Hatchet

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

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!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

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.

Trends

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.