Math Drama Games

This month, we are working on incorporating Math into our drama time (for more info on What drama time is, see these posts #1, #2, #3).  I know it sounds strange...but since most of my kids dislike math, we decided, why not try and make math more fun?!  WE are having a special guest (Mr. John from Red Kite!) come to help us this month.  My students love it when he comes because he brings his guitar and has lots of fun new ideas to spice up our regular drama time!

Flash Card Fluency Timings

Earlier in the school year, I posted about my language station.  Now that it is fully up and running, I wanted to show you more details in how I utilize it.  This is a station ran by an assistant.  It is used as a station for extra practice on concepts that are previously mastered when working with me.  At the language station, the focus is on getting fluent (fast and accurate) at these important skills.  It is great if you know your letters, but if it takes you 10 seconds to label a letter, the skill is not functional.  All the kids have a data binder stored inside a milk crate on the Language Table.

Science Tests

Last week, I posted a little about our science unit on the solar system.  Over the last year, I introduced "science tests" to my monthly science units.  My kids take the same test once at the beginning of the month (as a pre-assessment) and again at the end of the month (as a post-assessment).  I was shocked the first time we took the test as a group at how many of my kids were cheating (although secretly, I was kind of proud of how smart they were to think of cheating!).  We had to have a conversation about cheating, put up some dividers while we take tests, and move our desks apart from one another to deter cheating!  But then, we were good to go for test-taking behavior....until it came time to grading our tests.  I seriously think I made half the kids cry because they were sad they didn't get 100% (again...kind of proud that getting a good score is important to them!).  So needless to say, I am a little reluctant to give our science test on the solar system this week!  What do our science tests look like?  Well, see the picture below to find out!

All That Paperwork!

Back in college, I remember always hearing about all the paper work involved in special education...from IEPs and assessments, to data collection.  Not only were they right (although technology has made all that easier), but we are also supposed to keep track of our collaboration minutes, our communication with parents, and how much help our assistants are providing students in the general and special education classrooms (see this post).  Although keeping track of this information can be somewhat useful for tracking conversations, mostly it is meant for keeping a paper record of how we are spending our time.  I would so rather be taking data on my students skills (I LOVE tracking progress!).  But since these other types of data are a necessary part of the job, I figured I needed to make myself the most user friendly data sheet if I was ever going to actually take data.

Counting with Non-Verbal Learners

The other day I was trying to figure out the best way to assess one of my non-verbal student's counting skills.  I am pretty pleased with this super easy way that I stumbled across as we were working together this week!  First, I wrote out the numbers 1-5 on a piece of notebook paper.  I said the different number names, and waited to see if my student could point to the correct number.  She could, so we moved on to the next skill!

Calendar Worksheets

Today was a great (but exhausting) day!  We went to Special Olympics with our kids...and they did great!  Lots of gold, silver, and bronze medals were awarded and watching how proud the kids were of their medals was awesome!  

One thing I like to do to help my kids prepare for field trips, special events, holidays, or days off are calendar worksheets.  Since they can't yet answer questions about the calendar, we work together on answering them multiple times throughout the month on these worksheets.  The kids love these because they are another opportunity to talk about some the things they are most excited about in the month.  

Some Basic Reading/Math Ideas

When I posted a couple of my products on Teachers Pay Teachers this summer, I had not yet used them myself.  I had brainstormed the ideas over the summer for my new kiddos!  I knew that I would be receiving more kids than any other year (and no additional adults) and I needed more ways to incorporate independent work for my students to keep them busy and learning all day (which prevents boredom and temper tantrums!).  For my students with higher academic and social skills, I was not too worried...I have plenty of stuff to keep them busy and they are great at adapting to new activities (check out this post for what my higher academic students do at Reading/Math Centers).  However, for some of my lower functioning students independent work is harder to come up with and new activities do not go over very well (this group of students in my class struggles a lot with any sort of change).  As you probably know if you have read my blog, I love using work in binders for my students.   It keeps the work predictable and lets students know exactly how much work they have to complete.  It also allows for switching different work in and out without the student feeling like too much has changed.  I store these binders in a little plastic bin.  I put a piece of velcro on the side of the binders....that way when a student is bringing their schedule picture to the station, they attach it right to the binder they are responsible for completing.