Terrific Tuesday!

Happy Tuesday!

I am still working on remembering to take pictures of all of the fun fall things wer're doing in Starkey's room, but I can share a few things that we've done already. The past couple of days I borrowed an "I like Autumn" emergent reader from Kindergarten Kel's TPT account. In this emergent reader, my students practied sight words such as "I", "my" and "like", while also matching boardmaker pictures to the fall items within the reader such as pumpkin, scarecrow and animals.

Another fun activity involved reading "Fresh Fall Leaves", an easy reader I came across in our book sets library. This book has a lot of fun action words associated with fall and leaves, which is perfect as we're working a lot with actions! With a package of fake leaves from Michaels we had fun "acting out" the verbs. We threw them in the air, used our fingers to "rake" the leaves and much more. It was a super fun way to get the kiddos interacting with the book.

Adapted, interactive books are a great way to get our students with low interest in reading involved and engaged!

Pictures to come soon!

With three years worth of teaching stories to catch up on, I feel it's only appropriate to start a weekly #tbt (Throwback Thursday)! 

One of my worst but favorite memories of my teaching career thus far is a time that I often look back on and laugh about now. I was working with 9th through 12th graders and attempting to teach "citizenship". I thought it was important for my students to understand their rights and responsibilities for being citizens in our great country, and the extremely special community we live in. So as I'm being observed by my principal, I'm tfailing at attempting to engage my students  in our "discussion" over our "rights" and "responsibilities". We had done sorts, created webs, watched videos, I'm not even sure what else. At some point (after a good 10 minutes straight of only blank stares) it became quite obvious this lesson was an awful decision, especially while being observed by my principal in my second year of teaching! So to wrap it up, I said one last time "Okay friends, who can tell me one of our rights as a citizen?" And next thing I know, my student starts screaming, arms flying and all, "But what about the wrongs Miss Richardson?! But what about the wrongs?!". At this point, my only option was to laugh; luckily, I noticed my principal was as well. 

Lesson #1: stick to lessons you know have the best opportunity of being successful when being observed. Luckily, I had a principal that could find the humor in the chaos with me while we talked about what I could (and should) have done differently!

Lesson #2: When you know your students are literal, black and white thinking students, make something abstract like citizenship literal! The biggest lesson I took away from that was my lesson was poorly planned and did not take into account my students' needs. It was much too abstract for them and simply wasn't meaningul for them. In other words: fail.

Lesson #3: laugh. If I took all of my mess ups, embarassing moments and failures to heart, I'd already be done with the profession I love so much. So instead, I choose to laugh.

"I'm moving to Alaska!"

Recently in our classroom we've entered the "hormones of 10 year olds" phase...and I'll say, it's a doozy! My favorite quote from today was "I'm moving to Alaska!". This poor kiddo is simply not himself. Our talkative, loving, aiming to please buddy has gone to consistent yelling and telling you that he's going home, or like today, moving to Alaska. I'm working like crazy to come up with visual schedules, work systems, visual redirections and anything else I can think of, but I'm currently at a loss. However, I can remember how bad puberty was as a typically developing girl, so I can only imagine how puberty is for my buddies!

On a different note, this week we're kicking off fall right in  Mrs. Starkey's room! Pictures to come of all the ways we're celebrating the coming of a new season!

Happy Sunday!

This weekend I attempted to take some time off of work to spend time with the hubby, and while I did accomplish that yesterday, I find myself working yet again while he's out at a golf tournament :)

One of the first things I wanted to share with you is the calendar time that my students and I do everyday on my Mimio Teach. I can't even begin to explain how big of a blessing this new piece of technology has been for my classroom! You will see the before picture which shows how I attempted to turn my white board into a manipulative calendar time, but that meant the white board couldn't be used for anything else. With a Mimio Teach, that whiteboard has endless possibilities!

Our Calendar Time follows this routine:

-Sign in and Songs/movement

-Month of the year (sing months of the year song while students point to each month as we sing in their calendar binder) (some students have a PODD or a different Augmentative or Alternative Communication device, so they would point to the months of the year as we sing in that)

-Days of the week (same flow as with months of the year)

-Today is, Yesterday was, Tomorrow will be...

-What is the date? (count the number to the date)

-Today is... (this is where we put the whole date together)

-Weather (what's the weather like today, with graphing and dressing the weather bear)

-Math (Count by 10's, Number of the day (count it, before/after, even/odd, tally it), How many days have we been in school (hundreds, tens, ones blocks), Time, Money

- Signs of the week

-More Songs/Movement!

If you have a Mimio Teach or MimioStudio Notebook, check out my interactive calendar time on MimioConnect!

http://www.mimioconnect.com/content/lesson/23806/calendar_time_elementary_special_education

Welcome!

I am absolutely new to this blogging world, but as a teacher of kiddos on the Autism spectrum, I am constantly experiencing funny moments, struggling moments and fun, new activities all the time! Therefore, why not share with other people in our wonderful profession?! Check back soon for my first official classroom blog :)