St. Patrick's Day Pack

I finally finished my St. Patrick's Day pack just in time for one of my favorite holidays! Okay, they're all my favorite :) The pack includes about 20 pages of math & literacy activities working on cutting, coloring, color words, number identification, creating sentences, and journaling. As usual, it includes activities that can be used with younger, typical students, older students with special needs, students with fine motore delays, and more. There are several activities that can be used as regular worksheets, used to create interactive worksheets, or to create file folder activities. Here's the link to the product over at my TPT store.

I plan on using these pages with the kiddos on Monday & Tuesday. These will be great practice activities for my kids to work on while I pull them individually for goal work. I need to get some IEP goal data collection finished up before report cards go out since I've been gone so much lately with training. Don't get me wrong, I love that my district is so focused on professional development but I sure hate being away from my kids and getting behind on paper work. I only have one more day of training this week & then things should settle down. This week I will learn about the Fundations program- I am super excited about getting a better understanding and to begin implementing the program fully into my classroom! Have a great week!!

And We're Done!

Well, this week was a big one for me. I just got back from the Georgia Autism Conference in Atlanta, I had training for the new SEAS program that we just started using in our district, and my GAAs were due! I am so relieved to be finished with those assessments. I feel like I have learned so much over the past 6 months or so and I definitely want to remember a few tips for myself *if* I have to do them again next year. Here are my top three things that I learned to help me:

1. Plan, Plan, Plan. Since I had never completed GAAs before and wasn't very familiar with what the finished products would look like, I looked at each activity in each standard in each content area in each collection separately. At the end I was able to see how it all fit together. Next time, I would sit down and and plan out EVERYTHING using a graphic organizer. I think if I started earlier and took more time in the beginning, I would not feel as stressed throughout the process. I like the tables included in the manual but I think I would prefer to create my own.

2. Write it up ASAP. This go round, I completed all-or almost all- of my activities before beginning on the writing/documenting process. Next time, I hope to immediately write up the activities after the assessments. Not only will I be able to stay more organized but I won't have to take as many notes on the activities while implementing them because the details will be fresh on my mind.

3. Use my info chart from the beginning. I started using a color-coded chart that included all of my activities for each student. Between creating, implementing, writing, printing, and filing all of the activities, things got a little confusing. For the second collection period, I created the chart and color-coded each activity to remind myself where I was. If it was highlighted green, it was created and ready to implement, red meant it was written and ready to print, yellow meant it was completed finished and filed, etc. The chart included the student name, the content area, the full standard, and each activity. This was so helpful, given my inability to remember anything!

Now that I am finally finished and have tons of free time (ha!), I plan on finishing up a few products I've been slowly working on and getting those over to my TPT store. Hopefully I'll be able to update more often- stay tuned!

Valentine's Day Pack

I have a new pack up over at my TPT store just in time for Valentine's Day! It's a 33 page math and literacy pack, much like my 100th Day of School pack. Most of the pages have adapted copies for use with students who are unable to write. Since I was so slow on getting this one finished and we are out this week for Winter Break, I won't actually get to use this one with my kiddos. I hope some of you find it handy and are able to use some of the pages! I'm going to start working on a St. Patrick's Day pack this week- let me know if there are any pages you would like to see me add for this one.

I LOVE the feedback I've been getting over at my TPT store- thanks y'all! What's Skow-ing on in 4th Grade posted some adorable pics from her class celebrating the 100th Day of School using the crowns from my freebie. Y'all check out her blog- it's great. I also have had a request to redo my Penguin Number Match-Up using one color for all of the number cards. I'll be working on that and hope to have that added in the next few days. I purposefully made it with the matching colors to help my kiddos out so your feedback is so helpful in letting me know what you need for YOUR students. Keep those comments coming. I hope everyone is having a great school day today!

TPT Sale!

Head over to my TPT store today- 20% off!!

Penguin Literacy Pack

We just finished up a unit on penguins last week & I had several activities that I created along the way so I decided to combine them into a little pack for my TPT shop. It has 9 pages of literacy printables that can be used with If You Were a Penguin by Florence & Wendell Minor. Most pages have an adapted version for students who cannot write but can use a bingo marker to select the answer. Get yours here for just $1!

Great resource for GAA & Instruction

Happy MLK Day Y'all! I wanted to share a new resource that I just began using & am super excited about. A fellow teacher has been telling me about the Sounding Board app that she uses on her IPad with her kiddos (Thanks Rachel!). I finally decided to check it out last week & LOVE it! It is great to use after reading a text and asking student if they liked the text, why they liked it, and about their favorite part by allowing them to select pictures. This would align perfectly with the CCGPS standard: ELACC4W1- Write opinion piece on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons (a. Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in which related ideas are grouped to support the writer's purpose.)

I loved using the Sounding Board app because I could quickly create the tasks just a few minutes before actually implementing it. This is great for someone like me who feels like they never have enough time. All I had to do was open up the app on the IPad, take a few quick pictures of scenes in the book and of some opinion pictures that I already had printed, record a few prompts,  and that was it. Easy Peasy! I have so many plans to use this app during instructional times so that my students with severe communication needs can express themselves. If you haven't heard of it yet, you should definitely check it out!

Have a great week!

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
MLK

100th Day of School FREEBIE & Complete Pack

I can't believe that the 100th day of school is right around the corner. I created this fun math + literacy pack to use on that day with all of my students. It consists of 38 pages- including a letter to parents discussing the celebration, a crown craft, and many other printables. It has bingo dot pages, coloring, tracing, and simple number identification pages for my lower learners and hundreds chart fill-ins, beginning multiplication activities, and cloze reading pages for my higher kids. I also have included a 14-page emergent reader in both color and black & white along with ideas for lessons to be planned using them. Many of the activities are re-created two or three times to include accommodations for the various learning styles or ability levels of my kiddos. That way we can all work as a group on the same concepts but it is developmentally appropriate for each individual student. I can't wait to try these out with my class! Feel free to head over to my TPT store and pick up this pack for just $2. Or you can download the 8-page FREEBIE sample here. I hope you have a Happy 100th Day of School!