Literacy!

 Time I would love to say that I have literacy for my kiddos all figured out, but the truth is...I'm far from it. I am very excited to attend a literacy training on Nov. 10th and I anticipate a major overhaul will occur, but for now, this is what my literacy with my lower reading students looks like!

 I've recently started having stations twice a week within our literacy time. This allows my students to work with the text much like a general ed classroom Daily 5 time! The first staton pictured has students spell the high frequency words using large letter magnets. The second shows students matching biard maker pictures to the words as my staff models where to find this word within the students' PODD if needed. The third picture shows sentence sequencing where students work on anything from sight word identification (staff asks "give me....") to putting the sentence together appropriately. I didn't snap a picture of the last station, but the last station is a "magic wand" staton where students are either asked to "magically pick up" a certain word or they pick up their own and say the word aloud.

On the other days we focus on language combined with literacy. We recently ready the book "There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat", therefore our sentience starter of the week was "I see a bat...". We learned a little about bats prior and then students choose which action they wanted to use to complete the sentence. We work with the sentence all week with word hints, sentence sequencing, high frequency word mastery, the stationsand much more. Again, after my professional development on the 10th, I'm sure I'll make big changes, but for now we're learning through these strategies!

 Lastly, my phenomenal Speech-Language Pathologist works in tandem with me for her sessions with my kiddies! This week they made a spider snack (spider is close enough to bat...right?!) while working on using sentence strips and communicating needs. 

 

This year I feel myself learning and growing all the time as its my first year with a roster of students who I can put together in a group that makes sense. It's been challenging, but I love the challenge and the progress in which I'm seeing in my students is more than worth it! 

Happy Sunday everyone!

Literacy!

 Time I would love to say that I have literacy for my kiddos all figured out, but the truth is...I'm far from it. I am very excited to attend a literacy training on Nov. 10th and I anticipate a major overhaul will occur, but for now, this is what my literacy with my lower reading students looks like!

 I've recently started having stations twice a week within our literacy time. This allows my students to work with the text much like a general ed classroom Daily 5 time! The first staton pictured has students spell the high frequency words using large letter magnets. The second shows students matching biard maker pictures to the words as my staff models where to find this word within the students' PODD if needed. The third picture shows sentence sequencing where students work on anything from sight word identification (staff asks "give me....") to putting the sentence together appropriately. I didn't snap a picture of the last station, but the last station is a "magic wand" staton where students are either asked to "magically pick up" a certain word or they pick up their own and say the word aloud.

On the other days we focus on language combined with literacy. We recently ready the book "There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat", therefore our sentience starter of the week was "I see a bat...". We learned a little about bats prior and then students choose which action they wanted to use to complete the sentence. We work with the sentence all week with word hints, sentence sequencing, high frequency word mastery, the stationsand much more. Again, after my professional development on the 10th, I'm sure I'll make big changes, but for now we're learning through these strategies!

 Lastly, my phenomenal Speech-Language Pathologist works in tandem with me for her sessions with my kiddies! This week they made a spider snack (spider is close enough to bat...right?!) while working on using sentence strips and communicating needs. 

 

This year I feel myself learning and growing all the time as its my first year with a roster of students who I can put together in a group that makes sense. It's been challenging, but I love the challenge and the progress in which I'm seeing in my students is more than worth it! 

Happy Sunday everyone!

Pumpkins! and a #tbt of course!

Pumpkin Fun!

We started the kickoff to pumpkin fun this week with two different activities during calendar time. The first was "5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate", which we watched on Youtube. I love the ViewPure (viewpure.com) which allows all videos to be viewed with no commercials or adds :) 

We started the week by just watching the video, as the kids wouldn't have been able to focus on anything else without watching it first! The next day we walked through the song on our own (I'd like to say I'm brave enough to sing but I wasn't confident enouch with this new tune to do that!) using our story board (made in Boardmaker). I also picked up the pumpkins and acted it out as much as possible with them as well!

The rest of the week we've been/are working with the book interactive book "Orange Pumpkin, Orange pumpkin, what do you see?" (which I found on Boardmaker).

With the interactive books students are given a picture to add to the book when the picture they have is mentioned. In this one, each page had a character to add (brown owl, yellow moon, green ghost, etc.). I will ask "Who has...." and we're working on the students replying "I do!" before adding their piece to the book. We also work on colors as we're working on learning to sign the colors right now! 

Tomorrow we'll end the week with a tear and glue, pumpkin project :)

Next week we're digging deep into learning about pumpkins during our afternoon literacy group. We will be starting with a pumpkin investigation on Monday where we cut open and experience pumpkins. Throughout the week we'll learn about the parts of a pumpkin, the pumpkin life cycle and we will be working on sight words through a couple of emergent readers I was lucky enough to find on Teacher Pay Teachers! A lot of materials I also found on Mrs Jones' Creation Station, "Pumpkins Literacy, Math and Science Activities" on herTeacher Pay Teacher page! There is a ton of good stuff in that pack!

I have a quick #tbt for you :) There was one time that a staff told a student of mine that they were a "smart cookie". My student's reply was "I'm not a food, I'm a human!" Still gives me a nice little chuckle!

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