Social Skills: Where to Begin?

"Social Skills need to be taught" is what we hear all the time in schools these days, especially in special education...but WHERE are they taught? WHAT skills do we teach? HOW are they taught? WHAT curriculum should we use? are just some of the many questions we teachers are asking in response to this statement. I definitely don't have all the answers, but would love to get the conversation going. I would love to hear your input in the comments below or in an email (autismtank@gmail.com) as I feel like this blog post is just skimming the surface of this huge topic.

Ice Cream Unit for ESY, Summer School, or Home

As a special education teacher, I am always looking for ways to make learning more motivating for my students. My students LOVE ice cream. I mean, they really really LOVE it. So, why not introduce matching skills, teach shapes, counting, writing, and graphing all about ice cream!  This can make a great mini-unit to use during ESY or summer school as well to help maintain skills in an engaging way.  Another idea would be to send this home as "homework" over the summer and have parents use these worksheets and activities with their children.

This mini-unit includes 9 worksheets that all have to do with ice cream!  Photo copy, laminate or just throw the worksheets in sheet protector sleeves to save some time!  You can even keep these in a binder and use during the school year at an independent work station for review.

Food Themed Independent Work Tasks

I don't know about you, but my students always loved doing activities related to food.  They loved cooking, google-imaging (I know it's not a word, but it should be) pictures of food, going on community trips to eat, etc.

Many of us also have students who don't like to complete academic work.  You know, you put a worksheet in front of your student and they tear it up? or throw it at you?  Maybe, I'm just having that kind of week?!  But regardless, we all know that all behaviors are really our students trying to COMMUNICATE their needs.  What I assume my students are trying to let me know when they refuse work is either "this is too hard," "where's my motivation to complete the work?", or "this is boring!"

One way to keep your students engaged in work and decrease work refusal is to incorporate preferred topics into their work.  Have handwriting be writing their favorite movie character names, let them do a research project about their preferred topic, make social stories or behavior charts using their favorite video games or apps, etc.

This philosophy combined with having so many students that loved food, has probably been one of the main reasons I have created so many work tasks that have to do with food.  I have collected pictures of some of my favorite food themed work tasks to share with you.  I would love to hear about your favorite food themed tasks as well!

Implementing Hygiene Routines at School

For many students with special needs, working on functional skills can be just as important, if not more important, than academic skills.  When I spoke with parents of my students, I often found that they were struggling with getting their child to complete hygiene routines independently at home. Many of my students' parents admitted that they completed most of these tasks for their child because either their child didn't know how to complete the routine, didn't want to complete it, or it was faster for the parents to just do it for their child. That is what inspired me to to add hygiene to our daily schedule back in my first year of teaching. I wanted to ease the workload of the parents at home and also wanted to encourage promoting independence for all of my student to the maximum extent possible.

So This Happened...

On September 16th, we welcomed Colby into our family.  He is sweet and snuggly and way more work than I was anticipating...hence the reason I haven't posted in a couple months.  Being able to be home with this cutie for 12 weeks of maternity leave has been a real blessing and full of new experiences.  I have joined a new mom's group and gotten to know 8 other amazing new moms, enjoyed the most beautiful fall I can ever remember by going on daily walks outside with Colby, and drank more coffee than I did while going to grad school while working full time. 

Here are some of my favorite photos (I can't believe I narrowed it down to only three, because I probably take at least 15 pictures of him each day)

Colby and his namesake...good thing we didn't go with Jack as the middle name or he definitely would have been made fun of during his school age years!

Colby snuggling with his big fur-sister...I was a bit worried about how my dog would react to the new arrival, but these two are best buds already...and Colby hasn't even started throwing her treats from his high chair yet!

Colby in his Halloween costume...handmade by a friend, a knit burrito costume...due to our love of Mexican food, we called Colby a "baby burrito" throughout my pregnancy, so this costume was very fitting.

That's it for today...my little guy is up and ready to eat!  Hopefully I will get to some special ed content in my next post!

New Product: Writing Fluency Timings

Do you have students who struggle to write or generate ideas when given a topic?  Students who are slow writers or dislike writing?   Looking for a warm up activity to last you the entire school year? Then this is the perfect product for you!

This writing fluency activity allows students to work on writing in a fun and competitive way.  I like to use it as a warm up activity at the beginning of my literacy groups.  Once your students get the hang of the routine, this activity takes 5-10 minutes and is a great, structured way to keep kids busy with independent work while you set up/gather your materials for that day's lesson.

New Product: Fall Unit

Back to school means times for new products!  This week I am going to share my 2 newest products with you!  The first unit is perfect for back to school as it is a unit all about Fall!  It has a similar format to my "Summer Unit" and covers 15 vocabulary words related to fall (look for a winter and spring unit in the same format coming soon!)

Included are:
-Vocabulary Overview Page
-Vocabulary Assessments for words or pictures (receptive or expressive identification) to be used as pre/post tests.
-Flash cards (words)
-Flash cards (pictures)
-23 Worksheets
-1 Adapted Book
-I Have, Who Has? Card Game