Catching Up

My apologies for taking such a long break since our last classroom post!  Between our long Christmas break, readjusting to our school routine, and adding a new friend to our classroom - it has been a very busy time in our classroom.  Here is a look at some of the things we have been working on at school.

The Gingerbread Man
Before Christmas break we had some fun reading the story of The Gingerbread Man.  We talked about all the different characters in the story and also did some sequencing of events as the gingerbread man travels through the story.  Mrs. Frazee planned a group speech activity where the children each were a different character and acted out the story.  Everyone's favorite part seemed to be, "Run, Run, as Fast as you can!"

Our social skills group also included our work on the story by allowing the students to decorate their own gingerbread cookies.  The students had to appropriately request the different toppings and frostings from their peers and adults.

Christmas Tree:
The students created their own ornaments for our Christmas tree this year.  Some students even enjoyed helping to set up the tree.  They showed a great amount of responsibility in respecting the classroom tree this year.  (It can be so tempting to pull on!)

Word Study

This week we began a new set of words for our word study time.  Our word family words end in -ick.  You can always find the current words in the box on the right hand side of the blog.  Currently we are working on sick, lick, kick, stick, like, he, she.  

The Mitten

Since returning from break we have been working with the story The Mitten by Jan Brett.  In the story the little boy Nicki loses his white mitten in the snow.  Several animals make the mitten their home causing it to stretch bigger and bigger until finally the bear sneezes and the mitten goes flying into the sky for Nicki to find.

We have used the story during our Reader's Workshop time to work on the concept of characters and to practice some sequencing and retelling.  Mrs. Frazee also incorporated the story into her speech centers.  You can listen to the story on youtube by searching for "The Mitten by Jan Brett".  There are several different versions of it being read aloud.  

For our social work group on Thursday of this week, Mrs. Frazee and Ms. Weston brought a GIANT mitten (two sleeping bags zipped together) and we acted out the story.  It may be my favorite activity we have done so far this year!  The kids had so much fun acting out the story.  Since so many of the students have goals to work on using question words, before each animal could enter the mitten they had to request "May I come in?  I'm cold!"  To which the animals already in the mitten would respond, "No, there's no room." The animal would then say or sign, "Please??" and the animals in the mitten finally say, "okay!"  A few students were hesitant about climbing into the mitten and also did a great job playing Nicki and his grandmother, Baba, who makes the mitten.  We had so much fun acting out the story that we did it again on Friday afternoon - here are some photos!  

Nicki is walking along and looses his mitten.

Baba gives Nicki the mitten.

The rabbit comes hopping along and finds the mitten.

The owl comes along and asks to come inside the mitten.

The rabbit telling the owl she can come in!

The fox asking to come inside the mitten.

The animals squeezing into the mitten.

The bear sneezes and all the animals come rushing out of the mitten!

 Functional Skill

We are currently working on scissor skills during our functional skills time.  The students are practicing the correct way to hold scissors in their hands.  And we are also learning that scissors ONLY touch paper.  On Friday, we used our scissors skills to cut out several different colors of paper to decorate mittens.  The goal is that the students become more comfortable with scissors (right now, many treat them like objects that are very foreign to them), and to be able to cut things out more accurately.  The students are beginning to get a little more comfortable with the scissors in their hands, but we will continue to practice how to hold them and also become more familiar with holding the paper with their other hand.

November Fun

As we are finishing up the month of November, here is a look at some special things we have enjoyed in the classroom recently.

Reader's Workshop:
The focus of the lessons for our Reader's Workshop unit the past few weeks have been about reading with a friend.  I've found that for our classroom, the skills the children are learning from these lessons are actually functional skills.  It has been challenging for the students to learn to sit beside a classmate (Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee) and to share one book.  They are continuing to make progress, but this is something they have had to work extra hard to accomplish!

Social Skills Group:
In preparation for Thanksgiving, our social skills group with Ms. Weston (School Social Worker) and Mrs. Frazee (Speech and Language Therapist) focused on table manners.  The students practiced saying "please" and "thank you" as well as asking for items on the table ("please pass the potatoes").  We continued to practice this skill throughout the week.  We also talked about the importance of using utensils for eating, and waiting our turn.  Mrs. Frazee even brought some cranberry sauce for brave students to try!

Pumpkin Pie:
As a group we followed a recipe to bake a pumpkin pie.  The students were practicing taking turns, stirring, saying the names of different ingredients, and most of all having fun!  Later in the day, students had a chance to have a slice of their pie.  The pie smelled delicious, but among the students the Cool-Whip on top was loved the most!  :)

 

 

 

Turkey Art:
Miss Minto planned a fun turkey art project for art class last week too.  Each feather of the turkey had a different material and the students rotated from station to station adding the items to their turkeys.  She did an outstanding job of incorporation fine motor practice and sensory needs into one project!

 

Word Study:
We are working on a set of new words during our word study time and centers. We are learning to sound out words in the _ot family as well as continue our sight word practice.

hot
got
pot
spot
and
go
to
the

There are a series of videos on youtube that sing sight words and letters.  We occasionally watch the sight word videos for words we are working on, and the students also love the Alphabet Phonics Song.  You can find the videos at this link.
 

I hope everyone has had a nice Thanksgiving break!

Brrrr!

As a reminder - please be sure to send your child to school with a hat and gloves.  It is beginning to get very cold and windy outside, and we do go out for recess every day.

It has been an easy transition back to school after our first week off.  I'm very proud of how well all the students have gone right back into our routine! :)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  

Here are a few pictures from our party last Thursday.

Mr. Bob, one of our classroom paraprofessionals, was a hit in his Tigger costume!

We are waiting for the parade of students to come by in their costumes.  It was very noisy and there was a lot of waiting... but EVERYONE did an outstanding job.  I was so proud of the kids for handling the sensory overload!

We played a bean-bag toss game to win bags of goodies.

 

At another center we made cotton ball ghosts.

 

We also enjoyed some yummy popcorn, orange cups, and juice!

I hope everyone is having a nice break.  We will be back to school on Monday, November 5th. 

Have a fun and safe night of Trick or Treating :)

Nutrition Presentation

If anyone is interested, I received an email about a presentation on nutrition for children with special needs.  I know that many of you have mentioned that you have a difficult time getting your child to eat many foods. 

If you have any questions, you may contact Jean Baber from the LCISD Ed Tech Center at (810) 667 - 6166.

Pumpkin Fun

Remember - Tomorrow, Thursday, October 25th our Halloween Party will take place from 2:00 - 3:00.  We will be participating in the school parade at around 2:15.  The rest of the party will be spent enjoying some fun Halloween centers, snacks, and showing off our costumes.


Pumpkin Investigation: This week we completed a "Pumpkin Investigation."  The kids were excited to be able to get their hands on the pumpkin, and today - IN the pumpkin!  We listed words to describe our pumpkin on the outside, guessed how many lines were on the outside of the pumpkin, the color of the inside, and predicted how many squares tall the pumpkin would be.  It was a great combination of math skills (counting, measuring, and prediction) and the opportunity to practice our speech and vocabulary.

 

Today we cut open the pumpkin to see what color was on the inside.  (We decided on orange and yellow!)  A few adventurous students dug right in!

Mat Man: This week we began working with Mat Man from the Handwriting Without Tears program.  It is designed to teach body awareness, counting, drawing, and pre-writing skills.  There is an interactive game online here.  We sing as we build our Mat Man together, each student takes a turn placing a body part on Mat Man.  The kids also made their own Mat Man pieces that they have started to build on their own at their desks.

Mat Man made as a group from wooden pieces.

Student created Mat Man pieces.

 

An October Update

It's hard to believe our first trimester is almost over!  The past few months have gone by so quickly, and the kids are continuing to work hard and show some outstanding progress!

Here's a look at what we've been up to lately...

Word Study: Today we began a new word family, _am words.  We are focusing on: am, ham, slam, ram, Pam, and the sight words: to, the.  We are using our letter sounds to build the words in each word family.  Words like to and the cannot be sounded out, so we are practicing them using songs and lots of repetition!  On Friday afternoon, we played Word Study BINGO using all the words we have learned since the beginning of the year.  It was amazing how well every student did with finding the words quickly.  I was so excited to see their progress.

Centers: The students are continuing to work well during our Reading/Writing and Math centers.  We use a visual timer to monitor the time spent at each center, and then rotate through each station.  Our Reading/Writing centers also have the pleasure of including our speech teacher Mrs. Frazee on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Mrs. Frazee runs her own center that always includes fun speech activities.  The students look forward to this center most of all!  She always brings exciting props and hands on activities that the children enjoy.  In addition to speech centers, we have also usually have at least one center focused on Word Study, one center focused on writing, and one center focused on letters and sounds.

Mrs. Frazee leads a fun fall center with apples.

We practice writing our letters in salt trays at a writing center.

 

Creating word family books at a Word Study Center.

Reader's Workshop: We have been working on the following Reader's Workshop lessons recently.

• Readers keep their eyes on the book.
• Readers think about the book they are reading.
• Readers reread books they enjoy.
• Readers read with a friend.

Life Skills: We have spent a lot of time working on identifying feelings.  Specifically happy, mad, and sad.  We also discussed things that could make us feel each of these feelings, and also what can we do to feel better again.  With the help of our school social worker, Ms. Weston, we have been introduced to self-calming break techniques from the Conscious Discipline series.  You can download the four calming techniques posters and also information about how to use them here.

Fun and Exciting News:

• LINKS (peer buddies) are now helping us in the morning coming into the building, at our lockers, and during breakfast time.  We have four LINKS, both boys and girls joining us each morning.  
• Our therapy dog from last school year, Pepper, is visiting us again on Thursday afternoons.  The kids look forward to her visit all week.

 

• Halloween Party: A note will go home tomorrow (Tuesday, October 16th) about our upcoming Halloween party.  Since we do not have school October 26th - November 4th, we will be having our Halloween party on Thursday, October 25th from 2:00 - 3:00pm.  Family and Friends are invited to attend.

2 Hour Delay Tomorrow

Just a reminder - there is a two hour delay tomorrow, Wednesday, September 19th.  Your child's bus will be picking them up 2 hours from their regular time.

Our day is scheduled to begin at 10:14.  We will be eating lunch at our regular time of 11:30am. 

Social Skills Group

Once a week we have the pleasure of welcoming our school social worker, Ms. Weston, and our speech teacher, Mrs. Frazee, into our classroom for a group lesson on social skills.  The lessons include fun activities that provide practice in skills such as turn taking, following directions, greeting others, etc.  So far this school year we have participated in a pretend grocery shopping experience, a game similar to hot potato, and some fun songs. 

This past week our group lesson was based on the skill of greeting others.  The students practiced making eye contact and using their words to say hello.  The video below shows a glimpse of the two activities from the lesson.  During the first activity the students took turns entering the classroom and greeting a friend and Ms. Weston.  In the second activity, the students pretended to be getting onto the school bus and greeting their driver.

 

 (I'm hoping by posting the video this way it will turn out clearer than the videos from last year's blog.  The video is hosted on my school youtube account, but is not available by search on youtube for privacy and safety reasons.)

New Word Family

If you notice to the right, we began working with a new word family today.  The _at family.  The specific words we are focusing on are:

at
cat
bat
hat
rat

Our _it words have moved onto our word wall, but we will continue to work them in for practice!

I have had a few questions about when LINKS will begin.  Right now, our school social worker is collecting the permission slips from the students who are signing up to be LINKS.  Once the permission slips are turned in, she will be assigning LINKS to each of our students.  I have provided her with different times and activities where LINK support would be beneficial for each child.  Things should be ready in the near future, thank you all for being interested in and supporting such a great program here at Turrill.