Anybody else curious?

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.

Works for Me Monday: Staffing Assignments and Scheduling

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?

The Plan for This Year (2009-10)

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!

Unique Learning Systems

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.

Buzzard Day Resources and Activities

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 craftVulture 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

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

The Great and Powerful Oz

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.

Still more Oz fun

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

Favorite Christmas activities

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!

As the world turns over...again

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....

Favorite Cause Effect Activities

Here are some of our favorite cause and effect activities. There are lots of others that we use but these seem to be the most popular. As you can tell, we do a lot of work with cause and effect.


With switches
Fan to blow on chimes and/or self (Powerlink)

Bubble machine (ours is AC not battery so we use a Powerlink)

Turn on blinky lights (we have a whole collection of different kinds; with Powerlink)

Turn on tape player (with Powerlink)

Change the song on itunes; we use a jellybeamer; one of my students uses a Lilli Nielson HOPSA harness for standing and we Velcro a jellybeamer to the harness so she can do it while standing/walking which she thinks is totally cool

Press and hold (“direct” mode on a Powerlink) to explore between 2 different activities such as music and lights—lets the student have more control than using a timer

Use latching (click once to turn it on, click again to turn it off) to run appliances such as blender, mixer, vacuum, paper shredder, blow dryer, etc. Really nice to work on following directions and sequencing

Voice output switch to request “more” (swing, spin, massager, music, TV, ipod, itunes visualizer, the list is endless; especially effective with activities that have a natural ending like swinging); we like to vary “more” messages with comments so the student has to pay attention to what he/she is saying and realizes they have to hit the switch more than once to get “more”

Voice output switches for “channel wars” when watching TV: one student gets a switch that says “change the channel” messages; second student (or adult) gets switch that says “change that back, I was watching that” OR also gets a “change channel” switch. Let them battle it out. Adult changes the channel as directed

Voice output switches with “go” and “stop” messages when on walks, playing on scooter, etc. It’s also fun to add “faster,” “slow down,” and “crash!”

Voice output switch for gaining attention; especially good for the student who isn’t in the mood to engage just yet

Computer activities
Big Bang from Inclusive TLC
Priory Woods switch adapted videos
Itunes (make cause effect by putting cursor on play/pause or reverse or forward)
Things I’ve made using Intellitools Classroom Suite
Away We Ride and similar programs from SoftTouch, Inc.
The SwitchIt! Series from Inclusive TLC
Sights and Sounds series from Marblesoft-Simtech

Nonswitch activities
There's a lot more to cause and effect than just using switches. So often I find school teams get caught up in the technology for teaching cause effect skills when in reality cause effect is all around us, from hitting a light switch to using PECS to make requests to flushing the toilet. Here are some of our favorite non-tech and low-tech cause effect activities:

Knock the Can on the Floor: a favorite of my kids; simply a metal coffee can with marbles inside that gets pushed off the table/lap/tray onto the floor to make a giant noise; also good for Kick the Can

The novelty toys, usually an animal, with a button to push that makes the toy sing and dance

Lilli Nielson’s Little Room concept: we use an Actitunnel from Abilitations that is dubbed the “toy tunnel”

Resonance board, another piece of active learning equipment

Esseff board: a spring board from active learning; we put ours on a stand vertically and stretch a bungee cord across it and hang noisy toys from it; does all kinds of cool things when you bump it, pull on the toys, kick it, etc.

Wind chimes; my favorites are the bamboo ones because they’re easier on the ears

We have a toy that looks like a big red fuzzy head; when you drop it on the floor or hit it, it jiggles and makes noise; ours is called Cris P. Bacon

Learn body parts with a massager: which body part is this? Or where do you want me to put the massager?

The swing: we use a net swing and an Air walker

Flarp: it’s like plastic play doh that makes interesting noises when you squish it in the container; great for using with Walter the Farting Dog books

Bubbles

Mirrors

Mardi Gras beads on a cookie sheet: really good when using an active learning positioning bench

Shake and Go Crash Ups cars

Playskool Busy Gears toy

Tangle toys

Squeaky toys: OK, I'll admit it, we've found the best ones in the pet aisle; they are easy to activate, durable, LOUD, and just plain cute