Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Do you like Elephants? I want an Orange!...

.... No, do you like elephants? Orange please!

Does that sound all too familiar to you? Are you attempting to have conversations with students who just struggle and struggle to stay on topic? If you are at all familiar with someone with autism, you know that social skills are an area that they struggle in. And for some, staying on topic during a conversation is an even bigger struggle.

They can't help it. They know what they like and they want to talk about what they like. Irregardless of whether or not you have any interest at all in the topic. :) So they need our help in developing these social skills.

I have students who don't necessarily only want to talk about one subject, but who get preoccupied with one thing (like maybe oranges) and no matter how hard you try to redirect the conversation, they are still stuck on the other topic. (the oranges!)

I'm working on creating visual supports to practice on topic conversations. I know this idea exists already, but for my younger students I needed something that offered more visual supports throughout the conversation exchanges than what I could find.

I'm offering this first one to you for free! I'd love your feedback on it. Any suggestions for improvement, or what worked or didn't work for your students when you tried using this visual.


The student I've had in mind while making these really likes elephants. I wanted our first visual support for on topic conversations to be a topic that he likes. This way he is better able to follow the visual support before we start working on topics he might not care about.


Do you have any topic suggestions you'd like to see for these? 

Click {here} to download this one for free! 
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Sunday, May 11, 2014

{ACTION! ACTION!} Fun with Verbs

All of the students in my classroom have a high need for communication supports. Whether they are completely non-verbal or lacking spontaneous requests and comments, there is some level of need there.

While focusing on increasing their speech and ability to request their wants and needs it's obvious that our vocabulary tends to focus mostly on the use of nouns. Labeling and identifying objects. Learning to differentiate between visual representations for wants and needs. Toys, games, puzzles, drinks, foods, etc.


We want them to become functional. Have functional ways to tell a communication partner what they want, versus taking them by the hand, leading them to the vicinity of the item, and hoping the person knows what they want.


Once the functional communication is in place and spontaneous and unprompted we want to expand their vocabulary. Hello, Verbs!

I actually have more than one student at the moment who is working on expanding their use of verbs. I wanted to create some visual supports to assist the students in identifying verbs correctly. Before I knew it I had a TpT item before my eyes! Woo Hoo!


I hope this is something you can use in your classrooms as well. Whether you are working with special needs students with communication delays, or working with some Kindergarten students who are struggling to identify and/or understand verbs.

Action! Action! Fun with Verbs includes 3 different activities to help teach verbs and assess for student understanding. There is also a data collection sheet included at the end.

{Find the Verb!} Book: Print pages 3-8 and cut along the dotted line. Laminate pages and bind together with binding machine. This will allow you to create an easy book for assessment. Go through each page with a student. When they correctly identify a verb, make a mark in the square. After going through the whole book, record your data.
 
 
{Missing Verb} Book: Print pages  9-20 for this activity. Page 9 is the book cover and page 20 has the images for the verb choices. Print 2 copies of page 20 so you have enough options for the pages. Laminate all pieces and book pages. Use Velcro to attach three images to each page, making sure at least one is the correct answer. Student finishes the sentence at the bottom of the page by selecting the correct verb picture. 


{Matching Verb}: Print and laminate the picture choices on pages 30-37. Cut the board pages in half if you’d like. Laminate these too. Use Velcro to have students find the three correct pictures for each verb. 


There is also a data sheet included with 14 different verbs. You can track a students ability to identify each verb correctly on up to 12 trials.
 
 
 If you are interested in purchasing this product, you can head to my {TpT Store}. If you have any questions about it, feel free to comment below!
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Monday, May 05, 2014

MAY Write the Room

Well it's no secret that I'm 110% totally late on posting this. I should have it posted BEFORE the month of May so that you can prep it and use it during May. I'm not going to come up with "excuses" (although they would be valid!) I'm just going to remind you that I'm only human. It happens. I'm sorry. I'll try harder next time.

I will admit that I had a hard time  coming up with an idea for this month. I got concerned. Was I too ambitious making a monthly bundle for write the room? Am I going to be able to come up with that many different ideas that build upon each other each month? And then. IT HIT ME! Missing Letter!

I hope you think it's as good of an idea as I do! There are fewer cards to hide around the room, sure, but a great skill to work on with your pre-k kiddos as they perfect their mastery on alphabet recognition! I included capital sequences and lowercase sequences. There are also recording sheets for filling in on their own, tracing, or matching where the missing letter goes.


For the matching one, my suggestion is to create a board with the letter choices. This way when the child finds the sequence card in the classroom, they can refer to their choices, pick the correct letter, and then place it on their "recording sheet". It does require an extra page, but chances are a student on the matching level, may be getting extra adult help anyway, so there's an extra set of hands there.



Above is what the missing letter board looks like. Available in black and white or color. Velcro letters onto this board for students to choose the correct letter for their recording sheet when they find the cards around the classroom.

You can purchase this item on it's own, or purchase the Monthly Bundle for Write the Room Activities!


{click here} to purchase May Write the Room
{click here} to purchase Write the Room Bundle

Both items will be on sale with the rest of my TpT store on May 6th & 7th! Save up to 28% with the code!

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Friday, May 02, 2014

A {FREEBIE} is the Least I can do!

Seriously. I haven't blogged in over a month. In fact, I hope there are still some followers here to even download this freebie! Once I finished my masters degree, this is not what was supposed to happen with my blogging. It was supposed to INCREASE not, decrease even more!

"IEP Season" as I like to call it, started for me in April. I have my annual review meetings for my students mostly all in April and May so things get a little extra busy. I stay at work a little extra later. I'm a little extra exhausted. In fact, I broke a personal IEP record. Student IEP and Behavior Intervention Plan combined, was 40 pages. SHEW! Seriously, teachers should do an experiment. ONLY work their paid hours, just to make a prove how under paid we are and how much over time we put in. So many people seem to think we have "easy hours" or "easy jobs." I'd love to prove to them just how little would get done if we only worked the hours we were paid for. I could keep going, but really, that's a whole other blog post in itself!

The main reason I'm writing this today is to share with you this freebie I whipped up for our writing area next week! I couldn't find anything already made so I put one together myself. We are continuing with a "rain theme" next week.

It's a color by number page with two printing options. You can print in all black and white, or you can pink a version that has the color words in color. For my kiddos who made need the help or the model, I usually take a crayon and color over each color word/number at the top for what number they should color.

{click here} to download

If you'd like to download the freebie, just click the link below the picture.

I also put together a pinterest board with rain activities and books. I started working on that last week, but have continued to add to it as I plan for this week. You can check out the full board by clicking on the photo.


http://www.pinterest.com/eblecki/classroom-rain/

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