Space Station. We've just finished a mini unit on the Solar System and Space program so I clicked on the link out of curiosity. Nothing much going on so we went back to the Student News. I left the window open, however, and about 2 minutes later we heard NASA connecting with the Space Station. We switched back and got to watch a very interesting exchange between the President and a group of school children and the members of the Space Station team (listen here if you want). ALL of the kids were enthralled. Very cool. Technology is AMAZING!

Sink or Float?

2009-03-16T22:10:00.009-05:00

In my last post I talked about the importance of play. I try to incorporate playing into as many activities as possible. This has been most evident recently during the science experiments we've done. The latest was experimenting with and exploring the concepts of "sink" and "float." The Boardmaker activity sheet is available on Adapted Learning (be sure to sign in). As you can tell from the pictures, we had a lot of fun playing with the concepts of sink, float, wet, and dry while sneaking in some real learning!

The Importance of Play

2009-03-15T14:14:00.003-05:00

Free Technology for Teachers posted about this TED video today. It's a video I've been meaning to watch and FT4T prompted me to go ahead and do it today (I like to give credit when the work of other people leads me down new paths). Now, we all know play is important, especially for young kids, right? How many of us recognize the importance of play throughout the life span? Stuart Brown shares his views and research into the importance of play for everybody at every age. Check out his work at the National Institute for Play. The video got me to thinking, do we let kids play enough? Do we let them play at all? And, most important to me, how do we encourage play behaviors among people with severe disabilities, especially older kids, teens, and adults?

The world of a person with complex disabilities is often consumed by their needs: the need to perform caregiving routines, the need for a variety of medical procedures, the need to participate in various therapies designed to improve the person's function. Then throw in school, which is often very results oriented--the need to produce a project, the need to have measurable results, the need to collect data. You need to do this, you need to do that. Need Need Need. Doesn't leave much in the way of "personal" time, let alone "play" time. But according to Dr. Brown's research, play is as great a "need" in life as anything else. Play develops social skills, problem solving skills, adaptability, creativity. It creates balance and self satisfaction. It relieves stress, eases anxiety, and enhances happiness.

Play activities are highly prevalent in programs for very young children. In fact, these programs are typically built around the concept of "play," goals are written with play outcomes, and play activities are engineered for access and success. But what about older children, teens, and adults? Is play engineered into their daily activities? Do we get too hung up on "age appropriate?" What should "play" look like for older age groups? What could play look like? Think about the Siftables I mentioned in an earlier post. Now THAT is play! So how can we utilize the resources we have available to us to create play opportunities not only for our students but also the adults/staff who work with them?

I think we do a lot of play in my class but do we do enough? Do we encourage the right kinds of play? Often, I think for us, play time is a reward or filler activity, not the central activity itself. Play is what we do in between the "important" stuff. Maybe I need to rethink that approach a bit. I have one student in particular who I'm struggling with on curriculum. He is more than capable of matching to sample, sorting by one attribute, identifying vocabulary items from objects as well as photos, identifying body parts, doing "put in" tasks, and numerous other skills common to classrooms like mine and featured in developmental profiles, curricula, and even state standards. BUT this kid has absolutely NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in these tasks. NO reward is big enough. He'll do one or two trials and then that's it. Drill and practice is not his thing. How do I know he can do these things though? Because I've seen signs of it when he is playing on his own. So maybe I need to rethink our approach. How do we turn these traditional "skill and drill" tasks into playtime while keeping it "measurable" for data purposes?

According to Dr. Brown's research, there are essentially seven different "types" of play, all of which are important to the development of a balanced person. I got to thinking about these different types or categories of play and how a severe disability can impact a person's ability to engage in them...

Attunement play: this is probably the very earliest type of play people engage in. It begins in infancy: baby smiles, mom smiles. It helps develop that sense of connectedness and security. It is even very early level cause and effect understanding. I would think attunement play would be very difficult for kids who have spent a large part of their early lives in the midst of medical interventions (think preemies in isolettes for long periods of time). How do sensory impairments impact attunement play? And what about people (not just small children) with low awareness levels because of constant seizures, high levels of medication, other physiological issues that prevent them from developing an awareness of anything outside of themselves? Even typically developing kids can develop "attachment disorder" when their efforts at attunement play aren't rewarded. And we hear all the time about parents who have had children in long-term medical care who have difficulty "bonding" with their babies. Do we recognize attunement play when we see it? Do we engage in it? Encourage it?

Body play and movement: aahh! Here's an area many of us know a lot about. We all recognize that kids who can move and explore on their own at an early age typically learn more faster than kids who can't. "Learning about self movement structures an individual’s knowledge of the world - it is a way of knowing, and we actually, through movement and play, think in motion." (http://www.nifplay.org/states_play.html) What profound meaning this has for our kids who have extreme difficulty moving on their own, who are "tied up" with machinery, equipment, and so on. Who are coached and supported through every movement in an effort to "normalize tone" or prompt a desired response or "fix" what is wrong. How often does the "intervention" actually cause more problems in other areas? Do we take the time to step back and just let kids move on their own? I think this what I like most about Lilli Nielson's Active Learning approach. It is all about play and independence and figuring things out for yourself. The method advocates a "hands off" approach from adults and lets kids simply, well, play. We employ these techniques all the time in my classroom, with great success in some instances, and little to no success in others. It just depends on the kid, the moment, the staff, and a thousand other little variables that all add up.

Object play: we also tend to recognize the importance of manipulating objects. Object play develops problem solving skills--what does this do? How do I make this work? What happens when I do this? How do we encourage object play in kids with severe disabilities? What is "meaningful" object play and what is seemingly less productive "stimming" on objects? Is "stimming" really a bad thing or is it another form of play? How do we help kids with poor hand skills (little or no grasp, reach, strength, low tone, high tone, etc.) to engage in object play? I use Active Learning but what else is out there? Does technology like switch use enhance object play or interfere with this type of learning by removing the learner from directly interacting with objects? How can switches be engineered to allow for experimentation and not just "turn it on/turn it off" activities?

Social play: another area we are all familiar with. How often do we target social skills as a goal? Social play develops our sense of belonging and acceptance. It teaches us to interact with and get along with others. Kids with intensive needs are so often "separate" from others. They might engage in "parallel play" but seldom actually play with another person except maybe in highly structured and engineered activities controlled by another person. In our desire to intervene, to help, do we actually keep these kids separate from each other? Do we encourage these interactions/engineer interactions? In my room the answer would be "no" we don't encourage a lot of interaction between the kids. It's not intentional, but the kids usually each do their own things. Encouraging dual play with others needs to become a goal for us--put two kids in the toy tunnel together for instance, two on the swing set doing similar activities, two at the water tub doing tummy time, etc. Even when we play games we don't do enough give and take with the kids.

Another important area of social play is "rough and tumble" play. To a person my kids all love to rough house. "Tummy drum," "shake shake shake," and "wiggle jiggle" are all favorite activities that we don't do enough of. How do we stay safe but still encourage this type of physical play? Typical kids engage in rough and tumble play through sports, on the playground, wrestling with sibs, etc. How do we give our kids with severe disabilities similar experiences?

A third important area of social play is celebratory play. This is engaged in by every age group. We all have celebration rituals, cheer on our favorite team, clap in excitement, etc. How often do our kids with intensive needs not respond appropriately to these types of activities? They don't know what to do, how to respond, and sometimes they don't even recognize what all the fuss is about. How do we help them gain these understandings?

Imaginative and pretend play: is this developmental? Can our kids who are at younger "developmental ages" engage in pretend play? How do we help them? What should pretend play look like for a child who can't really manipulate objects (dolls, trucks)? Or who understands things in a very concrete way (expects food he can eat rather than play food that he "pretends" to eat)? What about older kids who seem "stuck" on baby dolls, Barbies, action figures? Should we discourage this kind of pretend play or encourage it? How do preteens, teens, and adults engage in pretend play activities? This is an area I've always wanted to do more with in my classroom. I had a very rich and engaging imaginative play "life" as a child and those skills have stretched into adulthood by allowing me to be creative and innovative. How do I give that gift to my students?

Storytelling and narrative play: well, books, TV shows, and movies are obvious sources of this type of play, at least receptively. How do we give kids with very complex communication needs the ability to TELL stories, especially when they don't have a good grasp of "language" as we typically view it? I have kids who actually speak a different language, one that is sensory based and doesn't translate well into English/talking. I have been known to crawl inside the toy tunnel beside a student, close my eyes and give her my hands so she could talk to me in her language about what she is experiencing. I need to do more of that "listening in their language" with all my students.

Transformative-Integrative and Creative play: using play as a medium to create new ideas, things, etc. How do we help these kids access this? They usually aren't "creators" so to speak. Music? Art? This is probably the least understood area of play so far. Maybe we already see it in our kids as they figure out how to work around an obstacle, accommodate a sensory or motor deficit, etc.

We hear constantly about "21st Century Skills." I got to thinking, could "play" be considered a "21st Century Skill?" The kinds of innovative thinking, problem solving ability, and creativy companies are looking for today all seem to be couched in the "play" philosophy. Schools are falling behind faster and faster. We should pay attention to the fact that kids come into kindergarten ready, willing, and eager to learn. But by the time they reach 2nd or 3rd grade, school has become more of a chore--kids can't wait to get to recess, PE, etc. Why? Is it because of "skill and drill" practices? Because they are forced to sit at their desk, raise their hands to respond, follow directions to the letter, do only as they are told? I was a good student but what kind of a learner could I have been if allowed to learn through play? What kind of a person would I be now? Would my social skills be better? Would I have better relationships with the people around me (something with which I struggle; I'm not exactly comfortable with nor skilled at forming new relationships; small talk? forget about it! Not my forte at all!)? I mean seriously, if dogs "get it" and polar bears "get it" then why can't people?

The (Hopefully Near) Future

2009-03-10T21:10:00.004-05:00

Sam Sennott of All Together We Can posted today about a nifty little thing called Siftables (look here too). Let's talk SMART boards on speed that fit in your pocket! Awesome! I love the section of the TED video (which you should check out because they are always interesting) where the little boy is playing with them and creating his own story. I immediately thought of the possibilities for several of my students.

One student has yet to "find her voice" using voice output and is just barely grasping the concept of requesting wants/needs with symbol cards; she'd pick it up in a snap with these (pun intended). She loves to fiddle with things and often uses fiddling to make her selections (desired selections are held onto and fiddled more intensely; undesired are fiddled briefly then dropped). Imagine what she would do if her choice spoke when she picked it up or fiddled it for a preset period of time.

Another student would be far more motivated to work on academic tasks if he got to play with such cool "toys." And interfacing with a computer screen or the Smart board or whatever would just add to the allure, not to mention provide him with very interesting access. Sorting, matching, vocabulary, sight words, counting,...

What about having a series of "menu" Siftables (eat--bathroom--toys--say something--need help); when one is selected the others immediately switch to related vocabulary (eat would result in food choices, etc.).

What about eye gaze selectors or those using head tracking? Could they be configured to respond to an infrared or other input so they could be mounted to an eye gaze board? Much more adaptable for some kids than a simple computer screen.

How about building sentences by stacking the words? Or putting together a sequence that the Siftables then "perform" in a cartoon, either messing up or stalling if the sequence is incorrect so the student can try again?

Teaching emotions and interactions, especially for kids who tend to be disengaged from typical social cues. What happens when you pinch someone? What should you do when someone says "hello?"

And think about the possibilities in multisensory spaces: build your own mood light (aka "blinky lights" in my room), make your own music, a combination of both, set them to activate various sensory items (fan, scents, CDs, disco ball, etc.), and so on.

Now, I don't know how these would be accessible to switch users or those with vision impairments. But, since they have wireless technology I'm sure the switch access could be worked out. And maybe tactile cues could be added to the cases for those with vision issues. Or maybe vibration or ??? And for those with fine motor issues, I'm betting they could be made larger, although the current size seems pretty manageable to me. I'd bet the Siftables creators could come up with all kinds of solutions.

And these ideas are relatively simple "inside the box" applications thanks to my currently overloaded brain which is fighting creativity. Now I want to know cost and availability and where I can get my hands on some! You know I don't buy all these "toys" for the students, don't you? That's just my excuse! In any case, I look back at what we had available for instructional and assistive technology even just 20 years ago (can you believe I went to college WITHOUT the internet?!!!) and am amazed at how far we've come. Where will we be next year? In five? In 20? Wow!

Monsters in the Closet

2009-03-04T20:46:00.005-06:00

Anyone who works with kids using AAC or some sort of assisted communication, or even assistive technology, needs to read this post by Schuyler's Dad. You know, sometimes kids just need to be kids without all the trappings that so often come with disability. They need to be let loose to fly through the gym, roll down the hill, scream their heads off for no other reason than it's just darn fun. They don't need adults hovering over them all the time forcing the tech on them. Don't get me wrong, the tech is great and can allow these kids to do so very much. But the tech also highlights the Monsters. It's good to shove the Monster in the closet now and again and just BE. How awesome is it that Schuyler figured out how to do that so well that, at least from her perception, her friends don't even know the Monster is there. Way to defeat that Monster, Schuyler!

And for anyone looking for a good blog to read that is both well written and insightful, Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords is one of my top favorites. Rob is an excellent writer who tells it like it is without holding back and I look forward to each new blog post. It is a true gift that Rob has chosen to share the joys, pain, and sorrows of fighting Schuyler's Monster and all the other monsters of parenthood while raising a beautiful little girl in her struggle to be just like everyone else but still fiercely and uniquely herself.

Buzzard Day Resources and Activities

2009-03-02T20:00:00.004-06:00

Here are some ideas to use with next week's News-2-You issue "Buzzard Day." If I have time I want to do an adapted book about turkey vultures using Intellitools Classroom Suite (haven't used it in awhile as I've been concentrating on Boardmaker), which I will post to the exchange. And keep an eye out on Adapted Learning as there are sure to be lots of good activities posted there too. The News-2-You support group started by Kate Ahern is growing weekly with more and more people starting to get brave and contribute. Check out Kate's awesome ideas for this week's edition of "Water for Africa."

Arts and Crafts

Vulture paper craft (could extend this activity into writing by hanging clouds from the bottom of the vulture and adding facts about vultures or things the student likes about vultures with either words or picture symbols)
Vulture toilet paper roll craft Vulture Theme Preschool Activities and Crafts

Science/Information

Compare and contrast the characteristics of turkey vultures to a bird commonly found where you live (I think we'll use turkeys since Kansas is gearing up for the spring turkey hunting season); hmmm...I see a possible Boardmaker activity with movable buttons here
Talk about wind, heat and thermals: Jumping Coin experiment, Wind Experiment (on Adapted Learning); use a hair dryer to keep a balloon floating in the air or to move a weighted down helium balloon from place to place
Eek!--Turkey Vulture
Yahoo kids
BioKIDS
Ohio State Parks
The Turkey Vulture Society

Did You Know?

A group of vultures is called a "kettle"

Turkey vultures are bald so their heads don't get gunky when they pull the guts and other goodies out of dead animals

Turkey vultures pee on their legs to cool themselves off when they get hot and to clean off their legs after walking through dead animal carcasses

Geography Ideas

Study about deserts; compare the desert climate to where you live; this article ties in to last week's "Water for Africa" story
Learn about Ohio; try this one too

Cooking

Vulture Vegetable Bites (if you don't have an oven these can also be done in an electric skillet)
Since vultures eat mainly meat, why not try taste testing different types of cold cuts from the deli? Interesting choices would be liverwurst, (cooked) bratwurst, hard salami, etc. Be sure to be aware of any religious dietary issues (I have a student who does not eat pork products). You could easily modify my Great Green Foods Taste Test activity to accommodate a meat taste test.
From a quick Google search I learned that people also actually cook and eat turkey vultures; lots of tips for keeping the meat from getting stringy (UGH!)

Motor Skills/Games/Sensory

Lay prone on a scooter and "fly" across the gym floor
Do the same thing while holding a towel or sheet like a sail
If available, use an Airwalker swing or swing platform to "fly"
Use large plastic tongs to pick up various small items (like a vulture's beak)
Go on a "bird walk" now that spring is arriving; how many birds can you count?
Use chopsticks to eat a snack like mini marshmallows
Alternatively substitute a pincer grip with fingers for tongs or chopsticks
Play a game like Operation (my kids can't play by themselves but they love the buzzer and "blinky light" so we pair them up with peer buddies and give them voice output with appropriate comments; loads of fun!)
Fill a bin with various textures of feathers
Get creative and fill bins with various "body parts" made from food items (spaghetti for intestines, cottage cheese for brains, etc.; look here for more ideas)
Listen to the sounds vultures make

A Unique Opportunity

2009-03-02T19:31:00.004-06:00

News-2-You's Unique Learning System is offering their summer curriculum for free! I have always been impressed with the News-2-You and have been curious about Unique. A couple of the elementary programs in my cooperative have been piloting the curriculum this year and I'm curious to hear about their opinions of it. Because of the price tag I was a bit hesitant to jump into the deep end so to speak. However, the support materials tagged on to the end of the first News-2-You issue of the month have been intriguing and I think the opportunity to explore an entire unit over the summer at no cost is just what I need to make my decision for next year. I signed up for the middle school level curriculum, which is entitled "It's a Beach Party." The curriculum will focus on water-based ecosystems, especially the ocean. This is perfect for us as a few years ago we did a 3 month long unit on the ocean and I have lots of support materials. And we have several summer birthdays in our group so the beach party culminating activity should be a good way to celebrate both the birthdays and the end of the summer session.

Other grade level offerings include:

Primary (K-2): "Sunny Days" with a focus on Earth and space science

Intermediate (3-5): "A Picnic in the Park" with a focus on insects

High School (8-12): "Summer Vacation" with a focus on popular vacation spots

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

2009-02-22T20:23:00.012-06:00

Our Wizard of Oz party was a huge success! We invited two other classes and had around 25 kids plus staff and some parents in attendance. Since our cooperative has taken over a recently vacated elementary school in the county we were able to reserve its gym for our party, no need to fight for space in any of our buildings. YAY! The Skill Development Center is located here as well and we contracted with the vocational program, which runs a bakery, to make cookies for us. And because the space was recently used as a cafeteria we had all the tables we needed in addition to access to a beautiful playground.

Everyone entered through a rainbow created with streamers taped over the door. The Yellow Brick Road was created with yellow table covers securely taped down with (mostly) yellow duck tape. To the right you can see a table that held paper bag "baskets" the kids used to collect prizes.

The first activity station was the Yellow Brick Road game. We gave out lollipops for prizes. And what about the creative use of that cooler as Dorothy's house complete with Wicked Witch of the East and Ruby Slippers?

Next up was the apple toss with Scarecrow. We gave out rainbow "slinky" type plastic springs for prizes. The background is the Dora Explorer scene setter mentioned in a previous post. The Scarecrow was enlarged from one of Pete Wells' illustrations.

After the Scarecrow came Pin the Heart on the Tin Man. Tin Man was also enlarged from one of Pete Wells' illustrations and highlighted with aluminum foil. We couldn't laminate him so hung a clear shower curtain over top of him to protect him. Hearts were "pinned" on using paper hearts with tape. Blindfold was optional. Prize was a heart ornament I picked up at Wal-Mart before Valentine's Day.

Lion's game was in the middle of the gym around a big circle. Unfortunately I don't have a kid-free picture of it, but we used a stuffed lion to decorate the circle and gave out medals of courage. The game is played like Duck Duck Goose but saying "Lions and Tigers and Bears OH MY!" and running on "on my." Nonverbal kids used a step-by-step programmed with "Lions"--"Tigers"--"Bears"--"OH MY!" Everyone had tons of fun running around the circle.

Melt the Witch was the next game in the rotation. We had a witch's hat on an empty 2 liter bottle. The kids tossed blue balls at the bottle to knock it over. This was surprisingly difficult for them! The prize for this activity was a mini bottle of bubbles. The witch is another enlargement from Pete Wells and the background is the other half of the Dora Explorer scene setter.

At the end of the Yellow Brick Road was the Emerald City. There were three activities available here, although only two of them are pictured (you can see the Lion game circle in the front of the picture). The kids were able to frost and decorate sugar cookies at the table on the right. The table on the left held a variety of green-themed sensory toys. After I took this photo I set up the portable podium with a lap top that was running the Wizard of Oz cause effect activity from Pete Wells' Oztastic unit. The kids had a lot of fun pushing the button to make Oz speak over the surround sound system. And don't you just love that the stage curtains are already green? Made the perfect backdrop for watching the movie during lunch. They even matched the Wizard's throne room.

The sensory table contained a variety of toys I found at Wal-Mart and/or had available in my classroom including: green Moon Sand, green plastic leis, green sensory/discovery bottles, green Flarp, a "slime" ball, a green fish that vibrates, a green hand held fan that lights up, and a bottle of green bubbles. The prize for the section, besides a cookie, was a mardi gras bead necklace.

We also had a "field of poppies" for kids who needed a break from all the action. The poppies are simply red paper plates taped to the wall. We had a CD player in here as well with the soundtrack to Wizard of Oz. We used folded up cafeteria tables to create a room divider of sorts.

It was actually warm enough for the kids to go outside for a few minutes while we set tables up for lunch. After everyone was settled with their sack lunches we started the movie on the big screen. The kids were enthralled. And the kids who needed to be more active were able to run around at the other end of the gym.

Set up took us about two hours (not counting the time it took us to make the decorations--gotta love teacher work days) but clean up only took about 20 minutes even with us salvaging what we could of the decorations. Best of all, everyone left with smiles on their faces. I really wish I could share the photos of all the fun we had.

How Oz-some!

2009-02-14T13:56:00.003-06:00

I was checking my email today and received one from someone I don't know. Now, I don't usually open emails from unknown sources but the Subject got my attention: "Interest in your Oz program." Hmmm... The email was from Jane Albright who is a member of of the International Wizard of Oz Club (IWOC). Seems like the yahoo group Everything Oz posted a link to my blog, highlighting our little Wizard of Oz project. She also invited me to submit a proposal to present at the upcoming National Wizard of Oz Club Convention to be held in neighboring Manhattan, KS (home of Kansas State University) and Wamego, KS which hosts the Wizard of Oz museum and has done a lot of tourism-related things around the theme if Oz, including Oztoberfest. The third part of the event is a coinciding academic conference at KSU on the theme of "Recreating Oz." And while I find that an extreme honor, to be recognized for my efforts with a very small group of children who tend to be among the "hidden" population (for those who do what I do, you know what I mean), what I found to be even more interesting and thrilling was what happened when I opened up my blog and checked my stat counter. Just since last night when I most recently posted I've had over 30 visitors (for me that's a lot), most of whom have come from the EverythingOz community. How cool is it that these people have taken the time to not only check out my work but also the work of all the other people whose resources have contributed to this project (Pete Wells, dltk-kids.com, Dale Air, etc., etc.). Not only that, but hopefully a few of these folks will return to see the "final product" and learn what kids who face such significant challenges can accomplish and that they are really more like every other kid their age than they are different. And that Kansas is a wonderful place to educate your children, especially if they have special needs. It's a beautiful place to live, and not gray at all.

So welcome to all my Everything Oz visitors. I hope you enjoy our trip Over the Rainbow, stay for a visit, and come back soon.

There's No Place Like Home

2009-02-13T21:53:00.003-06:00

During Week 4 we had a blast reading the story (the kids were really into it). But by far the most popular activity we did was the Great Green Food Taste Test. Every one of the kids had a fantastic time and EVERYONE used their higher level (relative to the student) communication systems to comment, request, and ask and answer questions. AWESOME! Tasting activities are a top favorite for my tube fed kids and all the kids demonstrated definite and consistent preferences.

In Week 5 of our Wizard of Oz project we vanquish a Witch, get some wishes granted, and learn that there truly is no place like home. Activities this week include:

This rainbow art project: We are going to do the mobile project and add a writing component by choosing things about home that are important to us, gluing the PCS symbols to clouds and hanging the clouds from the bottom of the rainbow
Making rainbow cookies

This week we are also hosting our big Wizard of Oz party. We've invited friends from two other classes to join us at the Skill Development Center. We are expecting about 25 kids plus staff and parents and have lots of fun activities planned:

Follow the Yellow Brick Road game with lollipops for prizes
Apple Toss with Scarecrow (toss plastic apples into a bucket from different distances) with rainbow springs as prizes
Pin the Heart on the Tin Man with heart ornaments I found at Wal-Mart on clearance
Lions and Tigers and Bears OH MY! game (played like Duck Duck Goose) with medals of courage as prizes (I found them at Wal-Mart)
Emerald City sensory play (lots of green sensory toys like discovery bottles, colored rice, mardi gras beads, play doh, etc.) and cookie decorating; the kids will get a cookie (for those who can eat them) and a mardi gras necklace
Melt the Witch game (place witch hat on an empty two liter pop bottle; toss a blue bean bag or small ball at the hat to knock it over) with bubbles (to represent water) as prizes
We'll also have the Poppy Field quiet zone with bean bags and mats and Wizard of Oz music playing for kids who need a break from the rest of the action.
During lunch we'll show the movie using the big screen in the Skill Development Center's gym
We'll also have kids and adults dressed as the various characters in the story

We spent today's teacher work day finding and/or making decorations for the party:

For the Yellow Brick Road we are using yellow disposable table cloths duck taped to the floor to make them safe to walk on
The Emerald City area will be covered in green table cloths (it helps that this section is located in front of the stage which has green curtains)
Party City had an awesome Dora the Explorer scene setter background sans characters which will make a perfect Oz countryside. It even has a passable Yellow Brick Road
We made enlarged versions of some of Pete Wells's wonderful characters from his Oztastic unit to designate the different areas; Dorothy's house will even be 3-D as there is a large cooler in that section of the gym (add some "windows" and a "door" and a pair of stuffed striped stockings wearing ruby slippers and you have a house!)
The goodie bags the kids will carry around to collect their prizes are made from brown gift bags with a picture of Toto glued to the front
We'll have a crepe paper streamer "rainbow" hanging over the entrance door

The Great Green Food Taste Test

2009-02-09T22:37:00.004-06:00

I just posted The Great Green Food Taste Test activity to Adapted Learning. Log in and check it out! The activity contains an interactive graph; simple, intermediate, and advanced communication boards (or at least how we define simple, intermediate, and advanced in my classroom), a cut apart board, and a Read Me page that explains how it all works.

Scheduling update

2009-02-07T23:09:00.003-06:00

I posted awhile ago about how our schedule was going to change drastically at the start of second semester when my program morphed into a dual middle and high school program. So far our crazy, chaotic routine is working well for us.

Our mornings always start the same with breakfast or peer time/leisure skills followed by Morning Meeting at 8:30 (you can find my Morning Meeting routine on Adapted Learning; log in to access the specific file).

After Morning Meeting we launch into two hours of Rotations. Each staff member not going on community outings has a "specialty" area: Academics/Cognitive Development; Computer Instruction; Assistive Technology; Physical Therapy/Gross Motor Skills; and Structured Sensory-Leisure/Assessment (this one is my area). Communication and Fine Motor Skills are embedded into the other areas. Rotations last 20-30 minutes depending on if we have 4 or 5 that day because of community outings. This is intensive 1:1 time for the kids and the short, highly structured sessions seem to be working well. And because of my "specialty" area, I can usually free up time to work with individual staff members within their areas AND I don't have to worry about training everyone on how to take state assessment data.

Rotations take us to lunch programs. I have 4 out of 6 students who prepare their own meals; the other 2 use g-tubes and have medication and other issues that result in the need for an extended rest break at about this time each day. Following lunch the kids get a 30 minute Independent Leisure break while the adults sneak in lunch.

At 12:30 the kids do chores (laundry, dishes, wipe tables, etc.) then we gather for a Group time activity (art, cooking, literature, game, etc.). Group generally takes about an hour, and then it's time to do bathroom trips and get ready to go home.

We also have each day categorized to make sure we cover all the academic areas, everything on their IEPs, and essential State Assessment skills. Mondays are dedicated to Math related skills, Tuesdays to Writing, Wednesdays to Reading, and Friday is still Sensory Fun Day.

Sounds pretty straight forward, huh? EXCEPT we also have an active Community Based Instruction program:
On Mondays ALL high school-age students (grade 9 and up) go to a nearby high school to participate with same age peers in Circle of Friends activities. Currently that involves 2 students and staff. In the afternoon 3 students go grocery shopping for their weekly food supplies (the fourth student who does meal prep follows a somewhat strict diet so his mother provides his supplies).
On Tuesdays two students/staff go swimming in the morning at an area YMCA on a rotating schedule. In the afternoon all high school students age 16 or older (currently 1 student) go to the Skill Development Center to work on a variety of Home Living and Vocational skills. We also have Speech in the afternoon.
On Wednesdays the 16 and up group goes to the Skill Development Center in the morning, prepares and eats lunch there, then goes to an area YMCA to participate in an exercise program.
On Thursdays the whole class goes out into the community, sometimes together and sometimes in groups of 3 students/staff. We go bowling, to a special movie showing dedicated to patrons with unique special needs, to the video arcade, to the mall, to a nail salon, etc.
On Fridays we stay at school BUT this is our "peer day." It is also "therapy day" as we have both Speech and Physical Therapy. Peers come one class period in the morning for "hang out" time (these kids are from the alternative learning class and work to earn the opportunity to join us) and right after lunch for slightly more structured activities (currently they are helping with Wizard of Oz activities).

This schedule is hectic and makes a lot of work for me in planning, organizing, and preparing materials, but it's been good for the class. The kids don't get stagnant and bored with their programming, the adults are on their toes all the time, and everyone gets a break from the over crowded conditions of our classroom at some point in the week. That goes a long long way to reducing the inevitable tensions that arise when people spend so much time in such close proximity (believe me when I say that is a whole other post!). I'll admit it's been hard for me to release so much control. Up until now I've always been everywhere the kids are. We pretty much did everything as a group and I knew what was going on all the time. Not that I don't trust my paras, because I absolutely do, but it's just not the same as me being there. However, the "release of power" has been good for me too. Other than when I have to go to start new programs, solve problems, or evaluate success, life is actually a bit less crazy for me. Or maybe I'm just used to it by now. Who knows?

The Great and Powerful Oz

2009-02-06T21:51:00.004-06:00

This week we had fun with Part 3 of The Wizard of Oz. A lot happens in this section, between the angry apple trees, meeting both the Tin Man and the Lion, and running across poison poppies. Just reading the story took most of our available time. Today the kids made lion "masks" with their peer buddies. We adapted a bit by using smaller paper plates and gluing a photo of the kids' faces to the center. Ours don't seem to look much like lions at the moment as they are made from some very interesting colors (blue and orange, purple and gold, etc.). Maybe once we add some ears... The kids really enjoyed the adapted Boardmaker book (still waiting to hear back from Pete Wells to see if it's OK if I share these adaptations), probably because some of the best music is in this section. I don't know how many times we've heard "If I Only Had a Brain" and "If I Were King of the Forest."

Next week we find out if everyone survives the poison poppies, meet the Great and Powerful Oz, and venture off on a quest after the witch's broom. As part of our activities we will

Do a green foods taste test and graph our likes and dislikes
Fingerpaint with different shades of green (if time; it's a four day week for us)
Do the heart collage we ran out of time for this week
Do a lesson on the concepts of "real" and "pretend"

Our big Wizard of Oz party is in two weeks. Hopefully we'll be finished with the story by then. There's only one part to go after this next week so I think we'll make it.

Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My!

2009-01-27T19:15:00.004-06:00

No, we haven't stopped working on our Wizard of Oz unit and no, I didn't forget to post Part 3 of our journey down the Yellow Brick Road. We are simply stuck on Part 2 for the time being. Between MLK Day and Inauguration Day plus a community outing last week, we just did not have enough time to get through the material. Thus we repeated last week's plan this week. Today we made scarecrows and they turned out SO cute. We modified this plan slightly by using styrofoam balls wrapped in muslin for the head. Even Wayne, who HATES art projects, got into this one and made awesome choices and fully participated in the project. Tomorrow we read my modified Boardmaker version of the story and work on comprehension questions. On Friday we'll do the sensory story with our peer buddies, play with bubbles, and make magic wands.

Next week we plan to work on the following activities along with Part 3...

Heart collage: choose colors and sizes of hearts to create a collage; we'll probably add a texture component to this too
This lion project: we'll make ours a bit smaller and use photos of the kids' faces
If we have time we'll make our own poppies, letting the kids explore circles and choosing their own colors for their flowers
Cook a recipe with an apple theme, probably a simple apple crisp we can make in the microwave; this recipe lets us incorporate assistive technology by chopping the apples in the food processor; my "non oral" kids can taste test the different ingredients as well as help measure and stir so they are fully included
There is a lot that goes on in Part 3 so it will probably take us some extra time to become thoroughly comfortable with the story

English Child Songs

2009-01-18T23:05:00.005-06:00

Larry Felazzo just posted about the website English Child Songs. These are simple animated children's songs that include the printed lyrics. Very cool, particularly for younger learners. The animated videos will also display well on an interactive whiteboard, especially in full screen mode. I didn't explore the site very long but I thought accessibility could be a bit of an issue as the menu is a drop down box. However, kids could always use AAC to make requests. Switch access to the site would be pretty much limited to pause or play (they are separate buttons so can't be used to toggle on and off). The child could pause the song to indicate the desire to request a new song. There are lots of songs to choose from. It would also be easy to make song boards using Boardmaker. I especially liked the phonics-based songs that target every letter of the alphabet. I often use materials designed for English Language Learners with my students as the language and concepts are typically simplified and easier for them to understand. Another good source for music activities is Super Simple Songs. They have a number of videos available on YouTube that either illustrate the songs or show how to teach with them. There are also lots of good support materials on the site.

Still more Oz fun

2009-01-17T21:29:00.003-06:00

I was in charge of a ROCKO event today. Because I already had lots of resources for a Wizard of Oz theme, that's what we did today. The kids had a blast making magic wands and Over the Rainbow necklaces (multiple colors of pony beads on lanyards). We even did an interactive viewing of the movie: singing all the songs, dancing along with Dorothy and her friends, blowing bubbles whenever Glinda appeared, booing the witch, etc. while we ate Munchkin Munchies (Chex snack mix).

We also played Follow the Yellow Brick Road:

Materials:

8 1/2 X 11 yellow paper (20 sheets or at least one for every player)
pictures of characters and places in the story to glue/tape onto the yellow paper (laminate for durability if you want to be able to use them again); a good source is Pete Wells's Oztastic unit
matching pictures for a "draw" pile or to put on an All-Turn-It spinner
sound track to the movie
small prizes (optional)

Procedure:

Lay the yellow paper "bricks" out in a circle, picture side up (we used yellow duct tape to secure ours to the floor)
Have the kids choose a brick to stand on
Start the music; the kids move around the circle until the music stops
When the music stops, everyone stops on their spot
Pull a picture from the "draw" pile or spin the spinner
The person standing on the spot can receive a small prize, become the Music Master, or whatever other activity you choose to use
Continue, engineering as needed to make sure everyone has a chance to "win"

Variations:

Play like traditional musical chairs, removing one spot each time until only one player remains
Put action options on the All-Turn-It spinner; the person on the spot that is drawn gets to spin then do the action chosen (or choose someone else to do the action); options might be "melt like the witch," or "sing We're Off to See the Wizard" or "dance like the scarecrow" or "freeze like the rusted Tin Man," etc.
Let the student who lands on the "lucky spot" don a witch's hat and become the Wicked Witch to swoop in and "get" the next person who lands on the lucky spot
Have the student who lands on the lucky spot act out something related to their spot
Have each student identify the character/location/vocabulary term he/she lands on or tell something about the item
Have the student draw a card then follow the circle until he/she finds the matching brick
Have a race to see who can match the cards to the bricks the fastest; must follow the path; could do this as a relay race, just make the path a straight line and have one team per side
Could do the same as the matching activity but use comprehension questions instead
For better access for wheelchair users, put the path on the wall

We used the following characters/places/things: Dorothy, Toto, Auntie Em, tornado, house landing on witch, Munchkin Mayor, Munchkin drummer, Lollipop Munchkin, Glinda, Wicked Witch, ruby slippers, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, angry apple tree, Emerald City, Witch's castle, The Great Oz, the Wizard, and flying monkeys
Other items might be: rainbow, hot air balloon, Munchkinland houses, water bucket, broomstick, yellow brick, basket, Uncle Henry, Miss Gulch, oil can, magic wand

Thank you Enablemart

2009-01-16T23:55:00.003-06:00

After the December edition of the AT Blog Carnival was posted, Lydia King from Enablemart contacted me. She had read my blog entry on "My Favorite Things." She had a gently used Little Step-by-Step that she wished to donate to my classroom. How awesome is that? Her generous gift came at just the right time. My high school home bound student, whose services I've just taken over, is in desperate need of a voice output device. His deaf-blind grant eligibility was allowed to lapse and at this point it would be difficult to get him requalified. Tight budgets meant little to no money to make a purchase for him through school, plus he needed something that could follow him into adult services, which has even less funding than the schools. Enter Lydia and her gift. The student is now happily communicating thanks to the donated Little Step by Step, with some programming help from his siblings. If you haven't checked out what Enablemart has to offer, I encourage you to go take a look.

Vortex Cubes

2009-01-16T22:38:00.005-06:00

Our Vortex Cubes from Dale Air in the UK arrived today just in time for our Oztastic sensory story. They were worth every penny! The "farm" one smells pretty much like a farm, or at least one with lots of cattle. The "burnt wood" brought back fond memories of sitting around a camp fire and "forest" smells like the evergreen woods in Colorado. "Apple" made my mouth water and "freesia" is just heavenly (and really really strong). The cubes are hefty at around 2 inches (OK, I'm really bad at estimating sizes, but they are big enough to hold onto while fitting comfortably in the hand), made of sturdy plastic, brightly colored, and well labeled. The scents were strong enough to be smelled through the box, styrofoam peanuts, 2 plastic bags, and an adhesive seal, which I'm sure made the package very popular with the dogs when it went through customs. The cubes cost around $9 apiece, which includes shipping and import tax, and took exactly 7 days to arrive. I have found nothing like them here in the US, but I'm sure they would be at least that expensive, if not more, if there was a US manufacturer. Customer service is excellent as well. I received quick and friendly responses to emailed inquiries. And the company has so many scents to choose from! There are 82 food related scents and 117 non food related scents as of today. Some interesting titles include Boiler Room, Dragons Breath, Street 1930's, Flatulence, and Dinosaur. And if you have a specific scent in mind but can't find it on their list, try emailing them to see if they can recommend a substitute or maybe create a new scent. They add scents all the time. I can think of a few right off hand (in case Dale Air is reading :-) ): swimming pool, gym shoes, locker room, wet dog, snow, autumn day, asphalt, large vehicle exhaust.

The uses of these cubes are limited only to the imagination. Put a container of them in a multisensory area for olfactory exploration. Buy two of several scents to create an olfactory matching game. Use with sensory stories, typical literature, history lessons, science experiments, etc., to increase understanding and enhance memory/recall (since scent is supposed to be the strongest memory trigger). Match to familiar community outings (although suprisingly I did not see one for Swimming Pool unless the Brits use a different term) or use as transition cues for various activities. Use scents of favorite or common foods to make choices at snack or meal times. Pair specific scents with colors for people with visual impairments to make art projects more meaningful (we have done this successfully using liquid potpourri on cotton balls stored in film canisters but the Vortex cubes would work so much better). Match scent cubes to objects, photos, symbols, or words. Use them to do a like/don't like inventory with individual students or classes. Or branch out and quiz random people in the hall. Play a "guess what this is" game with the cubes, another fun hallway/peer activity. For even more fun, pair the scent game with taste testing Every Flavor Beans (hmm...think I might have just found my "after spring break" activity).

Follow the Yellow Brick Road...

2009-01-15T20:31:00.005-06:00

Part 3 in our journey through Oz...

This week we have had a blast doing Oz activities. We read a story synopsis that I created using Boardmaker and liberally pirating the illustrations from Pete Wells' sensory story. It has sound effects and everything. Combined with a few tactile props for my visually impaired kids and we had a hit. The most popular part of Part 1 was the tornado. I made a tactile/visual version in a water bottle half filled with crystal beads. And EVERYONE got 100% on the comprehension questions. How cool is that?

We also started writing our own versions of the story. Each page of the book has a story prompt with three choices, basically a choose-your-own adventure. They've had lots of fun choosing and reading their books. I'm still waiting to hear back from Pete about whether or not it's OK to share these activities since I've used his work to create them. Hopefully he'll get back to me soon. This project was so popular with the kids I'm going to have to come up with more.

This afternoon we started the Wind Experiments. Between being short handed for staff, running late, and uncooperative kids, we didn't get very far. Only one student finished the experiment. The others variously protested, went on strike, or were too distracted by the other kids to concentrate. In retrospect I should have done a lesson on weight (heavy vs. light) and let them explore the objects as a group and set up the "wind" at a separate station in another area for individual use. The blow dryer was a real distractor to the kids who were still making choices or working on concepts. Not to mention that we were right on top of each other in our rather cramped space. That's how we'll set things up tomorrow when we try again.

We'll also do the Part 1 sensory story with our peer buddies tomorrow. If the response of my home bound student is any indication, it should be a lot of fun. Then our buddies can help us make tornado bottles.

This project has been wonderful for state assessment data for the portfolios. That's always a nice benefit. Interested in what we've done? Drop me a comment.

Next week, in Part 2, we meet the Munchkins, Glinda the Good Witch, and the Scarecrow. Lots of singing planned too. Goodness knows we've listened to the soundtrack enough. HA HA!

Other projects include:

Bubbles (for Glinda); so much fun and everyone is always motivated to talk; think I'll break out our bubble machine and hook it up to the powerlink

Magic wand craft to add to our story props

Scarecrow craft, although I think we'll use up some of the multitude of fabric scraps we have in the closet rather than neckties; this is a nicely tactile project with lots of choices

And of course the adapted story and the sensory story

The plan is to eventually post pictures of the whole project. I really liked the Voicethread Kate Ahern shared on her blog. I haven't explored Voicethread yet so this might be the perfect opportunity. We also have an Open House type night coming up at the end of the month. The first floor of the building (where my room is) will be opened up to parents and patrons during a home basketball games and we're all being encouraged to put up displays. I think we'll do a Yellow Brick Road timeline on the wall outside our room and put up the projects we've done, or photos of them.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

2009-01-08T22:27:00.004-06:00

Part 2 in our Wizard of Oz journey...
Next week we will launch into Oz activities in earnest. This week we have listened to the sound track about 3000 times (did you know the song "We're Off to See the Wizard" is repeated about 30 times on the soundtrack? It's repeating and repeating in my head, that's for sure!), worked on some vocabulary, and pretty well put all the materials together for the unit (now that I have my own laminator--YAY!). We also worked some on Kansas facts and did an Oz art project (chose between making a Toto or a Dorothy; Dorothy was a small paper plate with a choice of yarn to create hair, a choice of hair style--pig tails or braids, and choice of wiggle eyes). Tomorrow I think The Girls are going to spend some time creating the Emerald City, a Yellow Brick Road, and maybe some other Oz scenery.

For week two we are planning the following activities:

Tornado activities: tornado in a bottle from Pete's Oztastic unit as well as Wind Experiments (look it up on Adapted Learning) and "tornado" sensory bottles (see below)
Read Part 1 of the Sensory stories (oops! Just remembered I forgot to order the Vortex cubes!)
Listen to the first part of the audio book
If we have time we'll design our own magic slippers too

Tornado sensory bottle
Materials:
Empty water bottle with label removed, filled 2/3 with water
Glitter, confetti shapes, small items
1-2 drops food color if desired
Strong glue (we use Gorilla glue; hot glue tends to break)

Procedure:
Student choose items to put in their bottles
Glue the lids on the bottles
Shake the bottles and watch what happens; what happens when you swirl the bottle vs. shaking it?

Adaptation:
For visually impaired kids, make sure to use objects that they can feel hitting the sides of the bottle
Some visually impaired kids might respond better to a bottle partially filled with pinto beans or small beads (pony bead size) so they can feel and hear what is going on

All Students Meme

2009-01-07T21:48:00.004-06:00

Kate Ahearn at TLWMSN tagged me for a meme started by Patrick Black at Teaching All Students. The goal is to share three things you believe about all students then to tag others to join in on the conversation.

Here are some of my guiding philosophies (I tried to share ones that were a bit different from the old "standards"):

1. Going beyond the standard credo of "all students CAN learn," I believe that all students DO learn; WHAT they learn is very dependent on what the rest of us (teachers, families, peers, etc.) do in their lives

2. Every student/person deserves to be treated with respect and dignity regardless of age, ability, or any other descriptor you choose to use, including respecting and honoring differences and preferences, fostering interdepence not dependence, and creating an atmosphere of acceptance for unique qualities

3. Every student/person has the right to communicate their thoughts and feelings and to express their opinions, even if it's not something others want to hear or expressed in an atypical fashion

and just for kicks...
4. No one can do everything but everyone can do something and every student/person should be given credit for what they can contribute to any given project, activity, discussion, situation, opportunity, etc. and not have those contributions overlooked, ignored, or denied because of perceived "lack of ability" (Recognize the tagline on my email anyone?)

If you wish to participate, consider yourself tagged AnneMarie and Barrie.

Want to participate in this meme?
Share three things that you believe about all students.
Be sure to link to this post and/or to where you were first tagged.
Tag your response with AllStudentsMeme
Invite others to join the conversation by tagging them to be a part of the meme.

We're Off to See the Wizard...

2009-01-04T21:45:00.004-06:00

We are launching our Wizard of Oz unit this week. It should be loads of fun. I'm basing the unit on the wonderful work of Pete Wells and taking liberal advantage of his fantastic illustrations. Hopefully he'll give me permission to share these activities. If so, I'll post them to Adaptive Learning since what I've done is in Boardmaker.

We're going to take it a bit slow this week, getting back into the swing of things after over two weeks off. We're going to do a bunch of background work to prepare for really jumping into the story.

First, we'll work with the kids to make story props so they each have their own set. We'll make tactile/sensory representations for the characters and some of the major settings as well as gather the materials for Pete's sensory stories.

Auntie Em: an apron

Uncle Henry: ??

Dorothy: yarn braids with a bow

Toto: piece of fur or a small dog collar, for some kids a small dog doll

Witch: ?? I have a witch's hat, but it's a bit big; maybe make tiny brooms?

Scarecrow: straw; I also have a cool art project that we'll do during Week 2

Tin Man: silver card stock OR an aluminum or tin can (no sharp edges)

Lion: ?? I have an art project for this one too and a couple of lion dolls

Wizard: ??

Munchkins: I think we'll use some Little People or Weebles for these

Glinda: magic wand with a star and curly ribbon

Flying monkeys: ??

Ruby slippers: we'll make our own from cheep baby shoes or slippers and red glitter or sequins

Yellow brick road: we'll paint small blocks or bricks with yellow paint and glitter

Emerald City: ?? maybe some small boxes painted green with glitter

We'll also play some of the awesome switch games available from Pete's Oztastic activities

I'll do some of the activities from my Kansas unit including reading our All About Kansas adapted book, making sunflowers, and singing Home on the Range (for more fun switch activities from the Intellitools Activity Exchange, search on Bongo Barry's name; a very talented fellow Kansan)

We'll do some work with tornados by making a tornado in a bottle (see the Oztastic activities again or do a google search for lots of ideas) and doing some fun wind experiments with a blowdryer. I think I'm most excited about these experiments because we don't do nearly enough science. Being in Kansas, we have wind nearly all the time and several of my students have "wind issues" so this is a great topic for us.

Wind experiments: Concepts of heavy and light; prediction (check Adaptive Learning to see if I've had time to upload the activity)

Materials: objects with various weights such as feather, rock, book, paper, toy; a blow dryer; a powerlink and switch

Procedure: List the experiment items on paper (or use PCS symbols); allow the students to explore the air moving from the hair dryer and to "play" with the hair dryer using a switch; have students explore one of the items (or incorporate choice by letting the student choose which item he/she wishes to experiment with); ask him/her to predict if he/she thinks the item will move when the "wind" blows on it (yes or no in column 1); have the student perform the experiment by blowing air on the object with the hair dryer (could place item on table or in student's hand, depending upon sensory needs); have the student indicate what he/she observed (did the item move in the "wind"? yes or no) and record the response in column 3

We'll also work a lot on the basic vocabulary in the story using the flash card activities Pete includes in his unit as well as just letting the kids explore the character cards and props.

I was able to pick up some cute props from The Kansas Store including a head band and wand for Glinda, Tin Man's axe, a miniature Toto with a basket, etc. In addition, the older sister of one my students is absolutely obsessed with the Wizard of Oz (she prefers to be called Dorothy, thank you) so we may be able to (secretly) borrow some things from her. I downloaded the soundtrack to the movie from itunes as well as two really well-done audiobooks performed dramatically (one by The St. Charles Players, based more on the movie, and the other by The Colonial Radio Players, which stays true to the book).

I created a board game with two different sets of cards. One set has comprehension questions about the story. The other focuses on the concepts of "real" and "pretend." Both use the same game board. Of course, we won't be able to play them until a bit later in the unit.

So stay tuned for our journey down the Yellow Brick Road. I'll share more as we come to it. The original goal was to finish on Jan. 29, Kansas Day, with a Wizard of Oz party, but I'm not sure we'll make it. Between a couple of short weeks and the need to talk about current events such as the upcoming Presidential Inauguration, I'm sure we'll encounter some delays.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T17:38:00.003-06:00

I hope you have had a good holiday. I know I've appreciated the "time off," even though it seems like I've spent quite a bit of break working. I've been busy sorting through all the stuff I got from incorporating the high school program into mine. Two of my paras and I spent an entire day on Monday organizing everything. The strangest thing was nearly doubling my inventory and ending up with more space than we started with! Not quite sure how that happened; sort of a "loaves and fishes" thing in reverse. So far everything fits but we haven't added the bodies yet. We'll see how it goes on Monday.

I've also been working on IEPs and programming for my two new students. Bubba is an old friend. He was with me for 5 years before becoming too fragile to come to school and transitioning to the high school teacher. I'm really looking forward to working with him again. Lea is new to me. It's been interesting getting to know her. I have less than 10 days to evaluate her and write her new IEP (WOW!). I think I have it mostly done except for specific information in the performance levels/descriptive parts (social/emotional, academics, etc.). I'm hoping I can fill those blanks in before the IEP. I was actually able to come up with some really good goals for her which are both meaningful to her (I hope) AND transition-oriented (since she's almost 17). I have an awesome schedule planned for her, taking advantage of a partnership with the YMCA and using the brand new vocational training center our cooperative is creating. I'm also working with a teacher friend who works with high school students to give Lea some same-age peer time. Now I just have to hope that transportation can accommodate our daily needs for a van. Lea has an awesome para who is coming with her from the other program. She is very excited about the program changes and possibilities available to us.

In addition to all of this, I've been organizing and planning for state assessments. We can start taking data for the Kansas Alternate in January. I'm more than two instructional months behind because of all the other changes, so we'll see how that goes. There are some things, like "understands cause and effect" that I know we can get data on right away. Other things like "recognizes body parts" and some of the vocabulary related items will have to wait until we get in some more work.

I don't believe in setting "New Year's Resolutions" because I can never stick with them anyway. However, I do like to set goals and the beginning of a new semester is a good time to do that. This semester I have goals to:

Finish the Wizard of Oz unit (future post coming)
Put together a really good Solar System unit
Have Morning Meeting every day except Community Day
Get The Girls trained in using more technology more consistently with the kids, especially computer-based activities
Be as involved as possible with my new high school program while not neglecting my younger students
Stay ultra organized with state assessments and move through them as quickly as possible
Push for the expanded space I'll need to accommodate our new program
Learn what there is to learn about transition issues and adult services in our area
Survive without losing all my hair

Good goals, I think, for what is promising to be a nutty, crazy, wonderfully busy spring semester.
Cheers!

Quickie Christmas Activity

2008-12-17T18:52:00.001-06:00

This post was inspired by the need to find some easy activities for my students to do this week (and because lots of people are gooling for Christmas and Smart board activities) and evolved into more. A Christmas Carol is a terrific theme for some awesome differentiated learning activities. Everything I've put together here could be created in a couple of hours or is simply downloadable/printable/playable and could be done fairly quickly. Maybe when I have some time (she laughs maniacally) I'll further develop this into a real unit. Meanwhile, if you have ideas to share, please do....

This has been a big week for my program. My new high school student has been visiting with her teacher. Today we had a video party with another class in the building (the "alternative learning" class) where we watched the "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." Well, really, the movie played and everyone ate the snacks the other teacher brought. My kids showed off some of things they can do and the ALC kids gained an appreciation and understanding of others. It was a pretty cool experience and one or two of them want to come back and play video games (after he saw my wii one of the boys, who had kind of sat off in a corner and not said anything at all, asked if he could bring his playstation, which was in his back pack, and come play with the kids; that led into a discussion of how "my" kids play video games, what games they like, etc.; now we have a "date" for Friday and I think a ready-made incentive opportunity for this struggling student). Tomorrow and Friday my new student and her para are spending the day with us while the teacher packs up and moves all the stuff from her program. On top of all that, one of my favorite paras ever decided the job she had left us for was not for her. Her first day back was yesterday (yay for us!), but this, among other things, necessitated a long overdue team meeting. I've been writing progress reports and planning for the upcoming program changes. We've also been trying to consolidate, down-size, and generally make space for all the stuff we're getting from the other program. Oh, and we have a birthday party to throw tomorrow.

Because I knew the adults were going to be pretty well tied up, as far as programming goes, I needed to come up with some activities the kids could do with minimum assistance but that were still meaningful. Then Kate posted this article about Speakaboos including the link to A Christmas Carol. Perfect! Then I remembered that Pete's Stuff had a sensory story about Scrooge (for another fun Christmas activity from Pete try Norbert the Green Nosed Reindeer). And I found an AWESOME unabridged recording of the book on itunes read by the phenomenal Jim Dale (who reads the Harry Potter series, my kids' favorite audio books; mine too). So we're using the sensory story and Speakaboos on the Smart board during morning meeting and then letting the kids listen to the audio book at times when the adults are tied up with the multitude of other things going on right now. If we have time on Friday we'll watch the movie too.

Other activities you could quickly put together to do with this book:

Make a "humbug" (scroll down to "undirected craft time)

Recreate the characters with paper sack puppets

Make paper chains for Jacob Marley

Make a Christmas wish list for Tiny Tim (we would use Boardmaker PCS and pictures from toy catalogs)

Discuss the emotions of the various characters (happy, sad, scared, mad, etc.)

Compare Christmas traditions from the Victorian Era with today (presents; family get togethers; Christmas trees; crazy shopping days; dancing; etc.). If I were to do this with my students I would create representations of major traditions using Boardmaker. Then we'd create a chart or Venn diagram on the Smart board and help the kids decide if the activities should go in Christmas past, Christmas present, or both.

Vote on your favorite character from the story and make a bar graph using pictures (Scrooge, the ghosts, Jacob Marley, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchitt, etc.)

Make Victorian bonnets or top hats

Use some of these ideas for Victorian Christmas crafts

Or play some Victorian era Christmas games

Gee, all these ideas, that I found and/or came up with in about a 15 minute search, make me wish that we had time to do them! Maybe next year...

Favorite Christmas activities

2008-12-12T20:32:00.000-06:00

Recently it seems a lot of people have stumbled across SMD Teacher when searching for information on Smart boards, Christmas activities on the Smart board, and, the number one item, cause and effect activities. I thought I'd share some of our favorite Christmas activities both with and without the Smart board, with an emphasis on cause and effect as this is also a great time of year for more involved projects.

SwitchIt! Christmas by InclusiveTLC is a top favorite. Great for vocabulary building, sequencing, and discussion. Like all of Inclusive TLC's products, it is adaptable and accessible to any user, and of course focuses on cause and effect. It looks awesome on the Smart board too.

Some of the kids' favorite activities were created by me (and others) using Intellitools Classroom Suite including: Christmas Words Cause Effect, The Happy Reindeer, and I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, which I couldn't post to Intellishare because of copyright (too bad because it's cute, and annoying, which means it's the number one most played activity in my room right now). If you search on my name you'll find a bunch of gingerbread activities I did too. There are TONS of other great Christmas activities available on the Intellishare site. And ICS works great on the Smart board.

I haven't had the time to use any of them yet, but Mayer Johnson's Adapted Learning site also has some fun-looking Christmas activities.

Listening to Christmas music has been a top activity for everyone in my room. We have used itunes, but when my computer started protesting about memory issues, I switched to Pandora. Pandora is part of the music genome project and it's free. It lets you create custom radio stations based on your music preferences. Just type in a song or artist into the "Create New Station" blank and Pandora finds you music that matches your request and plays music by artists with similar characteristics. You can also listen to "genre" stations. You can't repeat or download the music, although you can pause and fast forward (cause effect if you engineer the mouse and a switch correctly). What I love about it is that it has allowed us to explore music in new ways and discover new artists that we really like. Know a kid who's "stuck" on the same artist? Try Pandora and see if you can open up their world a bit. There is an amazing number of artists available including such kid favorites as The Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, Disney, and Raffi. No visualizer available, but we just turn on the one from itunes when we want visuals. (Don't worry, itunes, we still love you. Couldn't run our ipods or play DJ without you).

Other favorite cause effect activities:

Of course, Christmas lights paired with a PowerLink is a must at this time of the year. We have them year-round in our multisensory area. The ones with music are even better, especially since they drive me INSANE, making even my least motivated student more than happy to hit that switch over and over and over and over.... If you have room for a small Christmas tree, consider hooking its lights up to a PowerLink (I'd love to do that but we'd have to hang it from the ceiling...hmmm....chandelier?).

We have a whole collection of singing, dancing cause effect Christmas characters. You know, the kind where you push a button and they boogie. I've had the best luck finding them at Wal-Mart and sometimes Walgreens. We also have a switch activated snowman that lights up with music that was given to us by an SLP years ago, but I have no idea where she got it.

Jingle bells of all sorts are always a huge hit. Get the right kind and it takes hardly any movement to get a big reward. The best ones are in the holiday section of stores like Wal-Mart. I tried to find a link to show you but walmart.com wasn't very helpful. Our store has lots of wreaths and other items made out of jingle bells.

As you can probably tell, music is a BIG THING in my classroom. Nearly everything we do has some sort of music component to it, even if it's just me making up something silly just for kicks. Some of my favorite "teaching" songs for Christmas (or anytime, really) are on Geof Johnson's Songs for All Seasons (totally worth the investment; I got my copy from itunes). We love "I Hear Santa Clause" (lots of Ho-Ho-Hoing on voice output devices) and "We're All Going to the North Pole" (in which we are continuously attacked by polar bears). Another favorite is from our friends at Super Simple Songs. If you work with special needs kids or English Language Learners, you HAVE to check these folks out. Awesome stuff! For Christmas we like their songs "Santa Where Are You?" (I "hide in plain sight" either Santa dolls OR Boardmaker pictures of Santa for the kids to "find") and "What Do You Want for Christmas?" (This brings to mind that I need to write a post on my current favorite kids' music that I use in my adapted music classes for ROCKO).

Another favorite activity involves recording the names of favorite songs on a switch and allowing a student to use step scanning to force--ahem request that Alicia sing a song as LOUD as she can (or in a squeaky voice, or like Dracula, or whatever else my paras can think up). After a couple of hours of this it can sound really interesting. Celine Dion I am NOT.

We are also known to label the toys in the toy tunnel with specific songs for our low movement students. Each time he or she touches a toy, we sing that song. It was awesome to see some intentionality and repetition emerge.

We also like recording an actual song in bits onto a step switch, either by singing it or by recording from a CD. The top favorite of one of my girls? Madonna's Santa Baby, or course.

It's always fun to read Christmas and winter themed stories complete with sound effects and props. If You Take a Mouse to the Movies is a big favorite. So is reading and acting out The Gingerbread Man or Gingerbread Baby. I'd recommend any of Jan Brett's books (Night Before Christmas, The Mitten, The Hat, Trouble with Trolls, Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve?, etc.). (Look for a future posts on my favorite children's/picture books, based on those in my somewhat extensive collection; my husband HATES that the Sci Fi-Fantasy section in our Barnes and Noble is right next to the Children's section).

No Christmas season would be complete for us without a rousing game of "red light-green light" with some friends. Great to do with a Little Step by Step or an italk2 (gotta get me one of those!).

Another fun activity is to make gingerbread men and hide them around the school (we program a step switch with "go go go stop!" for our kids who can't mobilize independently; when we stop the student is asked if he or she wants to hide their gingerbread man in that area and give them choices about specific locations). Then we post "wanted" posters around to encourage other students to locate the missing gingerbread men, write down their locations, and bring them to our room for a small prize.

I have a ton of other fun gingerbread-themed activities we've done as well Polar Express/trains, snowman, and bears. If you're interested post a comment and I'll work on posts to share with you.

Well, there you go. A few activities to share with you right before Christmas. A number of them can also be done after Christmas as part of a winter-themed unit. Have fun!

Check it out

2008-12-07T20:12:00.000-06:00

I just added an index list of sorts to my side bar. As I said before, I've noticed a few trends when looking a my stats. I thought this list might make it easier for visitors to navigate through my blog posts as well as highlight some resources. If there is anything you would like to see or questions you'd like answered, please leave a comment on this post.

Some of my favorite things

2008-12-02T21:26:00.000-06:00

The theme for this month's Assistive Technology Blog Carnival is "My Favorite Things," specifically things that can be used as AT gifts on a budget. Here are a few of my favorite things.

USB flash drives: I use these to back up communication boards for a student to send between home and school, to load photos to send home, and to transfer projects done with SwitchIt! Maker so parents can use them at home

Abilitations Actitunnel: I've mentioned this device before; it is one of my all-time favorite pieces of equipment; it is light weight, collapses into a managable and storable size, and provides a whole lot of fun for every child I serve

Little Step-by-Steps: communication fun for everyone

All-Turn-It Spinner: a terrific way to include every member of the family in game night

Digital picture frame and/or digital photo keychain: share slide shows of school and family events with others, use with photos of family members as a calming device, add scanned pictures from a favorite picture book for a portable digital book (granted there's no sound unless you want to spend bigger bucks, but isn't a picture supposed to be worth a thousand words anyway?), put PCS or other communication symbols on a photo keychain to be used for easy communication in the community, load photos of community places and/or PCS symbols to use as transition cues for people who need that kind of structure

An mp3 player: these are the number one most popular item in my classroom; while we have ipod nanos there are now many on the market that can be obtained for a very reasonable price; perfect for listening to favorite music, audio books, and even messages from familiar people created using a program like Audacity

Hand held massagers: relaxation anyone?

Swifty switch adapter: will make any computer with a USB port switch accessible with no extra software; plug and play is awesome!

Batteries: seems like an odd gift, I know, but anyone who has kids knows their value

Crayola Glow Station: I haven't actually played with this yet but it looks soooo cool; a terrific toy for kids with low vision and what a fun partner activity for kids who might not be able to access the light wand independently but could make choices about what to create; a great addition to a multisensory space

Trends

2008-12-01T21:25:00.001-06:00

I have really enjoyed using Stat Counter to monitor activity on my blog. I have noticed some recent trends. Not surprisingly I get a lot of traffic from the U.S. The UK, Canada, and Australia also have strong showings. People have been very interested recently in cause and effect activities and have located SMD Teacher through various google searches. Another recent topic of interest seems to be sensory activities and multisensory rooms. In the next couple of weeks I'll put together a post on our favorite sensory activities as well as some photos of our multisensory spaces, including our newly redone "white multisensory room." The awesome multisensory rooms you see in catalogs (like Snoezelen) are wonderful, but in general completely unattainable on the classroom budgets available to most of us. If we're fortunate we may have access to grants that let us purchase some of the more expensive items (like our Somatron cloud chair, for instance). But for the most part we have to figure out how to give our students these multisensory experiences using very limited means. There is more to multisensory spaces than a bean bag, a CD player, and some Christmas lights. Keep checking back to see what we've done. Meanwhile Kate at TLWMSN has a couple of nice posts on multisensory rooms here and here.

What I am thankful for

2008-11-26T12:34:00.001-06:00

It's Thanksgiving Day here. I'm watching the Macy's parade while the turkey roasts in the oven, waiting to go over to my in-laws' house (just behind us) to eat. And playing with the new labrador puppy I got my husband for Christmas. And I'm catching up on my blog reading. An overwhelming theme, not surprisingly, has been "thankfulness." I have read posts by special needs parents who are thankful for what they have, posts by teachers who are thankful for what they do, and posts by others who are just generally thankful. And I decided to share one of the things for which I am thankful.

This may seem to get a little off-track, but trust me, it will all connect. This past summer I decided to hold a giant Birthday Bash in our classroom as a way to celebrate the ending of the summer term. We had several summer birthdays between students and staff and, well, it just seemed like a fun thing to do. We had a special lunch, I put together a fun birthday-themed music "therapy" session, one of the parents brought a pinata, and of course there was cake. It was a blast. About that same time I discovered the blog Micropreemie Twins: The Story of Holland and Eden and read this heartfelt post. A short while later I came across this post by Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster and the blog Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords. These posts really brought home to me the difference between being a special needs parent and a special needs teacher. For Eden and Holland's mother, the day they were born, their birthday, is one of the saddest, most difficult days of her life. She still struggles with the grief, guilt, and even disappointment of that day. And while her family recognizes and honors her daughters' birth day, they celebrate their Coming Home Day. How cool is that? One of my summer staff members who also worked as a nurse for her student's family, had recently complained about how the student's mother didn't really do much to celebrate the little girl's birthday and how unfair she thought this was. Prior to reading Billie's post I would have been a bit appalled by this myself. But Billie helped me see more clearly what this parent might be dealing with. She had a beautiful little girl who, she was told, wouldn't live long. And on top of that, she was told she was incapable of caring for her child herself and had to have outside help from critical strangers. Through Billie's words and willingness to share her own experience, I was able to empathize with this other parent and understand that her daughter's birthday was most likely accompanied by painful memories and tremendous guilt and grief.

Robert Rummel-Hudson put it very succinctly in his post and shared quote from a key note speech he gave (read the speech; whether you are a parent or a teacher, it is worth the time). I can't say it better than he does:

"It might be the most striking difference between our experience with the world of broken children and yours. As special educators and experts in assistive technology, you have sought out the monsters. You’ve armed yourselves with the knowledge and the tools to fight them, and you’ve gone into battle with your armor in place. For parents, the monsters have found us, in most cases sitting by the campfire in ignorant bliss, totally unprepared."

Wow! I had never really thought about it like that. From a professional stand point it can be so easy to be superior and critical about parents and how they choose to raise their special needs child. It is easy to forget that I went to school to learn how to work with kids with special needs, that I have had extensive training in all the latest techniques and "best practices," and that I have access to the resources that are available. Parents don't get that. Most of them find themselves with the world of disability suddenly and unexpectedly dropped into their laps, all those dreams and desires inexplicably crushed. It's hard enough trying to figure out how to parent a child, let alone meeting the often complex needs of a child with disabilities. I can't even imagine the difficulties of navigating the maze of medical institutions, diagnoses, treatments, side effects, therapies, services, early intervention, constant fear and worry,.... Oh, and taking care of the rest of the family, tending to the house and yard, maintaining a job, planning and preparing meals, walking the dog, and, when time permits, caring for yourself too. My 8 hour work day is spent dedicated to meeting the needs of that special needs child, every minute of every hour. I have few if any other responsibilities during that time. Believe me, when I go home at the end of the day, often exhausted, I am grateful for the fact that I can actually sit down and put my feet up. Not so for the parents I work with. They come home from a long day at work and have to reposition, toilet, feed, bathe, entertain, and keep safe their child with disabilities and tend to the needs of the other members of the family. These parents are consumed by this world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no break. And they always feel guilty for not following through consistently with school programs. So what? Their child is happy, healthy, growing, and developing. If I do my job right, they should see positive changes at home even if they aren't able to work very hard on it. And when I start to feel resentful about the time ROCKO takes from my "personal" time, I remind myself that those parents don't get personal time. It's a small gift I can give them, letting them know that their child is safe, well-cared-for, and happy for a few hours so they can squeeze in a little time for themselves.

So, back to what I am thankful for: the parents of special needs kids...

Thank you for having the strength to persevere through the surprise and shock of learning your child has special needs.
Thank you for choosing to bring your child into the world when you knew he would have special needs.
Thank you for choosing to adopt your special needs child.
Thank you for fighting "the system" on behalf of your child. It takes unimaginable energy and persistence to struggle against obstacles like pessimistic doctors, selfish insurance companies, and convoluted government programs.
Thank you for being a strong, vocal, loud, obnoxious, demanding advocate for your child. That advocacy makes me a better teacher and your child's education more effective. It makes the world that much better for your child.
Thank you for supporting me as your child 's teacher, and pushing me when I need that push.
Thank you for sharing your child with me. Thank you for your trust and your belief in me and what I can do with and for your child. That is such a huge risk for you and I enter every day well aware of the gift you give to me and strive to honor it in all that I do.
Thank you for including me in your journey through life. It is a true honor to walk side by side and hand in hand with you as we both love your child into the future that he or she deserves.

Be careful what you wish for...

2008-11-21T20:17:00.000-06:00

Back at the beginning of my blog (oh so long ago in July) I wrote a post about Ben and his journey out of the darkness. Well, he is completely and truly all the way back into the light. Most of his "old" behaviors, especially all the ones we didn't want, have reasserted themselves. He's HAPPY now. He was doing the "river dance" when he was mad; now he does it when he's happy too. Paired with the excessive raspberry spitting and you have a true river dance on your hands, and face, and clothes, ... HA HA. The spitting means he's super super happy, or trying to "mark" his (and your) food so no one else eats it. He's back to responding consistently to transition cues and using his environmentally placed picture symbols to make requests. He is helping himself again and initiating interactions and requests. Did I say that he's happy? He's even interested in doing more than just sitting on his hands. Yesterday at the movie theater while watching Madagascar 2, he decided to ride his seat like a pony. He accidentally made his seat bounce, got a very intense look on his face, then very carefully and very deliberately DID IT AGAIN...and AGAIN...and AGAIN. Had me and his para slitting our sides laughing. And the other day I off handedly remarked that he needed to bring his chair to morning meeting, more to cue the para than anything, and turned around to find him CARRYING HIS CHAIR across the room. He's NEVER done that before. The boy has a severe hearing impairment. He almost never responds to even simple verbal commands like sit down. WOW!

Now for the not-so-fun side of Ben waking up. Yeah, the spitting is an issue but it's one we can deal with. The real problem is his inner bully has reasserted its big bad self. Right now Ben is being very territorial. The treasured sensory room time? Bah! Who wants the sensory room? Ben wants the SWING with chimes to kick and swing into. Not only does Ben want the swing ALL THE TIME but he also doesn't want anyone else to have it. He will happily leave the swing to go do his work, eat, bathroom, or whatever else we ask, as long as no one else gets in while he's gone. Remember, I have 4 other students at the moment, two of whom use the swing set for standing and one who likes to swing as much as Ben does. He got VERY VERY MAD today when Nicki got the swing at the end of the day. He spent 45 minutes variously shoving picture symbols at us (didn't matter which one, he was bringing them all to us; remember our grab and go system? It got grabbed and went today) and grabbing someone and dragging them over to Nicki in the swing and insisting we take her out and let him in (mind you, he'd probably spent over 2 total hours in the swing today). When that didn't work or we ignored him, he would go over and try to pull Nicki out himself. As we discovered, he is actually big enough to do this now (don't worry, Nicki was never in any danger). Meanwhile Miss Nicki was merrily hitting her step-by-step that alternated between saying "more swing" and singing "I've got the swing and you don't, nah nah nah nah nah nah) and laughing her head off (every time Ben tried to pull her out of the swing she got a free push). We took Ben on walks, gave him alternative activities to do including some favorites he hardly ever gets, offered special snacks, and anything else we could think of. Finally I had to get right in his face and tell him quite firmly ("mean teacher" face and voice) that he was NOT getting the swing and to GO AWAY. He looked at me, river danced, then turned around and STOMPED to his favorite comfy chair and pouted, for about 5 minutes. About this time Nicki had to get her coat on to go home so got out of the swing. Ben promptly ran over to get in. I got there first and put the swing out of reach (his bus was due). What does the little bugger do? Does he get mad? Does he request the swing? NO. He happily snorts, spits, and goes to his comfy chair and LAUGHS. His problem was solved as far as he was concerned.

So now we get to enjoy the odyssey of teaching Ben that he does not rule the universe and that sometimes he has to share. Nor does he always get everything he asks for when he requests it. Sometimes the answer is "no" and you have to move on. We spend so much time teaching these guys the power of communication through offering the opportunity to request what they want then giving it to them immediately. When they finally "get it" the rules change on them. Pair that with dealing with a very stubborn and very strong teenager, and, well, things can get very interesting. It's so hard to grow up.

Adapted Learning

2008-11-18T22:39:00.000-06:00

I was able to squeeze some time in today to play around on Mayer Johnson's new Adapted Learning site. Very cool although it took me a little bit to figure out how all the features work (I know, I know, that's what the "support" button is for). I was able to make a couple of friends and join the Yahoo group. I also saw a number of boards I'm interested in so I marked them in My Files although I haven't had time to download them yet. I did find the file browsing function a little frustrating but I'm sure they'll work that kink out soon. Kudos to all the beta testers. My goodness what a huge amount of work they went to to have so many boards up and ready for sharing. Every one of them had to be "zipped" and uploaded. I'm contemplating sharing a few of mine but I'm going to have to find the time to "proof" them, remove personal info, and zip them. Maybe over Thanksgiving break? Or Christmas? Or....??

I'm looking forward to backing up all my BM files (and those of my students) to the site. I have one student using BM at home so I think I'll try forming a "group" for him too so Mom and I and the SLP can communicate more easily and share boards back and forth and work on them without having to fight over the jump drive (or forgetting to upload or download to and from the student's computer).

Look for me on the forums. I'm "aodom." Feel free to ask me to be your friend. We can all use a buddy here and there. :-)

As the world turns over...again

2008-11-17T22:16:00.000-06:00

In the next installment in the never ending soap opera that has become her program we see how Alicia's classroom will be undergoing yet another change. Previously on SMDTeacher we saw Alicia lose all her paras in the 6th week of school and start over with all new staff. We watched her struggles as she searched for replacements and have caught glimpses of the turmoils of training a whole new staff in the midst of IEPs and the usual student test, test, and retest of new staff. And now, the next episode of SMDTeacher...

Yep, you got it. We're about to undergo yet another transformation. As of January 5 we will officially be a combined middle and high school program. The high school SMD teacher in my cooperative is leaving at semester and there isn't a replacement for her. She only has two students on her case load, one of whom is homebound. Plus, her facilities are woefully inadequate, at about 1/4 the size of mine. There was no way she would be able to manage the needs of my oldest kids who are very equipment and space intensive. With all that in mind, my cooperative director decided to take me up on my offer to run both programs out of my room. WHAT WAS I THINKING?? Actually, I was thinking that this move is in the best interests of the kids and the program at the moment. I'm also thinking this is a good way to [almost] guarantee me the promised extra space in my building and [fingers crossed tightly] a "real" kitchen [dare I dream?]. I was also thinking that I'm really not ready to "give up" my kids yet; I still have a lot of things I want to accomplish. AND this means I get to work with one of my favorite families again. YAY! It also means I get to know a new-to-me student as well as a new-to-me-para (who I didn't have to hire--Yay!; and who I didn't get to hire--ummm...) and fit them both into a functioning and happy, if not always balanced, family. This student's IEP is actually due the first part of January, which is a good thing. I can focus it on the kinds of things she'll be doing through my program where she'll be part of a group with different opportunities than are available when you only have one student. Plus I'll have complete input on what her state assessments will look like.

So, now I get to rethink my program and how we approach curriculum for high school vs. middle school. What should be the focus for the older kids? How do I provide what I consider to be adequate levels of service to an even greater diversity of students? How are we all going to fit into the vans for community outings? Where can a snag a bigger classroom table (and where do I put it when I find it)? And then there's the whole topic of transition [cue dramatic music]. Transition is a huge issue in my cooperative right now, especially in how it relates to writing IEPs (dotted i's, crossed t's and all that). Apparently the state auditors are coming down hard in this area and we're falling a bit short.

On top of everything else, I've been revamping our classroom procedures and, to some extent, our curriculum, or more specifically how we approach our curriculum. I had let my new staff kind of veer towards the 1:1 philosophy ("that's my kid, he's your kid). I really believe firmly in everyone working with everyone so wanted to find a way to steer away from those tendencies. I have noticed some real strengths in different areas in all of The Girls so decided to approach instruction from that view point. So now, for morning work tasks, we are going to have curriculum "specialists" for Academics, PT/APE, Communication (that's me), Technology, and Sensory/Active Learning. I will be requiring them all to gain expertise in at least one secondary area as well. The kids will rotate between us during the morning work session for 20 minutes of structured activities at a time. Some will HATE it (you mean I have to work?) and some will LOVE it (wow! I'm actually getting attention!). It's a tight schedule that will be highly dependent upon everyone's cooperation, and really needs another adult to make it go smoothly. We're going to try implementing it tomorrow. It better work as it took me two hours to figure out the schedule for 2 days! Fortunately we can basically repeat the schedule from week to week even if we change activities. The rotations are mainly dependent upon who is using standing equipment when as we only have one of each type (2 kids using each type) and the kids are generally tired after standing. Pair that with minimizing "in and out" transfers and it got a bit complicated to say the least. I think the system will be good for the kids and it will allow me to do more hands-on and 1:1 training with the staff. I haven't even had time to teach them how to take data yet. YIKES! Fingers crossed....

30 Day Better Blogger Challenge continued

2008-11-15T19:40:00.000-06:00

I've been faithfully participating in the better blogger challenge, just not necessarily posting about it. I've added an RSS feed to the blog, put in Clustr maps, and considered feedburner. Today I added an email contact. I actually used my husband's hotmail account for now as my "regular" email address would reveal too much about my location. I'll eventually get around to setting up a gmail account and posting that instead. You can also contact me through the comments and possibly through my About Me page. Comments is actually the best as I can get them at school, whereas yahoo and gmail are both blocked. Other challenges included a blogroll audit (I think mine is fine) and decluttering the side bar (since I don't like a whole lot of "stuff" there, that was an easy one). I've introduced myself to more than one blogger and reviewed my blog in various formats. I'm a fairly frequent commenter on others' blogs, depending on the week and content. I also invited a guest blogger, who will hopefully get me the entry soon.

More about switches and environmental control

2008-11-10T17:46:00.000-06:00

Kate at TLWMSN sent me this link to one of her blog posts: 60 things to do with a single switch.

And Barrie at OneSwitch.org sent this link to a nice instruction manual about instructing switch use and using environmental control.

And I have a previous blog post on our Favorite Cause Effect Activities.

Any other contributions out there?

What can you do with a PowerLink?

2008-11-09T18:22:00.000-06:00

Questions I've heard a lot recently:
What is a PowerLink?
How do you make a PowerLink work?
What can you do with a PowerLink? Or Why should I get one?
How do you use your PowerLink?

After hearing these types of questions from more than one special educator, some of whom are fairly savvy in the world of assistive technology, I did some quick research to see if AbleNet or somebody else had put out an idea list for a PowerLink similar to the ones that are out there for switch use and using a Big Mack. I was surprised to find NOTHING. Nothing? No ideas whatsoever (OK, that I could find in a 30 minute Google search) for one of the most versatile and easiest to use evironmental control units on the market? So I decided to make this the topic of my next blog post.

First, an introduction to AbleNet's PowerLink 3 environmental control unit. It is basically a box that allows you to adapt electrical appliances and devices so they can be accessed using switches. There are four basic modes of operation: timed seconds, timed minutes, latch, and direct. The timed modes allow the device to run for a set period of time (0-60 seconds or minutes) after the switch is activated (also known as press and release). The latch mode is basically an on/off switch: one switch activation turns the device on, the next turns the device off. Direct mode requires the switch to remain activated to cause the device to run (also known as press and hold). The PowerLink 3 allows you to connect up to 4 different appliances (2 on each side) with 2 switches (which means that when the right switch is pressed both appliances on the right will run at the same time). Some of the units allow for wireless control using an Airlink switch. You can also achieve wireless control using a jellybeamer transmitter and receiver (my preference because you don't have to have a direct line of sight between the transmitter and receiver). Essentially you can plug any electronic device into a PowerLink, but there are some limitations to the amount of juice it is able to handle. For instance, I think a large TV would overwhelm the device and I don 't think it could handle all the Christmas lights on your house, although it did just fine with the Christmas tree. It opens up participation possibilities to kids with physical and other challenges in a host of areas including daily living skills (cooking, cleaning, personal care), leisure activities and play, vocational skills, and artistic expression. I couldn't live/teach without it (as noted in a previous blog post). In fact we have four in my classroom with an additional out on loan and they are used every single day.

Now for the question of what to do with a PowerLink...

Use the timer to work on cause effect skills using a tape player and a tape of favorite music or stories (sorry, CD players do not currently work with a PowerLink because interrupting the power flow to one completely stops the play; would love to see AbleNet or somebody else work out a solution to this; the "adapted" players I've seen out there only allow for latching/on-off activation and they are battery hogs). Works great with a radio too.

Use latching to allow a switch user to control the music during a game like musical chairs.

Use latching to allow a switch user to control the pacing of an audio book or to pause the story when given a cue by the teacher so the class can engage in discussion.

Use either timed seconds or direct mode to operate a hair dryer to:

dry hair after swimming or bathing
dry paint on an art project
dry dishes
participate in science experiments

Use to adapt appliances like the mixer, blender, or food processor during cooking activities.

Attach blinking lights and place on direct mode to allow a child to explore switch use (see Two Switches to Success by Linda Burkhart, et al). Or use timed mode to more actively engage a passive student in sensory activities.

Use latching and a paper shredder to work on following directives during vocational training (turn it on now; OK, turn it off).

Using direct mode, attach two different toys/devices to allow a student to explore (two switches, two uses). Direct mode allows for greater independence than timed. In timed mode the first device activated will continue operating for the preset time no matter how often the student activates the other switch. Direct mode removes this exploration obstacle.

Allow the student to operate his own electric toothbrush (if it plugs in) or water pik during self care.

A water pik can also be used in a water table or to water plants, just be sure to keep the electicals safe from water intrusion.

Use the mode of your choice and attach to a vibrater/massager mat (we found ours at Wal-Mart) so the student can control the activity without getting overwhelmed.

We like to hook our bubble machine from Wal-Mart up to the PowerLink and blow away.

Adapt a fan for a student who overheats easily, who likes to feel moving air, or to blow on and move a mobile.

Attach to a lamp using latching mode so a student can signal for assistance during nap/quiet time or simply control the amount of light in his environment (like in a multisensory space).

Allow the student to work as a partner with someone else to operate a vaccuum or dust buster.

Can I just say...WOW!

2008-11-08T21:58:00.000-06:00

Patrick Black from Teaching All Students recently posted about the website Pete's Stuff. I just spent a couple of hours (yes, I said hours) checking out the site and it left me absolutely floored. I've seen some of Pete's stuff before on the Whiteboard Room site and my kids really liked the sensory stories we've done. His work inspired the Monster Mash sensory story I did for our Mad Scientist Party. The Pete's Stuff site is even better. The sensory stories located here are well-done, loads of fun, and thoroughy explained. Best of all, they are FREE! Pete asks for nothing in return except an email to let him know how the story went. I downloaded two to look at: Gobbin Hood and The Wizard of Oz (OK, I'm from Kansas, how could I NOT look at this one!). Gobbin Hood was a blast but I stopped in my tracks when I went through the Wizard of Oz collection. It is a COMPLETE UNIT and absolutely beautiful! Pete has done a phenomenal job of simplifying and synopsizing (is that a word?) the story to make it readily understandable to people with severe learning differences without losing the flavor or making it babyish. He has included a list of props (and where to find them, although a few of the cooler ones like the scented Vortex cubes, may be a bit tricky to get here in the States, but ooohh how cool), extension activities (art, cooking, core content), printables, and computer games for switch users (work well with touch screen too). All of it will present well on an interactive whiteboard (in fact, will present BETTER in a projected format). I always try to do something special in January in honor of Kansas Day and I've found this year's project for sure. My first instinct was to rush and try to do the unit NOW because I can't wait to share it with my kids. BUT, if I wait a couple of months I can put all the resources together including the props (I'm nearly certain I can find dolls for all the characters plus the Flying Monkeys at The Kansas Store) and effectivly plan extension activities (how do you convert UK recipe instructions to a US version and what the heck are "digestive biscuits?") AND get The Girls involved in the planning so they have some ownership and get as enthused as I already am. I will certainly be downloading ALL of the sensory stories Pete has so generously made available and implementing them with my students. It's going to be SOOOOO much fun!

Can't live without it

2008-11-07T21:32:00.000-06:00

A teacher friend of mine told me this week that her husband is being transferred and they are moving to Texas over Christmas break. That got me to thinking about what I would do if I suddenly had to start over again. Although my husband and I have absolutely no plans of going anywhere, especially since his parents moved to a house right behind ours, it's still not an unreasonable thing to think about considering how many natural disasters have happened in Kansas in recent years that resulted in the destruction of schools. I'm pretty spoiled with my very resource heavy program. So what if I did have to start from scratch? What tools and resources do I use all the time in my classroom could I not function without?

Probably the singular most important piece of equipment would be an accessible computer complete with Intellitools keyboard or Intelliswitch and a touch screen. We use our computers (yes, that's plural) all the time every day. They are essential for communication and instruction as well as for accessing resources and communication tools such as email.

Along with a computer would be Boardmaker. Boardmaker is probably the most used piece of software I have. And, of course, I'd need a good quality color printer to go along with it.

My digital camera would have to be on the list. We use it to take photos of objects and places, etc. for communication books as well as to document activities, accomplishments, etc.

A Powerlink to adapt a variety of devices in addition to at least one switch. Powerlink = Independence and Participation in my classroom.

An ipod. We have three that are used in my room and the kids love them. They are set up with their favorite music plus audio books. The kids love being able to listen to what they want without interference from others, creating their own play lists, and just generally doing the same thing as their peers. Plus they are infinitely portable and contain a HUGE amount of music and stories.

At least two Little Step by Steps. My kids use them for everything from simple cause effect social communication to telling jokes to giving instructions to two switch step scanning. They are constantly in use in my classroom.

Velcro. There are more uses for this awesome material than I can count.

Intellitools Classroom Suite. I make lots of adapted learning activities and digital books using this program. It would be high on my list of essentials.

An Actitunnel, especially for my particular students. We have multiple students using ours throughout the day and it is one of the top favorite pieces of equipment for the kids (the ipods are the other top favorite).

At least one "blinky light," whether it's Christmas lights or a mood light of some sort.

My list of favorites on my computer (can't access social bookmarking at school; basically if it's considered a "social" tool, it's forbidden).

I know there are other things I would miss tremendously if I didn't have them (Easy Stand stander, Somatron Vibrosonic music chair, active learning equipment, swing set, our collection of cause effect toys, the Smart board, jelly beamers, ...) and there are probably one or two things I've missed. After 14 years of teaching, 12 of them in the same place, I've collected a lot of stuff. But the above are probably the true essentials to effective instruction in my classroom (assuming that all the needed peripherals for basic positioning and caregiving would be in place). What would be on your list? What tools and resources would be indispensible to you?

30 Day Blog Challenge Days 5 and 6

2008-11-06T19:33:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's challenge hadn't been posted yet before I went to bed so I'm combining both that one and today's into one blog post.

Yesterday's challenge was to add a widgit, specifically something like clustr maps to see where visitors hail from and if you should add other features such as a translator button. I think the clustr map widgit is cool and there is something similar in Stat Counter. I found it interesting that I've had visitors from Australia, the Netherlands, the UK, Brazil, Israel, and Germany as well as the expected U.S. and Canada.

Today's challenge was to have your blog looked at by somebody with "fresh" eyes. My blog really hasn't been up and running for all that long so I wasn't sure how helpful this would be. I know what I like and don't like from other people's blogs and that has guided me in making decisions for mine. For example, there are soooooo many fun and cool widgits out there, but I think there can be too much of a good thing. Too many widgits make the blog look crowded. Pretty much, if I'm not going to use them for something I'm probably not going to add them. My husband recently spent some time on my blog for the first time. He seemed to like it, was most interested in the photos vs. the "non-kid" content (he knows "my" kids and since we do respite care in our home has spent time with several of them), and had no trouble navigating my (very simple) blog. I've been trying to get him to work on the blog I helped him start (he's restoring a WWII era military vehicle to add to the collection at the World War II History Center he is helping to develop), but so far we haven't moved passed the set up stage. Maybe now that football is over....

What a day for democracy

2008-11-04T18:04:00.000-06:00

If you haven't voted yet, what are you waiting for? If you already voted, YAY for you! If you chose not to vote or just didn't make it to the polls, I'm saddened that you've missed this opportunity to be a part of history.

As you've probably guessed, the election was the center of school today, both in my classroom and throughout the building. Believe me, the debates between middle schoolers can be just as intense as between adults about who should be President. Even myy students, who certainly don't understand all the issues and probably haven't had as much exposure to the campaigns as their "typical" peers, have formed strong opinions. Some of them I think are based on what they've heard their families discussing at home. Others made their choices for different reasons such as they liked the name or how the candidate looked or how his voice sounded or even because, like typical teens, they want to do the opposite of what's "expected" of them (asserting that independence from their families). Not too different from the general populace, in my opinion. I think we did a good job as adults in my room about not prejudicing the kids' choices or trying to unduly influence them. Yes, they have heard some good discussion about the merits, or perceived lack thereof, of the various candidates. Yes, the four adults in my room are evenly split about who we support, with some of us being more vocal than others. But in the end, I think the kids really did choose who they wanted. We had a good time learning the basics about the election, who the candidates are, and how voting works. I adapted last week's News-2-You about the 2008 Election which we read and discussed together. Then we participated in a school-wide mock election being run by the 7th grade social studies classes complete with election booths, "real" ballots, and exit pollsters. Building-wide, the election went overwhelmingly to McCain/Palin, not too surprising for a very conservative Kansas community. In our class, the election went to Obama/Biden by a margin of one vote.

Whichever candidate comes out on top tonight (or tomorrow or next week or whenever the "final" count is made), I hope he is able to be an effective leader for our country and can bring about the substantive change that is so desperately needed. So best wishes to both sides, but I really hope "my side" comes out on top (and he'd better do a good job if he does)!

30 Day Blog Challenge Day 4

2008-11-04T17:57:00.000-06:00

Today's challenge was to consider protecting your blog content using Creative Commons licensing. At first I thought, I don't mind/care if others use my work. Then I thought, wait! I have photos of the kids on here and, while they are mine to share, they are not mine to give away. And then I thought, you know, I work pretty hard to do the things I do and I think my writing is half way decent. I don't really want someone else taking credit for that (note to self, learn how find out if someone is "borrowing" from my blog and not giving credit). So I signed up for a CC license. Easy Easy Easy Easy. And you get a nifty badge to display on your blog. I decided to be very restrictive with my license. I don't really mind if others take what I write and rewrite and adapt it to make it their own, but the license doesn't differentiate the content (narrative vs. images vs. audio, etc.) and I decided the photos needed better protection than that.

30 day blogging challenge days 1-3

2008-11-03T21:56:00.001-06:00

Kate Ahern of TLWMSN brought this challenge to my attention on her blog and it piqued my interest. Patrick Black from Teaching All Learners decided to accept the challenge and I became even more intrigued. Then, today, on day 3 of the challenge, Kate chose to write a thank you message to me (!!) and I decided to bite the bullet and participate. I'm not sure if I'll end up doing all 30 days. We'll just have to see. Here are entries for days 1-3.

Day one: The About page--Who are you and what is your blog about?
I think I have a decent About Me page--enough info so that you know who I am and my experiences but not so much that I'm just hanging out there in the breeze (it's good for a girl to keep a little mystery, right?). I doubt I make too many changes to it right now. Most of that "getting to know me" stuff can happen through reading my blog entries. As far as the purpose of my blog, when I first started it I had no idea where it would go. I was originally inspired by Kate's blog and had toyed with the idea of doing a resources-type blog, but I feel like Kate's blog is SOOO good and SOOO thorough, that I really didn't "need" to do that. I could just reference her blog. Then I got to thinking that there just isn't much out there on the practical aspects of teaching kids with severe and multiple disabilities. I always have people asking me for ideas and I'm a really strong "ideas" person, so why not make the blog about what I do with my students, the day-to-day nitty gritty? So far, the parent feedback I've received has been really positive because the blog has allowed them to connect with me and their kids and their kids' school experiences in a new and meaningful way. They also like to see what their kids have been doing and don't mind one bit sharing with the "rest of the world." Since I do my best to protect their identities by not revealing their true names (mine is the only "true name" I will ever use on my blog, at least for the characters in my life) and keeping our exact location as "secret" as I can, everyone seems pretty happy and feels fairly safe. It's also been fun to hear from other people "out there" who do similar things to me and who are also looking for inspiration and collaboration.

Day 2: Stats
I just recently added Stat Counter to my blog. It's intriguing. I have to admit, it's a bit of an ego booster to see that people actually do come and read my blog and I find myself checking my count every day just to see how many visited, where they're from, how they found my blog, and what they seemed interested in (obsessive, who me?). As I gain more information from my stats I hope to use them to make my blogging better. I'm not certain I'll stick with Stat Counter and honestly can't remember why I chose that one (probably because it was used by one of the other bloggers I follow, which is where I get most of my widgits). A couple of other people use Feedburner. Might be worth checking out at some point.

Day 3: Write a thank you note
I want to say thank you to Kate Ahern for both being such a wonderful resource for those of us in the area of special education and especially intensive needs as well as being the primary inspiration for me starting my blog. Thank you Kate! You truly have been, and continue to be, an inspiration to me. I am completely "wowed" by the amount of work you have put into your blog, wonder how you have the time to locate all those awesome resources, and deeply respect your dedication to your students.

I would also like to say "thank you" to Patrick Black for being the very first blogger to link to me on his blog. That is just "way cool," Patrick. Thanks for networking with me.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to Lon Thornburg for not only writing a great blog with resources and personal experiences in the field of AT, but for also reaching out and creating the Assistive Technology Blog Carnival and encouraging me to become a contributor. I've received more "hits" from his references to my blog than from anywhere else (so far). Thanks for helping me step past my shyness and reticence to really put myself out there.

And, I want to say thank you to my students. They are the true inspiration behind my blogging. If you can't tell, I adore what I do and who I do it with. I am truly and deeply honored to be given the gift of the opportunity to work with these wonderful young people. This is not a "job" for me, it is my life. It is what I have wanted to do ever since middle school when I met my first person with a severe disability. Watching their growth and development, seeing them master new skills, and celebrating all the small, really important things, are the great joys of my life. I love every minute of it and wouldn't trade it for the world. Thanks guys!

Look Out! It's a Mad Scientist!

2008-10-31T19:52:00.002-05:00

The promised photos of a group of Mad Scientists. We had an absolute blast all day!

Check out those intestines!

Alien Slime and sensory bottles

It's a brain!

Flubber experiment

Playing with "oobleck"

For those of you who are curious, I took most of the photos so this is the only one I'm in. I'm the one with the wild hair third from the right.

Still More Mad Science

2008-10-30T21:25:00.000-05:00

Thought I'd share our mad science preparations in this post so the next post doesn't get so long. This is our classroom door. Found the door curtain at Oriental Trading.

We spent the end of the day transforming our "work" area into a "Laboratory." I don't know who had more fun: the kids who were watching the video Young Frankenstein (a couple of the kids were doing awesome imitations of the monster noises and then laughing and laughing; another kept activating step-by-step that had various screams recorded on it; it was all too funny!) or the adults who were playing with a variety of solutions and mixtures and concoctions to create the lab (more on that later). The cabinets and table are covered in white shower curtain liners left over from our sensory room make over.

Here is the "Nevermore" raven I found at Party City keeping watch over the tray of monster parts for the sensory story. Below are a bunch of sensory bottles (more info below) and other creepy lab experiments including Alien Slime (awesome stuff! It's even scented!) and a variety of test tubes and beakers (really intended for sand art but for the price they were perfect for us).

Another view of our "experiments" including the Mad Lab Kit, and a color changing brain and heart. I picked up the electo-static ball years ago at Wal-Mart. I stuck one of our other "mood" lights up there too, just to add to the effect.

The large flask has green tinted water with ping pong eyeballs. The flask on top of the "burner" has purple tinted water with dish soap suds.

A closer view of the sensory bottles and Alien Slime.

I got the idea for the sensory bottles from http://www.kinderfriends.com/discoverybottles.html and then went my own direction. They are concoctions of various combinations of water, Karo syrup, baby oil, dish soap, and hair gel (the orange ones) with food coloring, glitter, confetti, and small objects added in (the orange bottle in front has hair gel and rubber eye balls). One or two just have loose beads inside so they rattle. We used the same technique to fill most of the flasks, beakers, and test tubes. They turn out really cool and the kids have fun manipulating them and watching what happens when you turn them over. I used Gorilla Glue to secure the lids to the tops of the bottles for safety. I left the flasks and test tubes open so we could recycle them but the kids won't get to play with most of those.

More Mad Science

2008-10-19T22:31:00.004-05:00

I just finished doing the powerpoint and script for Mad Monster Lab and it turned out too cute! Many thanks to my wonderful husband for showing me some of the tricks to powerpoint 07. I will post it here as soon as I figure out file sharing. It was unbelievably easy to do. Link to powerpoint.
Link to script (in Word) You'll need both documents. My kids are controlling the powerpoint using either the Smartboard or a jellybeamer. You could also add fun with messages on voice output devices (ooh, that's scary; look out!; what gonna happen now?; I'm scared; that's creepy; etc.). Have fun! Just a note: when I tried to download the powerpoint to another computer using 4Shared not all the sounds came through, which kind of ruins the effect. When I checked the presentation the sounds weren't even listed. If you can't get it to work correctly leave me a comment with contact info (or email me) and I'll send it to you directly. Try this link to the powerpoint to see if it works better.
Well, that didn't work either. The download still leaves out 4 of the sounds: storm, lab, shock, and Monster Mash. Works just fine on the original on my PC so not sure what's going on (I'm not that tech savvy, sorry). Here are the links to the missing sounds so you can add them yourself. I found the first 3 on http://www.findsounds.com/ and Monster Mash in http://www.ilovewavs.com/ :
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310396/25693eae/labclip.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310662/a3572493/Monster_Mash_Music.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310615/727227f7/ShocknScream.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310366/a2f12261/thunder2.html

Here are the words to Spooky Hooky:
Put your [body part] in
Put your [body part] out
Put your [body part] in and shake shake shake shake shake
Do the hooky spooky and
Wave your arms around
Then make a Halloween sound!

We use finger bones, foot bones, leg bone, arm bone, head bone, and the favorite rear end bone as well as whole skeleton.

I have a body parts PCS board already made for the Hokey Pokey that the kids take turns choosing from. Ahead of time they get to come to the computer and choose a spooky Halloween sound from my collection of wav files and record it on an AAC device (either tablet PC or step by step). Makes for lots of noisy fun as they don't usually wait for the end to activate. :-)
We also do "wave your arms" instead of turn around because our space is limited and turning around gets really challenging with all those wheelchairs!

I also have a copy of the song "What Do You Like About Halloween" by Sue Schnitzer (search her name on itunes; awesome stuff; I also like Oh the Bats, great use of a balloon and really just everything on her Halloween CD) that I just did a board for. I tested it at ROCKO this Saturday and it was a huge hit.

What do you like about Halloween?
What do you like about Halloween?
[child selects button that says "I like ___"]
[Child's name] likes [selection]
That's what we like about Halloween.

I put the board in Boardmaker/Speaking Dynamically on a tablet PC that we pass around to let the kids choose. My scanners can either step scan to their choice or use a non-tech mode to tell us what they want before we sing the verse. Now that I know the tune I can think of infinite ways to use the song: holidays, seasons, the weekend, working with our SLP, shopping, ....

Mad Science

2008-10-16T21:34:00.000-05:00

I will be the first to admit, I love Halloween and always have. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood are of making my own costumes and going out on crisp fall nights to trick or treat, watching the Walt Disney Halloween special, and trading candy with my brother. Now that I'm all grown up, and don't have kids of my own, I generally get my Halloween fix with my students. I have a huge box of props, manipulatives, and toys. I think I must own every Halloween-themed kids' CD out there (my paras counted today and I think they came up with 10; that doesn't count what I've downloaded to itunes). We typically do lots of Halloween-related activities like going to the local pumpkin patch, carving a pumpkin and playing in pumpkin guts (fun!), designing our own costumes (last year's favorite was a pirate complete with a pirate ship-stroller and a treasure chest treat box, oh, and the parrot, can't forget the parrot), and having a Halloween party. This year we have decided to have a Mad Scientist party instead of the more traditional Halloween classroom party. This came about for several reasons. First, Lon Thornburg of No Limits to Learning fame is sponsoring a "Mad Scientist" theme for October's Assistive Technology Blog Carnival and I really wanted to enter it so got "inspired." Second, I have at least one student whose family does not "do" Halloween so we always have to adapt. I've been fortunate that these families have not asked me to restrict the Halloween fun for the other students (and staff), but they prefer that their child do non-Halloween activities. Third, at the middle school level we are constantly striving to "age up" the kids' activities. So often they seem "stuck" at a preschool interest level and to some extent we allow them to appreciate their favorites (tops right now are Handy Manny, Tigger and Pooh, and SpongeBob). However, we also expose them to as much of the pre-teen/teen culture as we can. The Girls and I all agreed that a Mad Scientist party would not only be fun, but could work to meet a lot of our goals with the kids and still let us enjoy Halloween fun without tromping on anyone's beliefs. I mean, what middle schooler wouldn't want to dress in weird clothes, listen to loud music, and play with weird concoctions? Pretty much an average day around our school.

We had to get creative with our activities to accommodate the kids' sensory issues, especially with science experiments. The exploding volcano project (which would be cool coming out of a beaker) just would not be a big hit with so many kids with vision impairments and I don't think anyone would get the rubber chicken bone thing. Here are the activities we have planned and the assistive technology we will use to support the kids in all the fun:

Ahead of time
Reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in audio book format

Watching Young Frankenstein just for kicks (that will be on swimming day) complete with our own versions of the sound effects or "movie watching" social scripts programmed onto Step-by-Steps (Chloe and I would rather do a fun interactive version of Rocky Horror Picture Show but somehow I don't think that would fly real well; maybe I'll snag her and go to the Orpheum Theater in Wichita to do the real thing)

On the day
Dress up as mad scientists with wigs, gloves, and other props (we have a nurse and a trauma surgeon in our parent collection so I'm sure we'll get some good donations to the cause)

Sensory story on the Smart board based loosely on The Monster Lab Game and work by some folks in the UK (The Advisory Unit Plasma Screen and Whiteboard Room is definitely worth a visit!); the kids will have step-by-steps for appropriate sound effects, use the Smartboard or a jelly beamer to turn the page on whichever software product I decide to use (Boardmaker, Intellitools, SwitchIt!, or powerpoint), and explore all the smelly and ooey gooey props that go along with the story. This will take the place of our usual Morning Meeting activities

Play with a host of "Laboratory Equipment" like a static ball, different light toys, exploring sound effects and creepy music, and "beakers" with different things inside

Cook lunch which will probably be spaghetti and meat sauce (so we can use some of the spaghetti in the sensory story of course) and our favorite pumpkin pudding; I'll have to come up with an appropriate name of course. Hey! Green beans would make good "fingers," hmmm...

Do a Mad Science Experiment, probably making "oobleck" with bright colors (3 parts cornstarch to 2 parts water; fun stuff to play with); I think a mixer (adapted with powerlink) will work with this stuff; guess we'll find out!

Create our own "Frankenstein's Monsters" or robots and use our communication devices to make choices, adapted scissors to cut, etc.

Do the "Spooky Hooky," our version of the Hokey Pokey. The kids use either pictures or step scanning to choose what body parts to shake shake shake

That will probably fill up our day. I doubt we do any "trick or treating" as most of the kids either don't eat by mouth or have dietary restrictions that mean no candy allowed. We'll also create the right "atmosphere" with one of our creepy sounds CDs playing through the surround sound (including the itunes visualizer on the wall) and props set around the room, given I can find some "on the cheap." I'm sure the science teacher next door and the school resource officer will also make an appearance. They go all out for Halloween. At least they don't Vaseline my door handle anymore (learned their lesson after one of the kids ate the stuff! Kid is OK, adults a little sheepish).

I will post photos after the Big Event but wanted to get the initial post done in time for the Blog Carnival (submissions are due Oct. 27). Who knows? We might inspire you to have some Mad Science fun, or maybe you have some ideas to contribute to make our day even better. Consider submitting your own entry to the Carnival. It's painless and NOT SCARY AT ALL. It's a terrific way to share and to get word out about your blog.

News-2-You Fun

2008-10-11T13:53:00.002-05:00

Just about every week we read the News-2-You adapted newspaper (see previous post). I always try to plan at least one extension activity to go along with it. Here are some of the projects we've done so far. Please note that while many of these projects are arts and crafts related, I also look for science experiments, cooking activities, and games.

Hubble Space Telescope: We made our own versions of space nebulae. We used BioColor paint to balloon stamp on coffee filters. The NASA website had a fun activity that gave examples of different space formations that have been seen using Hubble. The kids chose from those to decide what shape to cut their nebulae into. (NOTE: We attempted the project as described on the website but our markers wouldn't "bleed" on our coffee filters. I had planned to let the kids choose colors and make random marks then spray water using a switch adapted water pik. We had a big mess and a lot of wet fun but no projects.) The entire website has some fun projects which will be perfect when we do our more in-depth space unit this spring to tie in with state assessments. Balloon stamping has to be my favorite way to paint. I learned about the technique on the BioColor video which came with my first order of paint. Basicially you place 3-4 small puddles (about dime size) of paint touching each other in a triangle/square then stick an inflated balloon in the paint and stamp onto your project. It's something everyone in my room can do, a "no fail" outcome, and just looks really cool. The paint washes off of and out of nearly everything. Mix it with some liquid soap or detergent and you have awesome fingerpaint. There are recipes for puffy paint and other projects as well.

Iron Chef America: I was so excited when this came up as a News-2-You topic because I love this show. We had a blast this week. I was able to find some on-line video of the show to share clips of. Then we had our own Iron Chef Showdown. The secret ingredient was pudding mix. The kids chose between various ways to make their pudding and different ingredients to mix in. Everyone then taste tested everyone else's and voted whether or not they liked it and which they liked better. This was mainly based on yes/no responses and/or how enthusiastic they were about eating/tasting the sample and requesting more. The surprise favorite was vanilla pudding mix combined with whipped topping, bananas, blueberry pie filling, and crushed chocolate chip cookies. I took the kids' recipes and votes and made a recipe card using Boardmaker.

Political Conventions: This was a fun week that allowed us to talk about current events. We learned about the two candidates (and yes, I stayed nonbiased in my presentation, for those who know my political views) and talked about the two-party system. We then did an art project where the kids chose between making a donkey or an elephant. They had color choices of red, white, or blue for each piece of their chosen project, could choose whether to use stickers. etc. We all laughed when every single kid chose a donkey, including the one who would later wear a McCain-Palin shirt at least once a week. The art projects come from DLTK-kids.com. I LOVE this resource and use it all the time. It is rare for them not to have something that supports a lesson topic.

Olympics: This was one of the first topics of our school year this fall. We had just finished summer school by holding our own version of the Olympics and inviting friends from some other classes to participate with us. We spent lots of time watching the Olympics, viewing the very exciting Opening Ceremonies, learning a bit about China, and playing various games. For this project we used small paper plates to make our Olympic rings. Although the kids did not get color choices because I wanted to stick with the "real" colors, they did get to choose to use finger painting or a paint brush. They also chose 1-5 favorite Olympic sports using PCS symbols, which we cut out and glued onto the circles cut from the middle of the rings. I think the projects turned out pretty cool and they are still hanging in our room.

Last year I sent the News-2-You worksheets and related projects home every week. This year I decided to collect them to make portfolios. We can look back at what we've done before, I can compare performance on the worksheets to look for growth, and I might just be able to use some of this for state assessments. How cool is that?

Schedules

2008-09-28T14:30:00.003-05:00

A recent question on the Boardmaker listserv brought up the topic of scheduling. This is always such a challenge, and, to be honest, I like the challenge. It's a giant puzzle that I'm responsible for solving, sort of like Suduko for daily events. I have to meet the needs of the kids and the staff, figure out how to make the best use of our resources (equipment, activities, etc.), schedule in the therapists, community outings, inclusion opportunities, and planning time, oh, and make sure we have some time to just have fun too. This topic is especially timely as my classroom is essentially starting our year over this week. I lost 3 of my 4 paras in the last two weeks, two of whom I've worked with for four years and who were far and away the best paras I've ever had. I haven't had to really THINK for quite awhile as the three of us made an awesome team, had the same goals, and could basically read each others' minds. I'll miss these women who have become as much friends as coworkers, but I'm also viewing this as an opportunity for a fresh start. I've found 2 replacements who so far seem like they will work out. My one remaining para has only been with us since June so we're basically working with an all new staff. I was really happy and excited about this year's ambitious and demanding schedule. I'm hoping we'll be able to keep with it.

In planning the schedule I always start with the things that HAVE to be done: meal times, caregiving, procedures like tube feedings and medications, position changes, etc. Those are the things that cannot change and have to be done no matter what else happens. From there I look at the things I WANT to do: cognitive skills/work tasks, community outings, inclusion opportunities, whole group activities, etc. I figure out how to schedule in the use of the more limited resources like the stander and computer, and also negotiate therapist time. We actually have a pretty good schedule this year, I think. This version isn't as pretty as the one I did in Word, though, and I hope it translates well on the blog. The original version is all color coded with arrows and in a table, which I've discovered you can't do on blogger.

Monday:
7:30 B and N prep for community outing; W and C choice of hall/peers or TV
8:00 B and N leave for community (grocery shop, eat b'fast); M gets water; M, C, W choices while staff organizes
8:30 M, C, W morning meeting
9:00 M, C, W work tasks, yoga/stretches, stander, etc.; C gets water
10:00 B and N return and put groceries away then get a break; M, C, W continue
11:00 Lunch for B, N, W; M lunch feeding; M and C reposition and choices
12:00 All kids break time choies; C lunch feeding; staff breaks where they fit
12:30 B goes to library job
1:00 PM group; M medications Art/Cooking/Literature
2:00 Home prep; finish work from earlier in day
Busses: 2:35, 2:45; 3:00

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday:
7:30 B & N b'fast; C & W choice hall/peers and TV
8:00 Finish b'fast; M gets water; M, C, W choices while staff organizes
8:30 Morning meeting
9:00 Work tasks, yoga/stretches, stander, etc.; C gets water
10:30 Early lunch
11:30 Peer activities
12:00 C gets lunch feeding
12:45 Break
1:00 M gets meds
1:30 Structured leisure activities; finish work from morning
2:00 Home prep
Busses: 2:35, 2:45; 3:00
SLP and PT at 1:00, work with individual kids

Wednesday:
7:30 B & N b'fast; C & W choice hall/peers and TV
8:00 Finish b'fast; M gets water; M, C, W choices while staff organizes
8:30 Morning meeting
9:00 Work tasks, yoga/stretches, stander, etc.; C gets water
11:00 Lunch for B, N, W; M lunch feeding; M and C reposition and choices
12:00 All kids break time choies; C lunch feeding; staff breaks where they fit
12:30 B goes to library job
1:00 PM group; M medications News-2-You/pen pals
2:00 Home prep; finish work from earlier in day
Busses: 2:35, 2:45; 3:00

Thursday:
7:30 B & N b'fast; C & W out of wheelchairs
8:00 Finish b'fast; M gets water; M out of wheelchair; staff gets organized for outing
8:30ish Community outing (whole class)
Return by 2:00 to do bathroom breaks, home prep, etc.
Busses: 2:35, 2:45; 3:00
If back early, the kids choose from leisure options; sometimes we watch a video
Outings include: swimming, shopping, zoo, movie theater, skating rink, salon, special olympics activities, etc.

Friday: Sensory Fun Day
7:30 B & N b'fast; C & W choice hall/peers and TV
8:00 Finish b'fast; M gets water; M, C, W choices while staff organizes
8:30 Morning meeting
9:00 Structured sensory play, yoga/stretches, stander, etc.; C gets water
11:00 Lunch for B, N, W; M lunch feeding; M and C reposition and choices
12:00 All kids break time choies; C lunch feeding; staff breaks where they fit
1:00 PM group; M medications Sensory activities/game
2:00 Home prep; finish work from earlier in day
Busses: 2:35, 2:45; 3:00
SLP all AM

I have 4 kids who arrive at 7:40 and one who arrives at 8:00

Bathroom times are fit in where needed: during transitions between activities and always at meal times

Staff breaks are after the kids have eaten and gone to the bathroom (11:30-1:00 time period) with at least 2 staff in the room at all times

On Mondays we do a group project such as art, cooking, or literature. Tuesday is "peer day" so those activities take the place of PM group. On Wednesdays we read the News-2-You during morning meeting and do a related activity during PM group. I've chosen Friday to be "Sensory Fun Day" because 1.) we're always skipping these activities and the kids really like and benefit from them; 2.) as adults we are TIRED by Friday and this gives us something fun to look forward to; 3.) our SLP is with us all AM and these are great activities for him; and 4.) if anything "special" is going to happen in our building it's on a Friday (assemblies, days off, etc.) so this lets us be flexible.

It's News to Us!

2008-09-12T20:22:00.005-05:00

We use the News-2-You adapted newspaper in our classroom nearly every week. It's the perfect solution to finding age-appropriate, interesting, and accessible materials for social studies and science for my students. News-2-You has helped us talk about topics I would otherwise have never thought of. Along with reading the paper and doing the simpler worksheets, we generally do a related project. The kids can also return to previously adapted issues for self-selected reading. This has helped tremendously in expanding our library into nonfiction books. Being an extreme fiction lover, I have often found myself neglecting nonfiction. News-2-You has also recently released a curriculum called Unique that I am anxious to hear more about. It's a bit pricey for my budget and after a not-so-great experience with the adapted Weekly Reader by AbleNet (NOT because of AbleNet, however, but because Weekly Reader could not get us issues in a timely manner; the AbleNet adaptations are AWESOME so I hope they can work out the other glitches), I was hesitant to jump on board immediately.

Even though it's already adapted, I do end up customizing the News-2-You even more to meet our needs. It comes in three levels: simplified, regular, and higher with a periodic advanced issue. My kids can typically understand more of the content than is available in the simplified version but get a bit overwhelmed by the content in the regular version. I also like to use photos, sound effects, and other media to help support their understanding. I usually use Boardmaker/Speaking Dynamically/+ to create our own interactive version of the paper which can incorporate more media supports for them. I use the Symbolate tool to copy the text of the paper, adapted as needed, on the background and add photos, etc. There is a "read it" button that speaks the text for that page (1-2 lines) and a "turn the page" button. Using Symbolate I can reduce the number of symbols included with the text, focussing on the primary message. I can also insert photos (my kids respond better to photos of people rather than vector drawings) and the News-2-You Symbolstix symbols. I then use the same symbols in a vocabulary worksheet (which of these words did we hear today?) and a comprehension questions worksheet, adapted from the ones provided by News-2-You. I also print a set of accompanying vocabulary pictures that we cut out and use to reinforce vocabulary as well as with the worksheets. Depending on the content and how much time I spend searching for support media, the adaptations usually take me 30 minutes to an hour to complete. I would love to share my adapted versions with you, but unfortunately the News-2-You is copywrite protected. If you want to contact me privately I would be willing to send you a sample page though.

We read the paper together using the Smartboard. The kids have really enjoyed this. They have even surprised me with how well they do with the worksheets, even my one student who I thought would NEVER do something like this. He is extremely hands-on and tactile, not to mention dual sensory impaired, so typically worksheets are not his "thing." Actually, typically worksheets are not anyone's thing in my classroom, but these seem to work for us. We can adapt difficulty and response mode to the needs of the student with extreme ease.

We also do a related project. I will try to add photos when I can. We post our projects on the classroom door whenever possible so others in the school can see what we are learning about. The kids' peers frequently talk to them about these activities, which is really cool. Here are the ones we have done so far this year:

Olympics: made an Olympic rings mobile out of small paper plates. The kids chose between finger painting or using a paint brush. They then chose at least one and up to 5 Boardmaker symbols representing different Olympic sports which were glued onto the inside circles cut from the rings and hung from the bottom of the mobile. We also followed the Olympics, watched the opening ceremonies, and talked about favorite events and athletes during morning meeting.

Political Conventions: dltk-kids.com has some wonderful simple art projects including an elephant and a donkey. The kids chose which project they wished to make (everyone chose the donkey, with no prompting from me I promise!). They then chose which color to use (red, white, or blue) for each part of the simple paper project, used a VOCA to request needed items, helped glue, etc., and chose whether or not and how to use stickers to decorate their project.

Trains: We had a very short week during this topic so didn't get to the News-2-You, but we would have read some train themed books, worked on simple shapes by making a paper train (square, circle, rectangle, triangle), and played with our Geo-Trax train set.

Iron Chef America: This was a blast. We watched a little of the Iron Chef show then had our own Iron Chef contest. The secret ingredient was pudding mix. The kids chose between vanilla and chocolate pudding then whether to mix it with milk or Cool Whip (for those interested, an 1/8 C. of dry pudding mix with approximately 1/2 C. of milk or 1 C. of Cool Whip makes about a 1/2 C. serving). They then chose various items to mix in (crushed cookies, crushed graham crackers, banana, blueberry pie filling, strawberry pie filling). As you can imagine we ended up with some very interesting concoctions! They then taste tested each other's recipes and voted for their favorites. Believe it or not, the vanilla with blueberry, banana, and chocolate chip cookies was the favorite and actually tasted pretty good!

Hurricanes (this week): We are going to learn a little about the most recent hurricanes and how they are affecting us here in Kansas (the kids went home early today because of flooding from all the rain), learn some fun rain-related songs, and do some hurricane/weather related science experiments: hurricane in a bowl, tornado in a bottle (we do live in Kansas after all), and experiment with "wind" and "rain" using an adapted hair dryer and a spray bottle of water. Brainpop also has a pretty cool video about hurricanes.

In upcoming weeks we'll be learning a bit about dolphins and the ocean, outer space and astronomy, popcorn, and baseball. The Activity of the Month from Mayer Johnson actually has some really good support materials for Oceans (July/August 08) and Baseball (September/October 08) that I'm looking forward to using. There are also some nice supports on the News-2-You site including adapted stories in Joey's Locker and extension materials to download.