What Fun It Is!

I wanted to get another post in before our break--when I'll be out of the country-- so here we go!

Work Tasks

 

Many of the students in the classroom are working on one to one correspondence so this is a task I created to help them work on that while also working on fine motor skills by clipping the clothes pin onto the circle.

 

If you'd like your own copy, you can download my file here.

 

 Another skill we're working on is sequencing color patterns. I made this task out of part of an egg carton and halves of notecards! What I like the most about this task is that it can be individualized for each student. If the student is not able to sequence yet, they can color match the chips, but putting the chips on top of the color instead of into the carton.

 

Classroom Organization

 

Something important for our students, especially those who are non-verbal are picture schedules. This helps give a clear idea of what to expect for the day and helps eliminate any distress from unexpected changes in the normal daily routine.

 

I created this daily schedule that I refer to throughout the day and move over the picture as that activity is completed.

 

Timers are also helpful in assisting in making transitions easier for students.  We have some timers that give visual cues, changing from green to yellow to red, and others that require audio cues-- usually a verbal reminder.

Winter Wonder-crafts!

 

Of course, one of my favorite things is getting to do crafts with the students. We have done more than what I have to post-- but here are some of our highlights!

 We have been doing some watercolors in class!

I found this free download from teachers pay teachers with the light bulb patterns. I printed it out on cardstock and used a white crayon to write different messages like "May your days be bright" or "Happy holidays to all" or "It's time to deck the halls." They turned out really nice and it was a very simple craft if you're looking for one!

I was very excited to try out this next craft with my brother Tommy. It was a great practice at measuring the ribbon with a ruler, cutting with scissors and then stuffing the ribbon into the clear ornament. In some of the ornaments, we put colored pom poms into them to fill extra space.

 

I think they turned out great as well and would certainly recommend trying it out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fall Festivities!

Hello! I, of course, have been very busy creating new things for the classroom and doing more arts and crafts in the classroom.

Arts and Crafts

I often get to play art teacher at work and enjoy coming up with projects for the class to make.  This one with the fall trees was really great for helping them continuing to practice their fine motor skills-- particularly ripping. They had to rip all of the pieces for the trees and with assistance glued it down to make a fall tree picture!

I also had the class make scarecrows back in October. They practiced using scissors to cut the fringe for the "straw" coming out of their scarecrow and then with or without assistance they practiced using crayons. I had them draw circles and green lines for their pumpkins. They also practiced cutting out circles! It was a great cutting/gluing project.

Cooking

Something really fun we've started to do in class is cooking!.. or a kind of cooking. So far we've made trail mix-- students practiced pouring ingredients into a bowl and stirring and scooping into bags. We've also made smores-- students practiced assembling the smores in the proper order.

Back in October, for our "cooking" we decorated cupcakes! I found a pinterest idea for mummy cupcakes. I just baked chocolate cupcakes and bought icing and M&Ms and ta-da! Mummy cupcakes! They helped me guide it in strips over the cupcake and then set the "eyes" on top. It was neat seeing some of the students very particular on making sure the M was face down. It was a delicious Halloween :)

Until Next Time

I've been asked to post about some of the different communication strategies I use in the classroom so I'm getting some pictures and information ready to post about that. Look for that next week. Happy Thanksgiving!

New Directions

Wow! It's been so long since I've updated. I've been in the middle of a career change (kind of). I'm starting my masters degree in functional special education with the hopes of then becoming an autism specialist.

So help with my pursuit of this dream, I have started working at the Sherwood Center which is a non-profit school that teaches students with autism. I started back in June and I am loving it! I teach in a classroom of six students ranging from ages 6-11 with a variety of abilities.

As usual I've been making lots of things for the classroom, many of them are more fine motor skills and basic academics. I've been working on creating a lot more file folder activities for academic practice skills. Pinterest has definitely been my friend as of late!

 Linking chain

 

For this task I cut off strips of felt and used color coordinated buttons sewn on to creating this linking chain. This is a great fine motor skill for students to practice linking and buttoning.



Safety Pin Colors

 

 

I've used safety pins on reading group activities before, but I am loving them for creating dual purpose tasks. This works on fine motor skills and academics. Students here are practicing matching the color word to the color while also squeezing the clothespin.

 

I will do better about keeping up with updates now that things have settled down. If you're interested in learning more about the school I teach at now, visit the Sherwood Center website.



Lots of Learning!

 Anchor Charts

I never underestimate a good anchor chart. I often see students look to it to double check themselves and

even after I've taken one down they still look in the direction of where it was hanging as if they can see the invisible words still there.

Lately, we've been working on on -ed and -ing suffixes and it gets pretty confusing because there are a lot of special cases, but I think this really helped clear some things up. 

The biggest thing I've been trying to do lately is have interactive anchor charts. I think this makes the class pay even more attention to what the message is because they are interacting with the chart and building to it as the week progresses.

For this biography chart, all the students were reading different
biographies and looking for commonalities that were in all or most of the biographies that they'd read. This was a great way to help prepare the class for our biography research project that we're working on now!

Text structure was a real struggle until I started this anchor chart. I'd gone through my classroom library, chosen books that fit into different categories, copied the cover and then had the class work in small groups to read or reread the books and categorize them. The pair or group would have to then defend their answer to the class by giving examples from the book that fit into the category. It was great practice and the class loved doing it!

I plan on having at least one interactive anchor chart going on in my room at all times! It's so great to see them enjoying building up their learning :)

Subtraction with Regrouping

This is always so tough for 2nd graders, but this anchor chart was on pinterest and it shows a neat strategy that I really used this year that helped the class a lot. We used highlighters while working on our subtraction problems and after we'd highlight the larger number in the ones, then we'd say which rule it followed "More on TOP no need to STOP," "More on the FLOOR go next DOOR and get 10 MORE" or "Numbers the SAME zero is your GAME." 

I highly recommend this strategy. I plan to use it for next year for sure!

Martin Luther King Day

I added to what I'd done in the past for MLK day (see previous post-- in tags). I still had the students watch Dr. King's speech and write a summary of his speech and create their own dreams, but this time I put them all together in a class book. The class has really enjoyed being able to read their classmates dreams of how they want to help make the world a better place.

We started by brainstorming a list of people who still need help today and then talked about how to could help those people-- what did they need help with. As always, there are some very caring and creative students in class :)

I also used symbaloo to create a bunch of video and text resources about Dr. King that I then posted on the class Edmodo so they could watch any of the videos again or look through pictures or read his biography. Here is a link to that if you're interested in checking it out: MLK Symbaloo.

Reflection

I'll try to post again soon! I'm really enjoying my new school, but I continue to come of with more and more ideas for next year and how I want to keep growing so I'm not great at keeping up with this. I know this summer though that I'll be posting a lot! I've already started planning some projects so be looking for that!

Math Strategies

Math

We've been working on lots of different strategies with the new Math Envisions program.

In topic 7, we worked on mental math strategies for addition and subtraction. I taught the class to circle the ones place (because ones starts with an O) and underline the tens place. This way, students make sure that they are adding the right numbers together when they can use mental math.

This strategy was also helpful in comparing numbers using <,>, and = symbols to help make sure that they are looking at the right number at the right time.

Another strategy that one of my co-workers showed me was using dots. For the greater than (>) symbol, you start by putting the two dots next to the bigger number and one dot by the smaller dot. Then you connect the dots.

This is a great strategy for students struggling knowing which way to point their arrows (if the alligator trick isn't working!).

Also in the Envisions program they teach how to subtract on a hundreds chart using addition. So when subtracting 74-58, you're supposed to start with 58 and then count over the ones until you're above the ones place of the first number and then count down the tens.

It was a difficult concept for students to get at first, but I think it is helpful in the long-term because it helps students see the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Fable Lapbooks

Now I've posted about lapbooking before, but as a reminder, lapbooking is all about creating a product that is interactive and that students can learn from.

This was a project we did in class about fables. We were studying what a moral is and then how to apply it to a fable. We read aloud several fables beforehand and even read some stories that weren't really fables, but still had a moral. This was also a great chance to practice retelling.

I chose several short fables from the book Fables by Arnold Lobel. I copied the pages and then had students highlight key details from the story and then write what they thought the message was after rereading their key details. (This was important later for the lapbook retelling portion)

Here is our finished product!

These were hung up in the hallway where any students could walk by, read the summary and then pull out the card to read what the moral is. It was kind of a fun game for the students to check themselves.

I love making lapbooks and the students had a great time as well! I can't wait to make more later this year :)

Too much to tell: Strictly Photo Update

Technology plus Inquiry

Wow! I've been so busy that I haven't gotten to updating this for a month! A lot of exciting things have been happening in the classroom-- we've had birthdays, the walk-a-thon, a field trip, writing projects, centers, and most importantly, FUN and LEARNING!

Sumdog

Technology

I've had the chance to use much more technology this year, including a lot of wonderful FREE sites like Edmodo which is like an educational facebook.

For math I've also started using Ten Marks and Sumdog which are great tools for challenging advanced students and giving extra practice.

For reading I'm using the Lead21 curriculum site (which has virtual books and vocabulary building Star fall (which focuses more on phonics) and Game Goo which is a bit of everything.
activities),


Game Goo

There are many more sites I'd love to have students on, but sometimes those s
ites have games that aren't really educational so I'm always looking for more!



Symbaloo

I've been really happy using Symbaloo. Instead of going to a favorites tab, it shows images and then takes you to whatever you click. I use it for my home page on my computer, but you can also use it to organize resources for units. Like this Life Cycles Symbaloo I created has resources used in class and additional ones for students to learn from more. I uploaded it to my edmodo account for them to keep on learning even after we're done. I love it!

Inquiry

I'm new to inquiry lessons, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Our first question, we all chose the same question which was "What do my different roles say about me?" Here are some examples of our finished product!

 This time our focus is science in the community so we had a brainstorming session together and had the class pair up by interests and each pair is doing their own project (probably a poster this time). We'll see how it goes since the inquiry questions range from black holes to car motors to weather! Hopefully I can keep up with it all; I know the students will keep up the good work!

Classroom Adjustments and Extras

As it always goes, once the school year starts we teachers realize that we want to tweak our plans for our classroom.

Level Library

I have made it my goal to expand my leveled library so that I can provide books for students that are at their level each week in their "book bag" at their desk. I introduced that book boxes to the kids today and they were so excited about them!

I pick out two books at their level from my library and let them choose two other books that they are interested in. I can't get them to put it down! So that a wonderful thing!

I have also written each student's name on their bag in the color of their reading group-- to help me when I'm choosing books at their level. Super excited that I could have "book bags" again!

I got lots of books from Savers yesterday (Buy 4 get 1 free) so I am sure that in not time I will have much fuller baskets in my library! I also appreciated that families that donated books to my classroom. The students and I are very grateful!

Literacy Centers

After trying to use the smartboard to project the stations, I decided that it was too confusing for students. I want them to be able to move quickly without interrupting the guided reading time to ask where they are going. This is why I've started using the group baskets!

It says their rotations and has their book from guided reading time so that if they finish early, they could be rereading those books.

I have a basket for all four of my groups. Each day someone is designated to carry the basket to the rotations and be the leader-- pointing other students to their next spot if they forget.

The entire class is really enjoying word work activities and game goo!

Author's Purpose

I've done some work with the P.I.E. (Persuade, Inform, Entertain) idea before, but now I've expanded it into an interactive bulletin board! While students have done their silent reading, they decide which "piece of the PIE" the book their reading is.

I'm planning on getting some more persuasive texts from the library this week so students can see the difference. I think they've really taken off with it and it'll be a piece of cake in no time :)

 Classroom Community

Our class is truly coming together and will continue to build on our relationships using the morning meeting model. 

This was an activity we did our first week of school-- an all about me pennant. I've hung them all together to show that we are a community. The students haven't seen what I've done with them yet, but I think they'll be excited :)

First full week of school

We are wrapping up our first full week of school. We've spent a lot of time on placement tests and getting things organized and routines in place, but I'm also happy to share some of the fun things we've gotten to do!

Reading Centers

We've practiced the Daily 5 rotations which are: Silent reading, Reading to someone (partner reading), Listening to reading, Writing (which is actually done in our writer's workshop after centers) and word work.

The students have gotten very good at moving through the centers and had a lot of fun today working on the different word work stations.  The word work stations put a focus on phonics, sight words, and sentence construction AND they're always very hands-on so they are always a crowd pleaser. I'm hoping to create more this year too!

Math

We started math with a math about me project to display for meet the teacher night. This was my first time doing this project, but I was very pleased with how they turned out.

We also started the new Math Envision curriculum. I've been very pleased with it so far and the students love the workmats that come with each lesson, interactive videos, and center activities.

Science

We studied nutrition and the food pyramid as well as building well-balanced meals. We put this into our science journals-- we also saw a very good explanation of the new food pyramid, but it was through United Streaming so I can't share that link.

Very soon we will kick off our research unit on insects!

Social Studies

We just started looking at communities and will start looking at urban, suburban, and rural communities and then we will move into leaders.

Behavior

 

As shown in the previous post, I am using a clip up system for individual monitoring. I like that it's more positively focused and it gives students the chance to turn their days around (not "stuck"on red). I don't have a picture of the exact same calendar I've been using as a recording sheet, but here is an example one.

Many students got the chance to "cash in" their 5 good days today (green or better). Some of the things they can earn are: a hat day, no shoes, positive note home, prize box, bring in a stuffed animal, show and tell and if they save up for 10 days they can do lunch with me-- I usually go outside if the weather is nice :) They seemed very excited about "cashing in" today!

I hope this has been an insightful update!