Image – Page 20 – In Spontaneous Speech

Target Antonyms

25 Jan

January 25, 2014 Cindy 0

January sure has gone fast. Here we are a week away from February. We are coming to the end of a grading period so I am busy writing progress reports. I am a bit behind because of other meetings. I am sure you can all relate to that. We have a new software program which makes it a little harder. The paper work has been a bit of a challenge this year.

It is getting harder to be creative with the bulletin board lately. I stayed with my theme of antonyms for February. I looked in my cupboard and noticed that I have a large supply of straws on hand. Valentines Day brings out the cupid in all of us so I decided to make arrows. It helped that we have die cuts for hearts available. The die cut makes a heart as an outline and a smaller heart to be pushed out of the center. We used the smaller hearts to make the point of the arrow and used a folded rectangle for the feathered end. The students wrote a word on the arrow head and the opposite word on the white paper to match. It doesn’t look like the words are visible in the picture. This is the beginning of our project. I will post updates as we go. The students are making directions as usual. However, we are regulated for voices as well as visual images so I can not post my story kit directions until we are done and I can remove the child audio. This is what it is looking like. Here is the Storykit link to the directions: arrow directions

Don’t Fall Through the Ice

8 Jan

January 8, 2014 Cindy 0

This is our first week back from the holiday break. Some of us are in the grips of winter. Baby its cold out there! It seemed appropriate to go with a winter theme and cold things. I dug into my archives and brought out my version of “Don’t Fall Through the Ice”. This activity has been in the vocabulary section and there are written instructions that can be printed out under the link. I didn’t include pictures so some of you may have missed it. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. The activity is really very simple and made from recycled materials. I get a lot of use from my coffee cans. All you need is a wide mouthed container like a coffee container, a large rubber band, paper towels, marbles, and a spinner made from a plastic lid. The spinner has the words, one, couple, few, and several. The marbles are placed in a container of water. The paper towel is stretched across the mouth of the container and held by the rubber band. Students take turns spinning the spinner, taking the corresponding amount of marbles from the water, and placing them on top of the paper towel. Eventually the water will weaken the paper towel and the marbles will fall through. I used this activity as a reinforcement for students during therapy or as a group activity to work on the concepts of amount. I have table groups play and then compare the number of marbles they put on top before they fall through. In addition to the spinner words you can talk about the concepts of wet/dry, weak/strong, and most/ least.

Pop the Pig Game Adaptation

14 Dec

December 14, 2013 Cindy 2

This is the time of year when a lot of games are selling for good prices and you may be wondering which ones are good for therapy. I have adapted Pop the Pig recently. It really only needed a communication board to add the structure I need. I use it with students who are working on making basic comments such as I have ______, and I want______. It is also possible to work on descriptive vocabulary such as size, colors and amounts. We also work on turn taking and becoming aware of another student’s turn and when they are finished. The game is really pretty simple. Students roll the die to choose a colored hamburger. The student then looks at the bottom to see how many times they press the pig’s head so it will munch on the hamburger placed in the mouth. Pressing on the head inflates the rubber tummy until the belt pops open. It isn’t as dramatic as the advertisement indicates. However my students seem to enjoy this game and it provides a lot of repetition. I have them make comments for every turn they take. It is also good game for general reinforcement. If you find one at a good price, pick it up.

5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

2 Nov

November 2, 2013 Cindy 0

Goodwill is such a good place to find cheap games to adapt for therapy. This was a recent find.

This type of games works well for my students in the Life Skills program. It keeps them engaged, promotes turn taking, and teaches language with repetition. Many of my students are working on making comments using sentence frames such as I want,I have, and I need. They are also working on using descriptive words such as colors, amount and basic prepositions. I make a communication board available for my verbally challenged students. I use the visual cues to prompt sentences. The students I worked with last year are now using the communication boards independently to form 3 word sentences. Children with autism often get stuck in an echo pattern where they answer questions by repeating the question. The communication board helps break up that pattern.

This game also gives opportunity to practice verb + ing sentences. Students pick a circle card depicting a monkey getting ready for bed and use verbs such as brushing teeth, taking a bath and putting pajamas on. After describing the picture, the students put a monkey on top of the bed and then spin the spinner. The student then pushes the button on the bed post the number of times the spinner indicates. At some point the bed will spring and the monkeys will fall off. There is a game board that also comes with the game, but my students had fun using it at this basic level and I felt I had control over the pieces. I found this game had a lot of possibilities for students at different levels. I’ve thought of making more round disks to add to the variety of verbs that could be picked.

A Very Simple Spider Web

11 Oct

October 11, 2013 Cindy 0

The school year is in full swing. I had a bit of a shaky start and that is why it seemed like I disappeared. We have a lot of new staff to include a new principal, new psychologist, and Learning Resource Teacher. The new Learning Resource Teacher just started a week ago and a substitute teachers took her place until then. As if that weren’t enough, rooms had changed over the summer and the resource room was a newly emptied room. That doesn’t work very well for a substitute teacher and many of you may relate to when chairs, tables and desks are not in rooms they are up for grabs. I was left with the duty of getting things found and organized so a teacher could use the room with students. In the spirit of “Good Thing” and “Bad Thing”; new procedures can be put into place because there is no one left to remember the old ways except me, but I am also the only one that is familiar with the history of the special education files and students. I felt like I had to wear many hats. We also have a new program to complete our special education paperwork. This is really challenging my ability to be flexible and learn something new . It is making me go through the procedures we tell the students to do; deep breaths, count to ten. It is not OK to scream.

This school year. I have pretty much the same population as last year; 2 Life skills classrooms, general education K-5th, and a charter school K-6th. I am doing push in for two Kindergarten classes and the 2 Life skills classrooms. The need for social pragmatics groups continues to grow. I am team teaching 3 social pragmatic groups with the help of the school counselor. We are implementing material from 2nd Steps, Michelle Winner’s materials, and other things we find.

So getting on to the topic, We have been completing spider related activities. Many of you may be familiar with the Spider Web Activity where students form a circle and toss a ball of yarn across while continuing to hang on to the yarn with one hand. This creates a spider web in the center of the circle. I have used it in the past for concepts such as across, left hand, right hand, over, and under. It also works for teaching the social pragmatic groups the importance of working with a group. If a student doesn’t keep their mind and eyes with the group, they drop the yarn and the web becomes messed up. We have been talking about how you need to keep your eyes, your ears, your brain, your body, and your heart with the group so everyone can learn and work together.

I came across this spider and decided it would make a good bulletin board project. http://momitforward.com/craft-toilet-paper-spider . It met my requirements for materials that are easy to find and cheap. I found the eyes at the dollar store and already had the paper rolls and pipe cleaners. I bought a can of black spray paint from Wal-Mart for a total cost of $3.

I made a spider web out of yarn. and just stapled it to the bulletin board. It is looking like this. I added my pom pom spider from last year.

The students will make spiders that look like this and add them to the web. I added the crumpled paper on the back for some color.

I like my bulletin board activities to cover as many therapy objectives as possible. I use the free app Story Kit to make pictured directions that my older students can record. The younger students will practice following directions and understanding the sequence. The spiders also provide opportunity for problem solving and telling directions. It is easy to see how they are made by just looking at them because the parts are all visible. The Story Kit directions are in the process of being made so the audio is not all available yet. Story Kit formulates a storyboard that can be shared. http://iphone.childrenslibrary.org/cgi-bin/view.py?b=rpdpipex66oskuofy2ua The app formulates a book with pages on your device.