Our Unique Adventure--October 09

(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!

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!)

Sink or Float?

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!

Still More Mad Science

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.

It's News to Us!

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.