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!