January-March (but February got lost!)

Here are some of the things I have been doing the end of winter and beginning of Spring. I am not sure why I didn't document much in February. Must have been a busy, short month!!

January:
We worked on the snow theme and made some cute snow globes with marble paint (put the foam snowman cut out onto these cute snowglobes I made out of construction paper, put them in a box lid, and put marbles dunked in white paint in and shook to make it snow!)

We also read a story that was hand made by a speech pathologist I met and it was a sequence of making a snowman and adding the things he had on him. Students sequenced the story using different cut outs, we also did shaving cream and glue snowmen as a sensory activity:

Dr. Seuss:

I did a lot of the common themes, Cat in the Hat, Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Green Eggs and Ham, Fox in Socks, The Foot Book, etc

For the Cat in the Hat, they made their own hats following the AB pattern, white/red, etc. We identified characters and events, etc. For The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, I made an alphabetical order activity that is just like the book:

We also did the Foot Book, measured our feet by tracing them and counting out Unifix Cubes:

We did Green Eggs and Ham-we are working on shaking head up and down for yes and side to side for no, we also made green eggs and ham using vanilla pudding, green food coloring and a vanilla wafer in the middle as the "yolk". Here is a switch we used while reading the story:

We also did One Fish, Two Fish, and sorted out colored gold fish. We made some counting flip books using Dr. Seuss stickers.

St. Patrick's Day/March:

Sorry these are sideways and/or upside down:

Here is a game called the Shamrock game that focuses on simple counting 1-10. We put the large dice in a big bin and shake it, then stop, because students had a hard time rolling the dice. They have a marker of some type (we use little counting bears as their markers) and they move the amount they rolled, so they are counting 1:1 and then counting up to a number and stopping. If they land on a Shamrock, they get a Shamrock card. As soon as all the cards are gone, the game is over (makes it easy for you to control the end of the game). Whoever has the most Shamrock cards wins.

I printed this cute scavenger hunt off online and the kids love it. They are looking around their environment, looking for color identification, remembering a sequence (rainbow order), and at the end the leprechaun left us a surprise (it was pistachio pudding, add water and this magical white powder turns green before your eyes! How magical..we did not eat it we just watched it change and then I tossed it).

Pots of Rainbows! I used those same foam popsicle sticks and students had to count out 6 sticks, one of each color, then remember the order and what ROY G. BIV stands for. They had a lot of fun!

IEP Work Time and Work Bags

It has been a long time! I am going to do a few posts because I have been taking pictures since January but have not posted them. I am going to start off with some updates on how I do my IEP work time this year.

Each morning, I set aside individual time to work on IEP objectives. Usually in the morning we have various therapy pull-outs, so it works out nicely that some students are in therapy while a couple are in the classroom as well. Since writing my IEP's, I made sure that I could write a really good data sheet for the objective before I wrote the objective. This did simplify the writing of objectives! I made sure I based them off the extended common core standards, the ones that I thought were most essential for each individual.

Once I had all my students IEP's written and data sheets made, I tried to set up a schedule to make sure that each week, I am taking data on every academic and behavioral objective on every student's IEP. This was not such a small task. A bit easier because I have 4 students, but still difficult because of pull-outs and also I have a student who does inclusion for 1/2 day. So, on Mondays I focus on reading objectives, on Tuesdays I focus on Math, on Wednesdays I do a "make-up" day for anything missed and/or DIBELS, on Thursdays I do behavioral goals and try to get my one student that does inclusion on all his goals, and Friday I do DIBELS and anything I didn't get to throughout the week and we also do our handwriting goals on Friday first thing in the morning.

I am working with the student on different tasks that I can take data on the IEP objective on so the big question...what are the other students doing??? This is always a challenging task as every special educator knows you have to be flexible. Students are going to be absent. Therapy pull-outs won't always be regular (they have so much to do and I truly think my therapists are amazing).

So, first, with the students I try (and I am still not there yet) to set up boundaries at the beginning of the year and keep them consistent throughout the year. If you are working or earning on the carpet or at the table, you stay with that activity until you are told to transition or unless you clean up, raise your hand, and ask for something different. So, some students are able to participate in an individual task in one of these areas while I take data on another student. My instructional assistant is awesome and we have one student on a routine with her because he responds well to that, where she works on the same thing every morning with him while I take data on another student, then we switch.

The SMARTboard has been a great resource in my room because students can work on that independently (simple cause and effect reward games, starfall, etc). And finally, work bags.

I have created these bags and they do wonders when trying to occupy a student (my instructional assistant can do them easily), they work when you have a substitute teacher in the room, they work with simple tasks if you have a student observer/teacher that wants to try a task with a student. They focus on academic as well as fine motor skills. It helps the students make choices of what they want to work on. They are simple, easily contained and hands-on. These work wonders while I am taking data on a student and need the other students to be engaged.

Here are some pictures!

This is pretty self explanatory but...cookie sheets are $1.00 at the Dollar Tree, and perfect size for these double gallon (I think) Hefty bags (purchased at Target).

Here are a couple of them sitting out, as you can see, cookie sheet fits in great.

This was the most time consuming one. I printed these off a website in color, laminated every letter, attached a magnet to every pom-pom in every color, and in this work bin there is also a cookie sheet so the poms stick when the child is working.

This one is a hit...little bath mats with mini suction cups hold the marbles perfectly. I colored in the dots black so they can see it better. We also work on counting the marbles as we put them on or take them off. Sometimes you get marbles all over the floor so be careful walking into Room 5 ;-)

This was a fun one, shapes, using foam colored popsicle sticks and velcro with foam cut outs in the middle.

These are just some examples, I also have a lacing one with lacing cards and beads, one with unifix cube pattern cards I printed out and unifix cubes, and one with clothespins and paper plates that you put the clothespin with the corresponding cue on the paper plate such as colors and numbers. I plan on creating a few more, vocab and picture match, a pringles can that I cut little holes in and your put pipe cleaners into the holes, and a sorting one. A lot of ideas you can find under "toddler bags" or "busy bags" on Pinterest. 

Essential Questions and 100 days!

Hello! It is early February and I am back from Orlando from the ATIA conference! It was such a great experience and I had the opportunity to learn so much about the PODD (Pragmatic Organization Dynamic Display) for children with significant communication challenges. All I can say is...WOW! A whole different way of thinking and definitely worth the research. I am practicing with a borrowed PODD in my classroom and we are going to see how we can effectively implement this for language in the classroom. If anyone is interested in learning more or discussing the PODD, please email me :-) I would love to chat!

I thought I would have a quick post because recently my school has been working on the common core (in my case the extended common core) and our PLC's or TBT (so many acronyms now... PLC is Professional Learning Community and TBT is Team Based Teaching) and we were asked to post "essential questions" in our classroom so any outsider would easily be able to see what the students are working on in the classroom. It is also helpful for the students, if they understand, to see what they will be able to do at the end of a lesson/unit/year etc.

My students all have IEP's so it was more difficult for me to write the essential questions because each student is so different! So, I took the extended common core standards for each IEP objective (we already wrote our IEP's based on extended standards so this made it a little easier to do this step) and made it into a simple question. I have an entire document that is of course, cute as well as informative, but I thought I would post the meat of the information here in case you are struggling to incorporate the extended common core in the classroom like I have been this year. If you would like a copy of this document, you can email me and I can send it in pages format or a word document.

Here it is! I hope this helps some teachers!


Reading
RI-L.K2.1c How do I answer “who” questions?
RI-L.K2.3c Who are the characters or people in a story?
RI-L.K2.1c How do I answer “what” questions?
RI-L.K2.2c What are the events of a story?
RI-L.K2.7c How do I show you a picture or object that relate to a story?
RL.K2.6c What does the author do?
RL.K2.6c What does the illustrator do?
RI.K2.4c How do I match a word to a picture?
RI.K2.5c Where is the front and back of a book? Where is the title?
FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS!
RF.K2.1c How do I listen to a story?
RF.PC.K.d What are letters?
RF.K2.2c What are the sounds of letters?

Writing
W.K2.1c What is something I prefer or like?
W.K2.3c What is something I did?
W.K2.6c How do I use the keyboard or computer?

Speaking and listening
SL.K2.1c How do I listen to others and respond?
SL.K2.3c How can I ask for help?
SL.K2.4c and L.K2.3c How can I tell you about familiar things in my life?
L.K2.1b How do I tell you what I see? (describing and 2+ word combos)
L.K2.4b Can I sort into categories?
L.K2.5c Can I say words I know?

Math
CC.K2.1c Can I count to 10 using objects?
How can I make sets of a #1-5?
CC.K2.5c Can I count 5 objects?
NBT.K2.2c Can I count by 10’s to 50?
NBT.K2.2b Can I count by 10’s to 100?
MD.K2.2c Can I tell you which object is longer than the other?
MD.K2.4c Can I measure something?
MD.K2.7c Can I show you what happens in the morning and at night?
MD.K2.8c Can I match coins?
MD.K2.8c Can I identify a penny?
MD.K2.11c How do I make categories?
G.K2.1c What are squares, rectangles, circles and triangles?
G.K2.3b How do I put something above, below, beside, or next to something else?

Science
ESS.K2.1c What happens in daytime and what happens in the nighttime?
ESS.K2.2c How do I tell you different short-term weather conditions?
LS.K2.2c What are parts of a plant and animal?
PS.K2.1c How do I use things for their purpose?
PS.K2.4c-5c How can I move something that is stopped, or stop something that is moving?


Social Studies
HIS.K2.1c How can I tell you what is on a schedule?
HIS.K2.4c How can I tell you something I like to do?
GEO.K2.1c How can I show you where objects go with words like “over, under, behind, next to and down”?
GEO.K2.3c/ECON.K2.6c What is happening in the community?
GVT.K2.2c How do I participate in a group activity?
GVT.K2.3c How do I show you the class rules?
ECON.K2.1c Can I show you which one is bigger/smaller, or more/less?
ECON.K2.2c How do I tell you what I want?
ECON.K2.3b How do I make a choice?
ECON.K2.5c Can I show you money?

Also, we celebrated 100 days in Room 5-we made a chain with colored paper in which each group of 10 was a different color. The students really were engaged with this and it worked on their fine motor as well. We also worked on identifying "who" gets a turn next, etc. The kids loved watching the chain get bigger, and bigger, and bigger....
I also made these 100 mats and you can see two versions below, one differentiated to include 10 dots on each group of 10. They counted out 100 objects in groups of ten, practiced counting to 100 by 10's (singing the song). I had all the students use Froot Loops that we then laced into necklaces after (actually I had to lace them because it was a bit too difficult) but I had one student who did not understand the concept of counting out food and not eating it! (I don't blame him!) So, I had him using cubes and stacking them into groups of 10 which worked out great. Sorting, color identification, counting to 10 using objects, counting by 10's ... plenty of standards in this lesson! And, it was fun!
We also decorated glasses that said 100 on them and did a 100 step writing prompt to predict where we would end up if we walked 100 steps. Let me know if you would like a copy of this writing prompt which includes pictures for students to choose from :-)

A little cleaning up

Hello there!
So soon for another blog post, I know...how awesome! But, you probably won't see one for a little bit because I am going to Orlando to the Assistive Technology Industry Association conference so I will be busy busy busy! SO EXCITED :-)
I also recently had a Donor's Choose project funded and got a new iPad for the classroom! I will be researching and exploring this new technology for the classroom and most likely will be posting some fun apps we use in the future!
I wanted to show you some very simple cleaning up fixes I did in my classroom, starting with changing the look of a rolly cart and a small file cabinet with some funky contact paper. Not time consuming at all, very easy to apply (easier than I remember contact paper being) and much easier than using scrapbooking paper.

 You can tell that these are old and pretty beat up, but they look much nicer now! You can even see some dents in the filing cabinet, haha. I may even do my big filing cabinets! I bought two rolls-way too much. These projects used less than 1/4 of one roll. Less than $6.00 a roll. Very Mrs. Flower's themed.

Next are some of the pictures I promised from the last post...my dry erase board/dish drying rack storage. It turned out really nice. Word of advice: I purchased a cheap one but I bought the "extra large" one (it either said extra large or big) but it was the same price but as you can see, just big enough to hold standard small dry erase boards.

On the side, I purchased some infant mittens on sale as small erasers for the small hands in my classroom (they can put a couple fingers in and work on some fine motor erasing rather than just taking a big sock and going crazy with it)

Here is a super cute cup that a great friend got me:

It is housing my highlighters right now and I love it. VERY MRS. FLOWERS <3 

And finally, I will leave you with an update from the last post...my light box IN ACTION. My student here is spelling the word "WINTER" using his word list and some letters from an old sign we used to have at the school.

Have a great January and I will post in February!

Light Box

Hello!
Okay, so I did not take as many pictures as I wanted to in what we did with the students the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter break...but I will give you some ideas without pictures!
Since we had 3 weeks, we decided to celebrate a holiday each week. We started with Hanukkah, then Kwanzaa, then Christmas. Here are some of the highlights we did for each week, like I said-sorry no pics!!
Hanukkah:
-We traced the students hands with their thumbs together in the middle, looking like a menorah. Their thumbs were higher up together in the middle and their four fingers were spread out on either side. They used number stamps to count each candle and then used a bingo dobber to light each candle.
-We made Star of David out of popsicle sticks we counted out 6 of them first using a 6 frame I made, then painted them and adults assembled and they identified the two triangles that made the stars. We added glitter in the end-glitter was everywhere.
-I did a felt board counting game where I made a menorah, candles and flames and read a poem I found online in which we counted each candle and put them up. The kids absolutely loved it and caught on very quickly.
Email me if you want any ideas...since I got a lot of them from other people I don't want to re-post and take their ideas without giving them credit and I am not looking them all up again!
Kwanzaa:
-We made a Kinara and had flames with each of the principles written on them, talked about each principle and glued them onto our Kinaras.
-We made Kwanzaa plates where we sponge painted paper plates in the colors red green and black. I made some easy sponge painting brushes by cutting cheap sponges into 1 inch squares and then adding a clothespin on the end for easy grabbing. We practiced stamping instead of painting with the sponges, and identified the colors and made a connection to Christmas colors.
-We made Kwanzaa mats with marble paint (box lid, dip large marbles in the paint, put the mat in the box lid, add the painted marbles and let the kids shake and roll them to make designs on their mats) Once the mats dried, they practiced cutting slits in either end to make it look frayed at the ends.
-Once again I did a similar felt board story with a Kinara, candles, principles, and a counting song.
Christmas:
-We made ornaments out of pine cones with glitter, they liked this :-)

-We made Christmas trees out of different sized strips of green paper they had to put them in order from biggest to smallest then they could decorate their tree.

-We made Christmas cards with Santa handprints: paint thumb and top of palm red, inner palm skin tone and fingers white and upside down it looks like Santa and they wrote to whoever they wanted to about Christmas (some wrote to parents, some wrote to Santa, etc)

-Another felt board story with color identification, counting and predicting (opening gifts under the tree)

And Merry Christmas to me! My husband got me a laser printer so I can make tons of color prints without having to constantly buy ink! It can do like 1600+ color copies on one toner, which is exciting. I have already been printing away...

Now the project I have been working on this week: a light box for my students! Light boxes are beneficial for various reasons for students with disabilities but one reason I wanted one is because my secretary recently gave me all the letters from our old sign outside (similar to a gas station sign with individual letters) so I wanted to be able to use them because they are so awesome! I found this idea blogging around...

So I got a plastic container, an under the counter light, white duct tape, spray paint (white and silver), painters tape, construction paper, and the saran wrap that clings really well (it's kind of foggy looking)

First, I attached the under the counter light with duct tape to the lid of the box which will be the bottom of the light box. I cut some of the duct tape that was covering the light because I didn't want it to look "stripe-y".

Here is the light off and on.

Then, I covered the bottom of the box with construction paper and painters tape and spray painted it white first, then silver after. I think the reason they said this is so the light will reflect better off the metallic color. I messed up the white spray paint :-( I am not good at spray painting.

Here is the lid once it dried and I took off the paper.

Here it is completed! It looks great but I have one suggestion which is why I needed to use the cling wrap...It was TOO clear, you just look down and see a light. It's supposed to be foggy and just illuminate the surface in light. So, I would suggest buying a box with a foggier bottom (which they had but of course I was like, "I want it to be clear!" and it ended up being a mistake). So, I ended up taping in some cling wrap to give it the illuminated foggier look and it turned out great. I might end up using duct tape around the frame of the light box because I really messed up the spray paint but just a personal choice. A good choice when choosing the plastic tub is finding one like this one that has an edge along the bottom so things will stay on the light box portion and not roll off. 

Also, you need to cut a hole for the cord to come out so it sits flat. My husband has yet to do this part of the project, haha. 

Also, here is a little something I did at school for headphone storage. I bought a cheap tension rod because we have this window frame between the two classrooms near my student computer. It was a good idea! I probably got the idea blogging around, or maybe this was an original from me. Oh well, it works great and frees up space. I am thinking of other suction ideas for storage around the computer area but have not come to any conclusions yet.

Finally, one last idea, sorry I did not take a picture, I will take a finished product picture, I bought a dish rack for my dry erase board storage. The boards fit in each dish slot and then the cup for a sponge will hold the pens. I also bought infant mittens as erasers for my kids little hands. I will probably hot glue some pom poms on the ends of the markers as erasers too. 

Have a great rest of break, I will post more pics once we get back to school-I am off to Vermont to go skiing for a week :-) 

Winter Fun

Hello! It has been a long time since I have posted...and I have some new ideas for the classroom so I should be putting up a new fun post with lots of pictures once Friday rolls around and I have some time!
So...IEP season is OVER!! (unless a new student comes or something like that). I have been very busy trying to write IEPs, hold meetings and create new data sheets for new objectives as well as lesson plan, and make time for all the fun holiday activities.
I thought I would write a quick post including the winter fun packet I am sending home over break so maybe you won't have to spend as much time as I did coming up with one!

I wanted to send home some academic worksheets for parents to work on at home but only if they have time. The last thing I want to do is make parents feel obligated to do paper and pencil tasks when they are spending time with families. So, I made up a little winter fun packet and explained to the parents it is just for fun, if there is time and if the children want to work on anything at home!! Some of the worksheets I made myself but a couple others I found online:

http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/worksheets/winter/

This website had some good ones, but my students aren't able to do a lot of them yet, but if you have higher kids, this has some good worksheets with pictures. Very fun theme

http://www.kidsparkz.com/winter-letters-literacy.html#.UM3qVY5j7zI

This website I printed the alphabet snowflake cards and told parents the kids can trace them with their fingers, color them in, sing the abc's and touch each one, and the parents can even cut them out and play games with the letters. My students aren't able to do a lot of paper and pencil tasks so I wanted to send home some educational resources that can be disguised as games and the kids can show what they know at home!

http://www.theholidayzone.com/winter/Winter_Word_Wall.pdf

I printed these words out because they had pictures and then I modified it for my students, only cutting out words they have seen or are concrete items like a hat and made 2 pages of 6 words to send home in the packet, telling parents they can put the words by the objects in their house and go over them, cut off the picture and play memory, etc.

I made some prewriting tracing horizontal, vertical, diagonal and V worksheets with snowflakes (if you want me to send you the word doc, email me at mfdemski@gmail.com). I also made a simple counting worksheet with pictures and a number line on the bottom.

I hope this helps! I know that my next post will be too late to do the activities in the classroom, but we had a Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas week so I will be posting some pictures of what we did in the classroom as well as some of my new ideas that I am planning on doing to organize my classroom for when we get back in January.

I also wanted to post some gifts because...well, tis the season. My heart was melted when I received my first ever present from a student so I wanted to share:

Also, a Pinterest idea combined come to life...so I have been seeing those dry erase frames that you can put a class list behind or even just a piece of scrapbook paper like these: 

http://classroomcollective.tumblr.com/tagged/Classroom+Organization/page/3 

see bottom picture

And I recently saw this one using rubber bands so it can hold objects like a pen...

http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10451&langId=-1&categoryId=11526&parent_category_rn=26674&productId=14285&keyWord=Barbara%20Flanagan%20Snap-It-Up%20Organizer&purpose=crawl

and I wanted to combine both ideas and it came out SO CUTE, and it was super cheap and makes a great teacher gift, as you can see I made one for a coworker of mine...I just used some stickers and scrapbook paper I had at home and made these:

I am showing you how it holds a pen...don't use sharpie just dry erase marker. It is a dry erase board/note holder/desk organizer! How cute :-) The Mrs. Flowers frame I got for $3 and the one below was like $1 clear frame (didn't know if the black one would hold rubber bands and still close but it does). I got the jumbo rubber bands a long time ago for less than $1. I think thicker ones would be better but I couldn't find any...the good news is you can always upgrade the rubber bands anytime you want so if I find more I may change them out. 

Hope everyone has a great last week (or however long you have) before break and be checking over break for another post!!

De-bogging

Hello readers :-)

This weekend my goal was to de-bog myself...I make too much work for myself and I need to make it EASIER! My weekends are spent with lesson planning, planning fun hands-on activities, and creating brand new data sheets for my students each week, finding the activities to go along with it, decide what I was going to take data on for each kid, each day...and it was just TOO MUCH. The worst part of it all was...even though it was too much work, I would continue to do it if I felt it was truly beneficial...but I am looking through these data sheets, not getting much accurate data, it wasn't really telling me anything besides..."you're doing too much work and not seeing anything from it"

So... I decided to come up with better systems for things.

Starting with lesson plans.

my super cute cover

I (used to) make a lesson plan for each day and write the same things over and over again, so I downloaded an editable lesson plan format, downloaded a cute font for free, and make a very cute lesson plan that I am going to copy and bind at school. I know you're probably saying "duh, this is so simple" but for me, I was being too much of a control freak-wanting to write down everything each day to make sure I got it all right-but it's just too much work! Then, I'd have to flip through pages to see what we're doing Thursday on Monday. It was chicken scratch, not useful for anyone-even myself...

Here is the editable lesson plan document I found online:

http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/2012/08/cute-lesson-plan-template-free-editable-download.html

and here is the font I downloaded:

http://kevinandamanda.com/fonts/fontsforpeas/

I did pea ellie bellie, it turned out really cute

Then, for reading and math, we do a lot of repetitive activities each day of the week. So, I color coded a sheet to match the colors of the days of the week in my lesson plans so  I knew what activity we were doing for reading and math that day. These don't change I just have to remember what activity we do each day.

Now that I think lesson plans are working (we shall see how it works) I needed to update my data system. What I was doing was I made data sheets for my students IEP objectives, but some of them are not realistic or they have already mastered them and the data was not even worth taking, so each week, I was making new activities to work on and take data to help me write future IEP's and see how they are doing on work tasks. Each student had a clipboard with the data sheet on it and I would highlight what we were taking data on for each day because it got to be too much doing a lot of data each day. This kind of helped, but then if students were absent, I just had a lot of blank spaces and to see how they were doing on the goal I'd have to flip through weeks of data sheets and none of them looked alike and it was time consuming and not worth it. So, I decided, I am going to make more basic data sheets that can be used for a task numerous times by just putting the date when you do it and not making it so specific.

So, I started making basic tables and created (I'm sure it probably already exists-it's just folding paper but I like to think it was my original smart idea) FOLDABLE DATA sheets! I am in love with this idea and excited to see how it pans out. For this particular student, he is working on two letter words and a few CVC words. I want him to say the word when it is shown to him, spell the word when it is said to him, and identify the word that is dictated given a field of words. So, I created one column with the words down the left side, then two rows at the top with those three skills listed and under that, a date row. I split the cells so that under each skill, there are numerous data boxes where you can just mark the date. Then, color code each skill, fold and viola! Foldable data to measure many skills at one time without a bunch of paperwork. Best part is, all the data is on one sheet-easy to track and see progress/areas of concern.
Check out the images and let me know what you think:

This is the entire sheet, as you can see there are three colors for each skill (saying word, spelling word and identifying word), the words in white along the side, and a pink row up top for the date.

This is how it looks when you fold it to see one skill at a time, and always be able to see the words

second skill

third skill

Not all the data sheets I made are foldable, a lot of them are simple (numbers 1-10, ABCs) but I did this for colors and shapes also (identify by name, match and sort).

So, I made pretty simple data sheets (some specific for certain objectives) for each kid. I put them all on one clipboard, divided by student, and I am still going to have them working and practicing their skills and I am going to come around to probably 2 kids a day and take data on a few skills-not all of them, just a few. I can quickly see which skills I need to take data on because the sheets are so simple and comprehensive. I think this will work better and be a huge weekend time saver. 

Let me know what you think and if you want me to email any resources to you :-) 

Happy November