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!