Circle Time - Skill Building cheat sheet freebie!

Hi Everyone!

I have several emails from people who are asking for more of those cheat sheet curriculum planning guides like I have here for meal time.

So I am posting the one that our special education department has sent out for my program at work for circle time. It's a good one! Enjoy :)

Here is the download!!

Hot Chocolate Weather!

The past two days have been SNOW DAYS for us! So I drank about 15 mugs of hot chocolate (glorious) and decided our Friday cooking activity this week should be hot chocolate! I mean, the drink is so amazing that a song was made about it (don't you love Tom Hanks?).

 

In today's download, I give you not only a visual recipe (with ingredients needed and the steps for the cooking activity) but ALSO a skill building curriculum sheet that gives you ideas to make the activity meaningful. That way you can simultaneously run language programs AND make warm chocolatey memories (that's what my hot chocolate packets say. which is weird. but whatever.). Enjoy :)

 

Download is here!!!

 

 

Feature, Function, Class (FFC) - data sheet and target list

FFC stands for Feature, Function, Class and it is used to describe and understand objects further than just their label. For example, an apple is red (feature), is for eating (function), and is a fruit (class). Having a solid foundation of labels and FFC knowledge allows us to have conversations about things in our lives. We don't want our students to just be able to point to an apple and say "apple". We want our students to talk about how juicy an apple is, that their classmate is eating an apple for snack, that you can pick apples off of trees! I found a great article explaining the importance of FFC and encourage you guys to check it out. It is posted by a speech therapy group in North Carolina and although I do not know anything about their services, I agree with what they have posted about FFC. Here is the article. The article explains how to generalize FFC and that is essential to your students fully grasping what they are learning.

In the early stages of teaching FFC, I do work with them at the table and use an array of pictures. It is also VERY important to identify other meaningful things in their environment by FFC. I also make sure to vary my questions when probing. For example, I might ask "Which one do you eat?" or I might say, "What can you eat?". Varying your language helps them generalize -wh questions and removes the risk of them becoming dependent on the particular way a question was asked. Be sure you are also varying your pictures and the placement of your target picture. Identifying in the natural environment is the ultimate goal when probing. For example, having the student find something you can eat with and they independently search the room for a fork.

This data sheet template is from my school system and I have used it for many different types of skill testing. I change it dependent on the items I am targeting. The FFC target list that I have for download is not mine but I do not have the source. I downloaded it about 2 years ago somewhere online. If someone knows the source, please let me know and I can cite it! Remember you can use the picture cards I posted here and here!!

*VB-MAPP Level 2, LRFFC 8-M says to select the item from an array of 10 (or a book) with different verb-noun wh- questions.


Here is the download for the FFC Target List

Here is the download for the FFC data sheet



"Which one do you wear?" "Where is the animal?" "Find the one you see with"

What does the fox say!!?!?

 

Can we just talk about how a song with animal sounds is COOL right now? Too bad it would be a tad inappropriate to show that during our circle time (darn!). However - no need to stick to the classics! I have a book here with a song about farm animals and the sounds they make that ISN'T "Old McDonald"! I really do not know where I saw the idea for this song... I definitely didn't dream it up myself but I did spend some time making this fun book to share with you all :)

 

The song is to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus" and it is really a lot of fun to do with the kids. I have a student who has been working on intraverbal fill-ins (ex. "a pig says ____") and when we started using this book/song in circle, he started mastering several of them!

 

Hope you guys enjoy it! DOWNLOAD HERE!

 

5 Little Turkeys

Since this is the month of the turkey, I present you with another book produced by yours truly! It is an adapted book to go with the 5 little turkeys poem. Included are the instructions on how to put it together but it is pretty simple. I hope you all enjoy it! I am excited to show my students tomorrow.

Download here!!

My November Newsletter - includes tips for parents!

Hi Everyone!

I just finished up a newsletter to send out to my parents this Friday and thought I would share it! This week we had an open house and parents were asking about ways that they can implement strategies we use in the classroom at home. I am so excited that parents want to learn more about ABA! Having families involved in early intervention is one of the best ways to both increase and generalize the skills that we are teaching our students.

I always try to emphasize how important discrete trial teaching is when I give tips on how to use ABA in the home. This kind of approach to teaching skills works for all people, not just children with autism! However, when trying to research what discrete trial teaching is, it can be very overwhelming when you aren't familiar with ABA terminology. I crafted a simple chart and found a Google image to illustrate how ABC (antecedent, behavior, consequence) works. I am hoping that this is helpful for my parents and that it will be of use to my readers as well!

The download is a Word document so that you can edit it to meet your needs. Enjoy!

Here is the download!

My Halloween Book!

Happy Halloween! Today I have a treat (no tricks!) that I put together this week. I have a rather dismal collection of fall and halloween books so I figured instead of contributing my hard earned dollars to the Amazon empire, I would make my own! It took me hardly any time to come up with a quick little idea and do a Google search for images. My assistant was kind enough to finish the formatting to make the book look classroom worthy and WHOOMP, THERE IT IS. (no, not there. that's a link to a 90's classic).

But for real, HERE IS THE DOWNLOAD! Enjoy!

Embedding Targets During Meal Times

In my last post I shared how I embedded language/behavior targets for a back to school art activity. As educators, we are responsible for being intentional with our activities and knowing what our goals are for those activities. I don't write traditional lesson plans and instead use curriculum planning sheets to prepare how I want to execute a lesson. Today I am including a curriculum planning sheet for embedding targets during meal times. I keep this posted near the table where the students eat so that my staff and I have a constant reminder of what we can target during meals. It is not necessary to try and tackle every single target for every single meal (unless you are just super ambitious and have very willing students!). Pick the important ones for individual students and work from there. I have curriculum sheets for many other parts of our day but decided to share the meal time one first since I think it can often be a forgotten part of our day for useful language training. It is tempting to take a break and relax during meal times but time is everything in early intervention and we only have so much of it!

Meal Time Planning Sheet can be downloaded here!!!

 

Happy New School Year!

Hello!

I hope everyone is having a great "back to school" time of year! I know I am all over the place making newsletters and supply lists, getting to know new students, mourning over the ones who transitioned or moved, and all of that fun stuff! I put together a fun little "back to school" art project that is simple and fun and thought I would share! It is just a printable of a backpack that the students got to color and then add pictures of school supplies that they are familiar with and use! I made sure all of the school supply pictures were cut out beforehand and then as we did the activity, we targeted a lot of language/attending/fine motor goals. This activity makes it easy to use differentiated instruction and while doing it, I thought about each student's needs. One of my students is working on matching, so she was expected to match the school supplies before she glued them on. Another student is working on labeling so he was expected to label the item before gluing it. We also went over the function of the items as we did the activity (for example, we talked about how scissors are for cutting). I like to squeeze as much as I can out of an activity so below is a list of ways you can do this! (It is important to think of all of these targets for each activity that you plan and have goals in mind for each student so that your activity is meaningful and not just a cutesy art project that will impress the parents ;-)

Here is the download!!!
(FYI- in preview mode you cannot see the backpack template. Google Drive does this often - so no worries, when you download the full file it will all be there!)

Matching:
-Match the real school supply objects to the pictures.
-Match "picture to picture" of the school supply objects.

Motor Imitation:
-Imitating by saying "Do this" or "copy me" and modeling coloring/cutting/squeezing glue, etc

Requesting/Mands:
-Requesting colors of the crayons
-Requesting the glue/school supply pictures (only expect this if it is motivating)
-Work on requesting using carrier phrases/full sentences with the higher verbal kiddos
-Requesting actions/help ("Can I glue this?" "Can you open this?")
-Manding for information (ex. "What is that?")

Receptive Skills:
-Receptive ID for colors of the crayons (ex. "Show me the red crayon"
-Receptive ID for the school supply pictures (ex. "Touch the tissues")
-Receptive ID for function of items (ex. "Which one is for cutting?")
-Following instructions ("Glue the crayons on." "Give me the glue")

Labeling/Tacts:
-Labeling colors/items
-Labeling actions (gluing/cutting/coloring) <-- ask them about what their peers are doing
-Labeling their peers
-Labeling feature, function, class of items

Intraverbal:
-Fill in the blanks and reversals with feature/function/class ("you cut with ___" or "you color with ____")
-What questions ("what do you cut with?")
-Who questions ("who is using the green crayon?")
-Where questions ("where are the crayons?")
-When questions ("when do you need tissues?")
-Why questions ("why do you need the glue?")

Other Skills and Behavior:
-Staying in their seat for duration of activity
-Attending to directions
-Modeling and following directions correctly (including imitation for your more early learners)
-Counting the items
-Keeping hands to self during activity
-Fine motor (holding crayon correctly, squeezing the glue, picking up the small pieces of paper)

one of my very talented student's work!

Schedule

Hi Everyone!

Tomorrow is our last day of the regular school year with the kiddos (why the last day of school is a Monday is beyond me!) and last Friday all of the teachers talked about being lazy with the kids and forgoing the schedule since, what the heck, gen ed kids are all probably watching Disney movies and having end of the year parties - why not let our guys in on the fun too! The problem with this, is that our guys are really used to the schedule. Not that I want my students to be totally reliant on a predictable routine, but when they are at school for 6.5 hours, they really cannot be expected to just play and watch movies all day without feeling a little lost. In my first year of teaching, I didn't have wonderful planning skills every day, and there were definitely times when my lack of planning led to behaviors from my students. I decided to loosely follow the schedule, allowing for longer play time in the morning and longer outside times. I didn't have strict centers but I did have them do simple activities in small groups. One of my students actually remarked to me "We didn't do any work!" so they definitely knew what was up. But since I had a loose plan for the day, all was good :)

Anyway, I realized that having a schedule is just SO important. Even on a day at the end of the school year when you want to relax and celebrate all the hard work everyone did all year, you gotta have that plan!

I am sharing my daily schedule with you all. This would be helpful to someone who is struggling with a schedule or someone who is new to teaching. During the week, we have three different dismissal times (Mondays are 1:15, Wednesdays are 12:30, and T/Th/F are 3:45) so if you are like us and have varied times during the week, make sure you incorporate a plan for each of those days. I keep this posted in my room and I send it to parents because they are always interested in what their child is doing throughout the day. The version for download is a Word file so that you can edit it to meet your needs!

Please don't believe that every single minute is followed exactly to the schedule - I WISH! This is special ed and we are flexible of course. But we do our best to follow it each day.

DOWNLOAD HERE!

Sorting By Color - Free Download!

Hi Friends!
Over the 3 day weekend, I made some time to create a color sorting activity. Using the beloved Google Images, I found pictures of both cartoon and real objects for the kids to sort. I made them all into flashcards for you to download and use with your students! There are 90 cards, 10 pictures for each color. The colors included are yellow, orange, blue, green, red, brown, black, purple, and pink. (After creating them, I realized it would have been helpful to add "white" objects for sorting. Check back later for those!)

There are numerous ways to use these cards: 

Receptive ID (identification) - "touch the red car" or "which one is the yellow banana?"

Expressive ID - "what is this?" "what color is this?" 

Matching - print two sets of each card

Feature Function Class - have the kids identify items by FFC (ex. "which one do you eat?")

Sort by Category - food, color, clothes, etc

Get creative and have the kids match the cards to buckets with a color card on the outside of each one or have the kids find the cards in a scavenger hunt game around the classroom, etc.

I hope you enjoy! DOWNLOAD HERE!

Emotion Sorting Activity - Free Download!

I made this sorting activity to go into the new independent binders that I am in the process of putting together for my students. I think this is fun because it is working on sorting skills, recognizing facial expressions, can be done independently, and could also be used as a matching activity (print 2 copies of the last page). I color coded it and used Boardmaker symbols since they are so widely used in special education classrooms and my students are likely to see them again - therefore they should have exposure to them when appropriate!

Along with the sorting board are a set of 15 pictures, 5 for each emotion. 

And yes... it was awkward using search words like "crying man" and "angry child" to look up pictures to sort! BUT my favorite find was a crying Dean from the show Supernatural. (And yes, I used the image!) Never heard of it? Oh - you mean you don't have a nerdy husband who makes you watch silly sci fi shows? Well, I do :) If you're in the mood for a corny show about brothers who chase ghosts and goblins, check it out on Netflix. 

I hope you guys enjoy the latest download... let me know how it works for your students!

HERE IS THE DOWNLOAD!

List of amazing prompts and questions - could be used for FFC!

Hello friends!

I came across this AWESOME free download on Teachers Pay Teachers that would be oh so helpful for the classroom! You can use these for ideas for feature/function/class, answering wh- questions, fill-in sentences, and more! She has them sized to print large strips and put them in pocket charts for circle activities, journal starters, etc. 
There are 180 of them. 180!

I have perused this lady's blog over at The Autism Helper and she has some fantastic ideas and freebies. 

Also, join Teachers Pay Teachers - I have found some really great things over there!

sample page!

Weather and Seasons Printable!

There are plenty of weather and season printables out there but I just conjured up a simple one to go inside an independent work binder. What's the independent work binder you say? Well, I have two guys in my class who are really beyond sitting at a table, one on one with staff, going through discreet trials. They have graduated to some pretty awesome things like simple cut and paste activities, file folder games, puzzles, etc. with little to no assistance. Yesterday I realized they absolutely need some sort of preschool journal or work binder of sorts that the kids could be responsible for, use independently, and work on typical preschool academic skills. I have a lot of fun ideas for this binder and I will be adding to it and switching things out by the week. Some of the ideas are sorting activities, tracing pages, name practice, ABC and 123 sheets, and tons more!

Right now, my morning circle is simplified and void of a lot of "typical" circle activities like weather, what you wear in said weather, day of the week, month, and whatnot. A lot of my guys are working on things like staying seated during circle, choosing the correct picture to sign in with, following simple directions, and even responding to their name. The work binders will give my guys exposure to what we might be missing out on in circle.

I laminated the following sheet and hole punched it for the binder. I'm keeping a dry erase marker in each binder so the kids can circle the right answers and cross off the ones that aren't. You could also cut each picture out and have them velcro the right ones if you made a blank sheet for them to go with it. OPTIONS ARE ENDLESS. (not really. but still.) 

DOWNLOAD HERE!

Also, check out this cool lap journal I came across. I love the idea of my guys making a journal that chronicles their learning! I might have to make a summer learning journal for each of my students now!

Imitation Level 2 - VB-MAPP Data Sheets!

Who is excited for more data sheets?!?! You mean you aren't tired of them yet? I keep getting emails with requests for more and it makes me so excited to think that someone is waiting for me write a blog post dedicated to... a data sheet. Sometimes I think about how boring my life would have been if I was an accountant or something (spreadsheets? ew.), but people must think we are a snore, the way we ABA teachers talk when we get going on about a data sheet ("Oh girl, don't even get me STARTED!"). 

This one is another awesome resource that has floated around in my school system. It includes all objectives for Imitation in Level 2. If you are looking for Level 1 imitation, check out this post.

Imitation is a great way to start working toward increasing your student's attending and having them get the base for following instructions and increase learning skills. Most new skills are learned by imitating someone else, whether it's a new hairstyle on Youtube or watching your mom cut a pineapple. The ability to imitate others doesn't come so naturally to our guys so we need to work on it and be aware of it's importance. 

Check out the latest and greatest data sheet HERE!


*Also, just a disclaimer: I have some pretty cool, non-boring friends who are accountants. 

Mand Data Sheets: Levels 1,2, and 3 on the VB-MAPP!

This is a nice little packet for all of the Mand objectives on the VB-MAPP. I love the way this data sheet is laid out - it includes all the criteria for each objective and it gives space to write in what you observe. 

Some of those Level 3 mands are tough right?! Especially the intraverbal mands... whew. Even my most verbal guys right now aren't even close to that yet. Those are some high level expectations for our kiddos with autism. I applaud you if you are seeing your students get there! 

I got this data sheet from a colleague who got it from another teacher, and so on. It has been floating around our department so I am unsure who exactly made it but I hope it spreads far and wide for all VB-MAPP testers out there to use! 

Here is the link! - Happy Friday! :)

sample page for level 2!

Level 1 Social Behavior and Play (VB-MAPP)

My wonderful co-worker created this data sheet for the section of social behavior and play on the VB-MAPP. It is a no frills, get the job done, simple and easy data sheet! I love it because it is all on one page and you can carve out an hour to observe your student and check off what he/she is doing by simply following the data sheet. It includes the criteria so all you have to do is plug it back into your score sheet and you are DUNZO! (done-zo? um... finished!)

Hooray for super cool co-workers who do this kind of thing on their own free time and then share the goods. We need all teachers to be this way right?!?!

Here is the link!!! Get it while it's hot ;)

This social stuff is very important when you are looking at a very early learner who needs a lot of support in becoming aware of his/her peers. Teaching things like following others or even just engaging in parallel play can be difficult. Remember to always assess where the weaknesses are and target them so you know exactly how to help your little guys. 

Free Adapted Pete the Cat book!

Last week I made an adapted book for Pete The Cat: I Love My White Shoes. I have discussed my love for Pete in another post and I highly recommend that you introduce him to your kids if you have not done so already! 

I used this book during circle with my kids and it went better than I could have expected! I carefully chose how I would adapt it, keeping in mind the need for consistency and simplicity. One of my students was independently reading the book within a day based on the images associated with the main phrases in the book. Prior to using this adapted version, he needed verbal prompting and modeling to chime in with "Did Pete cry?", "Goodness no!", "Oh no!", and even the song part. Now, he is doing all of the parts completely independently which is very exciting! I am sending home his own copy so that he can impress his parents with those awesome skills! 

This book hits on a lot of learning points. With the same Pete image on each page, it helps the students become familiar with the character and help them recognize him. The book also teaches color identification, facial expressions, and labels/vocabulary for the items he steps in. 

Depending on the students you are using it with, you can adapt it even further by printing and laminating certain parts of the book, such as the color parts or the things he steps in and then have the students match the pictures to the book. You could also print the pictures onto cards and have the students help tell the story or even predict what happens next by selecting the corresponding card. There are many great ways to use this book and I hope that your students enjoy it as much as mine have! 

(The last page includes pictures of water to velcro onto the shoes for when he has wet shoes.)

Here is the link to the Pete the Cat book!

Here is a sample page from the book!

More VB-MAPP materials! (Level 2 - Tact)

Tonight I decided to check my email for this blog and I had a lot of emails with requests for more materials (specifically VB-MAPP data sheets). I was really touched knowing there are people out there reading this blog... and I was also completely guilt stricken for taking a 5 month hiatus from sharing with you all! 

Last night and today I spent about 7 hours in total making picture cards and a data sheet that can be used to test the Level 2-7 TACT objective on the VB-MAPP. I am pretty proud of this document because I sized each item to perfection and I am usually rather awful at anything computer related!

The materials provided are for the objective that is testing the ability to tact 50 items, across 3 examples each. I thought of 50 items that are common for preschoolers, broke them into categories, and looked for 3 different pictures for each item. There are 150 pictures total. The document is almost 40 pages long so get ready to dominate the printer! 

Download the picture cards HERE!!!

Download the data sheet HERE!!! 

I hope you all enjoy! Please send more emails so that I stay connected and accountable!

EDIT: updated on Jan. 27, 2014: I have a new data sheet posted that is much better than the one included in this post. check it out here

An example of one of my pages!