Making Unique Learning Systems Work in the Classroom!

This is the first year my school has purchased Unique for our specialized classrooms. (If you're not familiar with Unique Learning Systems, it's a curriculum specifically designed for students with significantly modified curriculums. You can read more about it here.) I was so excited to know I finally had a curriculum that I could work alongside, until I opened it, and then met my students. And I felt stuck.

A lot of the Unique activities, even for their lowest level, are a bit high for some of my learners. It requires some basic skills that they don't quite have - like circling pictures, tracing, "wh" question answering, etc. If it takes my student 4 minutes to circle a picture, what are we really accomplishing? I used some of the activities with their visual choice boards, but a lot of it felt like more work for me to modify than the materials I had created/already modified myself.

Recently, we were SO BLESSED to receive an interactive whiteboard in our classroom (SERIOUSLY I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED!). Did I mention that I love it? My students are so motivated by it and it's the perfect way to really get Unique up and moving in my classroom. This is how we are working with Unique's reading activities in my classroom this week:

Every morning at the end of circle time, we read a book together. We are able to project these books from Unique onto our whiteboard. We can read this together and touch each word as we read, to help with print understanding, tracking, etc. At the end of each book, there are comprehension questions available (all differentiated, too!) and interactive versions available. We use the interactive version with visuals to answer the questions together. 

After we complete these activities together, we move into our 3 literacy centers (alphabet/word work, writing, and teacher time). During Teacher Time, two of my groups completes this again in a paper version. We read one copy of the book together, followed by the students finding the answers and gluing them to the correct spot. 

How do you use Unique in your classroom? I'd love to hear any thoughts, suggestions, or creative tips!

December Currently!

December? Excuse me... what?! When did it become December? But I won't lie, this weather we are having out here in Chicago is BRUTAL and is reminding me of last year's "Chiberia". This better not be our reality again! Here's my currently link-up from Farley!

Here is a freebie... you're not going to be able to stand how adorable the clip art is in this adapted book about winter. It's seriously so cute! Enjoy!

Cyber Monday Sale!

I am NOT a Black Friday shopper (for many reasons!) but I DO love Cyber Monday. I will basically have all of my Christmas shopping done by Monday evening! I am a firm believer in sales and online shopping, so of course a "holiday" that merges the two is perfect for this girl.

I am also really excited for the TpT Cyber Monday sale! Here are a few things that are in my cart:

1.) 

Interactive Math Notebook for Kindergarten {Unit 2: Counting & Sorting}

2.) 

Letter Recognition Activities for Intervention/RTI

3.)

Princess Clip Art {Frozen Inspired}

And let's be honest, I'll find more!! :) Please check out my store and stock up on some great adaptive books, cute worksheets, units, and more! Enjoy your shopping spree!!

Adapting Worksheets

So worksheets aren't exactly my favorite tasks to give my students for many reasons. One is obvious: they can be really boring. Also, many of my students are pre-writers so I honestly don't get too much valuable information about their knowledge if I am constantly prompting, hand-over-hand-ing, (etc) to get the worksheet completed. BUT, completing worksheets is a really needed skill for all students. It's what I give for homework (not much choice there), and if our goal is to include our kiddos in general education as much as possible, they are going to need to know how to complete worksheets. So, I add them in to our centers and make them as engaging as possible.

There are several TpT products that I use that have already been highly adapted to meet the needs of students like mine. One of them is the Daily Math Practice Pack by Melissa Toth from The Adventures of Room 83. From what I can tell, she teaches kiddos similar to mine, and the visuals in this addition pack are so helpful. I am definitely not as patient as she is in terms of creating materials, and was happy she did the work for me for this addition pack.

I also use Sasha at the Autism Helper's Visual Math Activities for Children with Autism. The pictures are super engaging, the worksheets fit so many of my students levels, and they're just so easy to print off and use :)

My latest kick is creating my own Color By Number activities. These are so good for my lower level students who are working on color identification and one step direction following, in addition to letter, shape, or number identification. Here's an example:

I also like the make these with shape and number identification :)

Adapting Books

I love having free reading time with my students. It gives them a chance to explore books, and allows me to learn so much about them. Do they even know how to hold it? What types of books do they gravitate towards? Are they generalizing sight word identification into their reading? Etc. etc. etc...

I have a lot of new babies in my room this year. The crew I had previously was higher functioning and had really adapted to our classroom expectations and all of those executive functioning behaviors. I adapted books minimally, but many of my students loved being read to or could read our basic books. Now, my new bunch of cuties are quite different. Many of them are pre-readers and need a LOT of prompting to follow 2 step + directives. During the first week of school, I had free-reading with limited prompting to see what they would do - which included a lot of sitting and staring (either at me or at the cover of a book), stimming, and throwing books. I knew immediately that I would have to get back on an adapted book kick, QUICK!

Here is one of my favorite ways to adapt a book. It's so simple and can be used as a non-identical matching work task as well as for engaging with books during a quiet or free reading time. I picked up this book at the Target Dollar Spot, laminated matching Boardmaker pictures, and Velcro-ed it up.



Another way I need to adapt my books is more physically. Many of my kiddos have fine motor challenges, and turning pages can be really difficult. This is a quick adaptation - just taping on a piece of thick paper to help with page turning!

Welcome to the BIG TOP! Circus tasks!

I have posted a product on TpT that I have been working on for awhile - and I LOVE IT! I can't wait to roll it out in my classroom. Plus, the clip art is seriously so cute I can't. stand. it.

In a few weeks, my kiddos are headed to the circus on a field trip. Our school is located right by a big stadium and we can walk there. The circus is something very foreign for most of my students - only one of my nine students knew what I was talking about. I decided to make some circus themed tasks to help warm them up to the ideas of clowns and animals running around inside. I know I would need some prepping if I were them!

This 42-page bundle includes clothes pin tasks, file folder activities, pre-writing sheets, basic math worksheets, alphabet cards, and more :) Also, the pre-writing sheets are on TpT as a FREEBIE so be sure to check that out & leave some feedback love.



Check it out here and the freebie here!

Math Centers: Multiple Skills!

During our daily math centers, I want to tie in as many skills as possible. Social studies & science are so hard to add in to our day because there just isn't enough time. So, I add these in to our math centers! Gotta make every moment count. 

The science goals that my kids come in with, and the ones that I create are typically very functional and relate to basic skills. A big one for our class is color identification and classification. For my lowest math group, we target colors, number identification, and 1:1 correspondence with this product from Lakeshore. 

I'm able to have my kiddos pick certain colors from a field, request colors, etc, as well as then identify the number and show 1:1 correspondence through counting the pegs. 

Stay tuned - I'll be sharing how we incorporate social science into our math centers, too!