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! 

Workbasket Wednesday!

I'm linking up with Chris from Autism Classroom News for November's Workbasket Wednesday!

I have a great system for independent work tasks that I've adapted from a bunch of different sources. This year, my students LOVE animals, so I use them as the matching pieces for each task. First, I put 3 pictures of animals, which designate the task the child will complete, on their name tag.

Next, the child brings the picture to our work box station and matches it. 

Here are some of our work tasks...

Matching community helper names and pictures.

Working on comprehension, as well as number and color words. You can find this task in my TpT store!

A few of my students have pre-primer sight word goals, and this task helps them generalize the words because they are all in different fonts and colors. I got several of these divided containers from the Dollar Spot at Target - so perfect for sorting tasks! I wrote on the bottom with dry erase marker so words can easily be switched out. 

Then, the child finds where they originally got the work task by matching the picture again. 

They then take the picture they matched off of the box and put it into the finished container. 

I'm excited to see who else links up for Workbasket Wednesday - I'm always looking for new tasks to keep these little hands busy...

Literacy Centers - Tuesday Edition

So I realize today isn't Tuesday. It's Wednesday. But when your day just doesn't go as planned (sick kiddos, epic meltdowns turning into no prep periods or lunch breaks, and a DCFS call), I'm realizing that blogging just isn't on my radar when I get back from school! It's more of a drink wine and watch Gilmore Girls in sweats on my couch kind of evening. But, as promised, here is what we do on Tuesdays: Lakeshore Learning Alphabet File Folders!

I received this awesome set through a grant on Donors Choose (my savior!) - and I absolutely love them. They're leveled, their engaging, they target multiple skills, they're adorable, and best of all - they're premade :) Makes my teacher heart very happy. My kids really do like them - they're used to them (of course they all love routine) and they feel successful completing them. Even for my students that cannot complete them independently yet, it's easy to create errorless learning opportunities with these file folders.

Here's an example of one of our class favorites!



What are some of your favorite alphabet/language arts activities for centers?

Leveled Language Arts Work

It can be so difficult to set up centers, stations, independent work (etc.)  in our classrooms - our kids skills are SO VARIED! Ahh! Between empowering my two classroom assistants, setting up leveled groups, scouring TpT, grant writing like crazy on Donors Choose, and laminating my life away, I have come up with some fun, standards based (yay?), cute, engaging activities that my students of each level LOVE to complete.

Right now, I have 3 groups. Two of them are functioning at the same level, but I split up the students due to behavioral needs. Two of my groups are working on letter and sound identification, pre-writing, writing/tracing letters, book handling, and what I call "learning to learn behaviors" (sitting, waiting your turn, following teacher directives, hands to self, etc.). My third group is working on pre-primer and primer sight words, spelling these words from memory, and reading sight word readers.

This week I'll share with you what we do each day of the week during our literacy centers! I change up the activity daily for my two lower groups to help with generalization of skills, to work on a variety of other skills (coloring, requesting, waiting, tearing paper, gluing, etc.), and to keep them engaged. I will say - this year my crew is VERY busy. I need lots of varied goodies on hand at all times to keep 'em with me!

Monday- Groups 1 & 2

I made these quick on PowerPoint (my absolute favorite program to make any type of teaching materials!) by using the WordArt function. We are working on identifying the letters A--I. I had my kiddos pull a letter tile out of a bag, find the matching letter on their sheet, and color it in. For some of my little ones, I circled the letter before they colored it (to give them visual coloring boundaries and avoid scribbles all over the paper), while some can handle doing this independently.

This little one is a "mouth breather" which leads to a lot (a LOT) of drooling. She tends to put her fingers in her mouth and grab her paper, making her paper nice and wet (yuck!). I started taping her work to the table so it avoided a lot of her saliva getting on the paper. 

Monday - Group 3

We have been working on Dolch Pre-Primer words since September, and they are doing so well. We have been reading sight word readers, tracing the words, making them with playdough, stamping them, using letter puzzles, and more. UNTIL - I found this beautiful product. I was so excited to unleash this baby today, you have no idea! (Drumroll, please...)

Sight Word Interactive Notebooks

Yup, you heard it! Interactive notebooks in a low incidence classroom! I am so thrilled that I found such a comprehensive product on tPt that will really help my little guys master these sight words, and be able to look back on their work and their words in a snap. Here's the notebook in action:

One of my little guys cutting out each piece. I highlight the dotted lines to give them a clearer visual on where to cut. 

Coloring in his sight word in the "Color it!" box. 

These notebooks have 2 pages for each sight word (we will do one page per day, taking 2 days for each sight word). They include cutting and pasting each piece into the notebook, coloring the sight word, "building" the sight word (gluing each letter in the correct order), tracing it, writing it independently, rainbow writing it, writing it in a box, putting a sentence with the word in order, and copying a sentence with the word in it. I. am. in. love. Please check out Jill Bell's awesome product on tPt, she has them for ALL of the levels of Dolch Words!

Tomorrow, I'll show you how my cuties did with page 2!

Introducing... me! And, November Currently!

Why, hello there!
I am seriously honored (well, and maybe a little surprised) that you are reading this - my FIRST entry! I am really excited to dive into the world of teacher blogging (also, your computer is working fine - my links are not currently working, but I thought I'd post anyways :) Stay tuned for the official reveal of the blog SOON!). Honestly, I need it. The life of a teacher in general is exhausting, and in my role as a special educator of children with severe disabilities, I often feel like I am on an island. I am confident that blogging will not only be a GREAT outlet for me, but will allow me to share my knowledge with people who might actually use it, and to learn from and collaborate with so many other educators! 

What about me as a teacher? Well, I am in my 5th year of teaching children with severe disabilities, and I LOVE IT. My kids are absolutely exhausting little people with complex minds, lives, and needs, but despite the chaos, I love what I am able to get paid for each day. This summer I completed my master's degree in Special Education and gained my LBS II certificate, where I specialized in teaching children with severe and multiple disabilities. I currently teach kiddos in K-2 grade and have 9 students across a huge spectrum. I have students working at grade level in some subjects, while some of my students are working at below a preschool level. My students have disability labels of Autism, Down Syndrome, Fragile X, Intellectual Disability, Developmental Delay, Epilepsy, Small Gut Syndrome, aaaaand more. I am not your typical type-A, uber-organized, overly prepared teacher. Do I wish I was? YES. Have I attempted to be? More than I'd like to admit. But, though I'd like this to be true of me, it's not - and I'm realizing that it's okay. My students learn, they make progress, I can (usually) find everything my assistants and I need, and my classroom definitely has that "lived in" feel to it ;) I am by no means the perfect teacher, and I have also learned that it's healthy to admit that. I sometimes lose my cool and need to take a "break time" for MYSELF so that I don't end up arguing with a six year old. I pack chocolates in my lunch so that I have something sweet to look forward to - EVERY. DAY. I occasionally create a lesson and realize that the iPad we were going to use has 2% battery. I work in an inner-city school where resources and materials are scarce, so none of my rugs match and some of our furniture has GOT to be at least 40 years old. So needless to say, my blog is not going to be a highlight reel of my career and my classroom, but I hope that my transparency will make my adventures relateable, real, and overall, helpful in some regard. Through my experiences that I literally could not make up if I tried (you all know what I mean), I have created some really fun tasks, learned some on-the-fly adaptations that have changed my teaching, and have tried just about every intervention in the book. I can't wait to share it all with you.

And, if you made it this far, I linked up with Farley for my November Currently :)

Listening... My boyfriend is watching Nik Wallenda walk a tight rope across the Chicago River on the Discovery Channel. This is giving me more anxiety than I need on a Sunday night!

Loving... I have 2 prep periods on Mondays and it seriously makes the week so much smoother. More time to set up everything for the week? Yes, please!

Thinking... An epic wedding weekend is upon us! I am headed to Kansas City this weekend to celebrate the wedding of one of my oldest friends. I can't wait!

Needing... Nik Wallenda to make it - I can't handle it!

Reading... The book of James - an amazing book of the Bible that eases my mind.