Thursday, July 19, 2012

ESY

And here we are, day 2 of summer school complete.  I only have 2 of my usual students, the other 4, oh boy....what a handful!  Our preschoolers are used to a 2.5 hour day (unless they are with me, in which case they are used to full day programming); however, for summer school we are asking them to attend and focus for 4 hours.  Needless to say these 4 kiddos are EXHAUSTED!  I even had one fall asleep yesterday...oops!

This week our "theme" (and oh how I use that term loosely!) was farm animals.  We made such a fun craft! And I am the most un-crafty person, so any time we do a craft in my room it is a pretty big deal.  Our classroom art motto is "Art is a Process, NOT a Product."  I took a separate picture of each step and copy and pasted into a BoardMaker schedule.  The kiddos responded well to this and were proud of their cows!

In my class when I want the students to check their schedules I will ring a bell.  Of course I had left my bell down on the first day, and low and behold, my student did not want to continue with the activity we were doing, rang the bell and yelled "Check schedule!" I love how she wants to communicate and loves/thrives on the routine of our classroom.

My classroom aides for summer are not my aides that I have during the school year.  Today the one aide asks, "Is it going well?  Am I doing ok?"  My response, "Nobody hurt each other, there were no death threats, there was no blood, and no one filed workmen's comp...yep, it's going pretty well!"  Here's to next week going just as well :)

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Intro

Hi all,
This blog will be devoted to special education with a focus in autism and severe behavior strategies.  I will post pictures of classroom set-up, data collection, TEACCH bins, etc.  I am a sixth year teacher.  I currently run a preschool Autism/Resource classroom, in addition to my preschool class, I have been asked to start-up/run a K-1 grade AU unit as well.  I invite you to embark on a this journey with me.