Task Cards sold at my TPT store – Page 6

Social Skills and The Size of the Problem

21 Feb

February 21, 2014 Cindy 0

The need for social skills groups continues to grow at the elementary school where I teach. We had enough students to form two groups this school year. One group is made primarily of second graders and the other fourth and fifth graders. The counselor and I teach these classes together.
We have used Leah Kuypers The Zones of Regulation® (www.zonesofregulation.com) and Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking® materials for our lesson planning. Recently we have worked on identifying emotions and how they fall into the 5 zones. For a brief overview, the Zones are 5 color coded signs that rank from the lowest blue zone of low alertness which relate to being calm, or tired to the red zone of heightened alertness which relates to feelings such as anger or fear. You can click on the web sites to obtain more explicit information.

These colors and zones can also be used when talking about the size of a problem. Students determine if a problem is at the lowest level which would be a glitch in our day or at the highest level a crisis difficult to correct. Other problems may fall somewhere in between. When compared with the zones of regulation students can see if the emotional reaction is appropriate to the problem. This also leads to talking about possible solutions.
When starting this unit, I found it difficult to find appropriate scenarios for the students to rate. They came up with a few on their own but typically do not think of the full range. you would be surprised at how much comes in as being a crisis. I created 26 cards with written scenarios. I added another four blank cards that if drawn the student would make up their own. The scenarios are ones that are common to students. I used Ned’s head for drawing out cards. Ned’s head is a good way to add humor to the situation and remind students that they may be thinking and seeing from one perspective inside their head. They can step out to see another perspective and problem solve. Here are a sample of the cards. You can down load them and test them out by clicking the button below.

You can reach the the full set by clicking the button below.

3 Sentence Sequence Task Cards

16 Aug

August 16, 2013 Cindy 0

I decided to update the 3 Sentence Sequence Cards that are in the Expressive Language Section. This activity is for students who are able to make complex sentences from 2 given sentences and are ready for a little more difficult task. It requires the student to hold the meaning and sequence of 3 sentences in their memory and condense it into one complex sentence. This is a prerequisite skill for getting the main idea and useful for taking notes in class. I have used the task cards mainly with 5th and 6th graders so I tried to make pictures less childish. I also added a backside to the cards that provide example sentences. However, One of the sentences is not correct so students will need to decide which one it is and correct it. If your students are motivated by technology you can use the QR codes that are provided to check their answer. You can read a QR code with an app you down load on one of your electronic devices. There is an answer sheet if you are unable to do this. I’ve also thought of using my pen with the invisible ink to highlight the wrong answer. Because I appreciate the feedback I get from my blog readers, I am putting 8 free double-sided cards here so you may try them out.

free 3 sentence sequence cards

If they work well for your students and you would like more, there are an additional 12 pages for a total of 32 double-sided cards at the TPT store. You can click on the button at the top of the page.

Bad Thing, Good Thing; It is the perspective you take..

13 May

May 13, 2013 Cindy 0

I imagine some of you are wrapping up your school year and ready for a break. We still have 4 weeks to go here. I am still doing lesson planning in the middle of all those end of the year IEPs and progress reports. I can’t help thinking about last year’s contract negotiation issues which caused an unplanned for week off. This year is going much better. Looking at the bright side, I developed some strong relationships with my fellow teachers with all that walking. It paid off in my interactions this school year. This got me thinking about how bad things often have a silver lining, and how that carries us through to a better future. My inflexible thinkers often have difficulty seeing this possibility and have difficulty making a recovery when things go badly. It may be one of the most important life skills to develop. If you are using a Social Thinking Curriculum by Michelle Garcia Winner, www.socialthinking.com, it fits in well with determining “The size of the problem.”

I decided to address this ability to turn a bad thing into a good thing more directly. We’ve been using cards I made called “Bad Thing Good Thing’. I started using them with my 3^rd and 4^th graders who are part of a social skills group. That was tough. The inability to think flexibly was very apparent and they needed a lot of prompting to think otherwise. The 5^th grader did better. I was worried that I might have created something too difficult for the age range so I brought them out for my articulation students working on sounds in conversational speech. The 3^rd graders through 5^th graders were able to do them without prompting and pretty automatically. I concluded that these cards were very telling about a deficit area.

I am putting the full set of 32 cards on TPT. You can reach it by clicking on the button at the top of the page.

I am listing the first 11 cards here Good Thing no. eleven cards. I would love to get your feed- back on how they work for your students.

Making Descriptive Sentences for an Easter Activity

16 Mar

March 16, 2013 Cindy 0

I have five days left before Spring Break and I realized Easter is coming faster than I thought. It will be done when we come back from Spring Break and I haven’t even pulled out the plastic Easter eggs. The Easter eggs always add a little variety to the speech therapy sessions. In preparation for this, I updated the Descriptive Sentences Activity that is in the Expressive Language section. It now has 20 basic sentences and I added color and visual cues to the spinner. It is free at the TPT store here. I will print out the basic sentences and insert them in the eggs. The students will pull them out and spin the spinner to make more elaborate sentences. If they succeed they will keep the egg. If not, it will get thrown back into the basket. I will give some sort of little prize to the person with the most eggs.

Comprehension of Complex Sentences

8 Mar

March 8, 2013 Cindy 0

There has been a set of cards called Comprehension of Complex Sentences in the Listening and Comprehension section. I expanded on those, adding pictures and colors and more of them. If you have used these a lot you may like the new version. The answer card on the right is meant to be folded behind the prompt card on the left. This provides a sturdy card if they are glued and laminated.

Download the free set of 9 trial cards.

If you feel like you can use more, there are the full set of 36 cards at the TPT store. The button below is a direct link to the store.