Happy Halloween!!

So much for working out today after work.  I am exhausted!   21 kids, 12 adults, 7 stations, all in one classroom for an hour and a half! But the day went fabulously. We trick or treated in the morning and had our party in the afternoon.  The kids all participated in everything and I am so proud of them.  I wish I could post pictures and videos of how cute they were all day!  But these pictures of what we made will have to do. 

Fading From Picture Schedules to Word Schedules

Have your students been on a picture schedule for too long?  Are they able to follow their schedule with complete independence?  Can they match some words to pictures?  If you answered yes to the previous questions, it may be time to get your students off the picture schedule and onto a word schedule.  Word schedules are more functional, age appropriate, and will allow for increased independence.   I fade my students into a word schedule using  a variety of activities.  First of all, I test my students ability to match words to pictures for schedule words.  That way, I know which words they already know and which words I will need to target.  I actually just did this assessment for one of my new students (who has been on a picture schedule for the first 2 months of school), and he could correctly match ALL of the words to the pictures.  So, now I'm on a mission to switch him off of his picture schedule (these kiddos always keep me on my toes!).

Teaching Emotions

 For students with autism, identifying the emotions for themselves and/or others can be VERY CHALLENGING.  
During my first year of teaching, I realized that teaching emotions needed to be a key part of my instruction.  I started targeting emotions in a weekly Drama Time where we played structured drama games related to emotions. Currently, we not only utilize drama time, but try to intertwine teaching emotions into everything we do.  And can I tell you...it has made a difference.  I used to have a student who would scream, cry, throw is body on the floor, and completely shut down to the outside world anytime something didn't go his way.  When we started working on identifying emotions, these behaviors reduced drastically.  I still remember one day this student sitting up and crying in the cafeteria.  I asked him what was wrong and he said "I am sad no playground today." (It was raining).  This would usually have been something that would cause a full blown tantrum.  I was thrilled!  This student had never used language about emotions before except during our structured drama games.  Once he had been taught the words for what he was feeling, he was able to generalize those skills and express his emotions through words instead of dangerous behaviors.  This was definitely a proud teacher moment for me :-)

Green Ghost, Green Ghost What Do You See?

 I printed this book from the website PreKindergarten...The Right Beginning a few years ago and when I decided to post about it today, I was so happy to find that it is still available.  My kids have loved reading this book each year leading up to Halloween!  The book is free, but you may need Boardmaker in order to download it.  If you need help downloading it, let me know because I can turn it into a PDF and email it to you.

Sound Bingo

Today, I wanted to share a game with you that my students can't seem to get enough of!  My parents bought  Sound Bingo  for us last year, but I found it today on amazon for $11.50.  This game is a great way to work on vocabulary, while at the same time targeting listening skills and social skills.

Data Collection on Schedule Following

For teachers in autism classrooms, we pretty much all have one thing in common: SCHEDULES!!  Object schedules, picture schedules, word schedules, etc.  For students with autism, schedules are very beneficial (SEE MY POST on Schedules), but learning how to utilize them does not come naturally to all of our students.

Trick Or Treating

 Most of my students don't get the opportunity to go trick-or-treating for Halloween for a variety of reasons.  Some students live in bad neighborhoods, others are afraid of all the decorations, and others struggle with behavior in the community.  Regardless, as I have expressed earlier this week, my students are OBSESSED with HALLOWEEN.  Working on our Halloween worksheets this week has been a real hit!  My kids get so excited every time we turn the page to the next worksheet.  And since they are so happy and engaged, time has been flying by for me as well!  And, after our week getting off to a rocky start, we have had a fabulous last couple days!

Now, onto Trick-Or-Treating.  Regardless of if our students are able to go in their neighborhoods with their families or not, we like to include a mock trick-or-treating around our school to give our students the life experience and/or practice.  Since my school has 4 autism classrooms, we go trick-or-treating to each of the other classrooms as well as our speech therapists' room, the office, and the case managers office.