Ummm....Helloooooo out there -ere -ere -ere !!!

Wow! Has it truly been over a year since I posted on this blog? That is CRAZY and a strong indication of just how busy I've been. And tired, oh so tired. I didn't realize, when our kids came, just how dedicated I would be to spending every free moment I have focused on them. School tends to stay at school and when I'm home they get as much of my (mostly) undivided attention as my students do during school time. So that has left no time for blogging here. And then there have been the changes at school, oh so many changes....

So to go back where I left things a year ago with the open ended individual projects:
Some of them went REALLY well. My two "artsy" girls made some phenomenal mask projects, starting off very simple and working up to some very complicated and intricate papier mache and mosaic masks including a three dimensional head that stared us all down during the last month of school and had a tendency to make our night custodian very nervous. :-)

My music maker and scientist's projects ended up fizzling out. Music Man enjoyed banging and experimenting but soon lost true interest and switched to working on other things, like actual READING (exciting!!!!). And my scientist could never decide on an experiment. But even though we never arrived at a "product" for these two, they did learn quite a lot and had many, many interaction opportunities while working on their project interests.

Now onto the changes we've incurred over the past year.
First, we have a completely remodeled learning space. Our building underwent and top to bottom remodel over the summer and that included us getting a second room added to our classroom (and necessitated packing up EVERYTHING we had, and after nearly 16 years that was A LOT of stuff). Yay! We were so crowded in the old space and spent as much time shifting furniture and equipment out of our way as we did learning and teaching. Our newly added room is approximately half the size of our original room but it almost doubles our functional space. And good thing too, as we essentially gained two students for a total of 7 kids this year (my oldest from last year exited), both of whom are extemely active. That also meant adding staff. And with the departure of pretty much all of my staff from last year that meant an entire room of new faces, reorganization and reprioritizing, and training training training. It took us most of first semester to really get settled and into a rhythm but things are working (mostly) smoothly now.

So what are we working on? So very much! A new component to our curriculum this year is Pati King deBaun's Teach Me AAC program, which teaches both AAC and literacy skills. There is a LOT I like about this program (too much to go into here). Comment with questions and an email address and I'd be happy to chat more. We dropped Unique Learning Systems this year as it just was not a good fit for me (a personal thing; I have teaching friends who adore the program; I just need more variety). We still use News-2-You heavily, however. They have added some nice new features if you haven't checked them out recently. And I recently rediscovered the website Praactically Speaking which has awesome resources. We are using their 12 Months of Core Words for language group in conjunction with Teach Me AAC and the kids are doing fantastic! In just three weeks of implementing the core words I have students who are pairing 2 and 3 symbols to form messages for the first time ever. Math is a combination of community-based math (measurement, money, address and phone number, etc.) as well as things pulled from Equals and Teaching Math to Students with Down Syndrome. All of this should help us be better prepared for the transition to the Common Core over the next year. I am very curious to see exactly how the new Dynamic Learning Maps alternate assessment system will actually work. It looks promising. Hoping it's not a giant headache!

So that's what I've been up to in a bit of a nutshell. Eventually I will get back to this post and link the resources I listed above. But right now I'm tired and it's my bed time. :-)

Individual Open Ended Long Term Projects

My class has embarked on a new and exciting adventure. We are doing individual long term open ended projects this semester. We've done extended projects before. It's the open endedness that makes this experience difference, and to some extent, the individualization. In the past we've typically done a whole class project (learning about oceans, learning about the rain forest, a novel study, etc.) with a definite beginning and end. Everyone worked on pretty much the same things, with differentiation for skill level and a bit for interest. After getting caught up in some reading for my own children (specifically related to the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education) I thought, "Why not?" I was really encouraged to give this a go when two of my girls were enamored by the African mask paper sculptures that the 8th grade art classes did and displayed in our halls. They are beautiful and the girls are fascinated by them. When asked if they wanted to make their own, they both gave a resounding YES. So they are researching masks, African culture, learning about color and symmetry, and exploring paper sculpting techniques. One of the girls has discovered quilling and is enjoying working on with that. The other has had a blast checking out some truly awesome paper sculptures. Both are fully engaged and actively learning as well as using previously gained and new skills. I have no idea if they will even make the masks that originally started it all. This journey is about the PROCESS not the PRODUCT.

So why not just do this same project with all six students? Mainly because two of those students have next to no interest in art and would be totally disengaged in the activity and two of them have a complexity of sensory issues that would make it difficult to adapt this project for them in a meaningful and fully participatory way. But also because I wanted to really inspire them to learn about something they individually find fascinating. With that in mind, I talked to one of my boys who loves music and banging on things and asked if he wanted to explore something along those lines. He was excited and we narrowed things down to learning about percussion instruments and maybe guitar music with the initial thought that maybe he could compile an itunes collection of music he likes for his ipod. This was still fairly directionless and we were floundering a bit until today, when I introduced him to Stomp on a video. He was immediately hooked! He asked to repeat the first 7 minutes of the performance four times and was thrilled when I gave him a variety of brushes and a hand broom to experiment with on different surfaces. I watched my No Talk Boy be the most engaged I've ever seen him as he experimented with the brushes and attempted to copy the actions of the performers on the video. At one point he even got upset because he couldn't accomplish exactly what he had in mind. Talk about an opportunity to communicate and problem solve! He now wants to create and perform his own Stomp-eque performance, with maybe a few Blue Man Group overtones.

Boy #2 is interested in what the other kids are doing and at first I thought he would get into the music project as well. No dice. He wanted to do something unique to him. Knowing he has always enjoyed doing science activities I asked if he wanted to do some kind of experiment. That got him excited and he finally narrowed his scientific interest down to biology, specifically something with plants. Currently he is learning about plants (and enjoying every minute) but has not decided what his project will be or even IF he will do a product of some sort or simply learn more about a topic that interests him.

Boy #3 was totally disinterested in doing any type of project and that is OK. He is one of my oldest students and spends a lot of time out of the classroom in the community. He recently started a new volunteer job that is taking a lot of his attention and energy so time in the classroom is frequently spent in sensory regulation activities as well as ADLs. To include him in open ended explorations I have relaxed some of his "must ask before he gets" rules and am allowing for more open ended play and discovery with his favorite interaction items (he's too old to call them "toys") as well as introducing novel items and sensory activities for him to check out as he wishes.

Girl #3 is my most complex and involved student. She is fairly medically fragile and gone a lot. In addition, she is almost finished with school and had a sad lack of appropriate services before coming to me (sersiously, what SLP puts a nonverbal kid with NO effective communication on CONSULT!!!!). Consequently her skills levels and behavior states are nowhere close to what they should/could be. She has come so far in the year and a half that our team has worked with her but still finds too much to be overwhelming. We have always used open ended explorations with her (Lilli Nielson's Active Learning) and she has responded well. We allow her the freedom to participate in what any of the other kids are doing or to do her own thing with sensory experiences. So many of the sensory experiences that are commonplace and routine for my other students are new to her. It's been fun finding new ways for her to experience and control her world. Who knew that an accidental encounter with a large bin of pom poms would bring so much pleasure? Without that happy accident we would never have known that this student likes to stick her hands into containers. Perhaps it was a new discovery for her too.

The real challenge to these projects is the open ended nature. The staff, myself included, are all used to having a definite end goal in mind. If I had let them, the staff would have had those African masks completed in a day or two. And while the girls would have made color and some design choices, in the end they would have been consultants on a para's project, rather than having true ownership. Now don't get me wrong. My paras do NOT do "macaroni" art and they always work hard to involve the kids in projects. We are just working to take it several steps further and learning new ways to look at "full participation." A couple staff members are also learning that it's OK for a student to say "no" or "I need to stop" before an activity is "finished." They are having to accept that mistakes are not only OK but essential to the learning process and are actually enjoying the process of helping the kids problem solve solutions, with often unexpected results. And they are being forced to accept "messes" as part of the learning experience as well. Doing truly open ended projects with kids with complex disabilities including limited communication skills is extremely challenging. They can't just get up and go get a seemingly unrelated object to add to their explorations or make profound comments about what they are doing to give as direction (or at least no that we can understand yet! Another lesson in thinking about things differenly). And while we do have some structure and an initial "end goal" in mind, we try to stay very aware that the direction could change at any time and stay open to and aware of the the kids' interests. All I can say is, "Wow!" when I see the growth and learning that is happening with students and staff alike. It will be very interesting to see how these projects play out.

Novel Studies

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

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!

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

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

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

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....

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

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

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!!!

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

(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.