Donating for Oklahoma

I know that we were all horrified by the severe weather events in OK in the last few days.  For those of us who work in schools, the devastating impact of the tornado on the school in Moore, OK really touched a nerve for all of us.  I have always known how caring teachers can be and how they put their students first, but to have it demonstrated by physically shielding students with their bodies is almost just too much to imagine.  Another thing about teachers (and when I say teachers I mean educators of all sorts and professions who work in education) is that we are a resilient bunch who always want to help.  To that end, there have been a number of fundraisers put together with amazing speed to send much needed funds to help the recovery effort in Oklahoma.  The outpouring of the Teachers Pay Teachers community in this effort has been unbelievable to me.  Below are some links of products that you can purchase on TPT and similar communities to help raise money for this cause.  In addition, I will be donating all my money from sales in my TPT store on Monday, May 27, 2013 to the Red Cross to support efforts in Moore, OK.  TPT will be sending out more details about product bundles you can purchase on Friday, May 24 to donate to the cause as well and I will add those links as I receive them.  I will also put links to a linky that is being started with other stores that will be donating, once I am able to link up,

Here is a bundle of educational resources being sold for donations from Teacher Treasure Chest.
This is a link to bundles being sold on Teachers' Notebook to raise funds
This is a link to my TPT store

If you know of other fundraisers that should be shared, please add them to the comments.  If you are from OK and were affected by this tragedy, please know you are in our prayers.

Guest Blog from the Dabbling Speechie

First I want to say my prayers and thoughts are with those families in OK after the tornados.  While the stories of teachers protecting their students during the tornado (and in Newtown) are inspiring and just show what I have always known about teachers--that they are selfless people who always put the kids first--my wish for the future is that we have less opportunity to test that theory.  

Note:  I will be out at a conference beach trip on Marco Island for the Florida Speech and Hearing Association conference.  I'm presenting on data collection and evidence-based communication strategies, so expect some posts about that when I get back after Memorial Day.  In my absence, I happy to have the Dabbling Speechie guest blogging today.  She is going to give some great information about speech therapists and how the collaboration between SLPs and teachers is so critical for our guys with ASD.  I'm off to collaborate with a margarita with my friend the SLP....

 Thanks Christine for having me guest post on your blog today! I wanted to share my experience targeting social skills as a Speech Pathologist in the school setting. I have a background in doing in home ABA, working with birth to 3 year olds in a private practice and having experience in the school setting working with K-12th grade, so I have dabbled in working with ALL ages of students and have experience with many different communication disorders. My passion is working with students on the autism spectrum particularly with students who have Asperger's or high functioning Autism. Traditionally, I have targeted social skills in a small group in my little speech room and was wanting to work on generalizing the skills I have been teaching my students.

So, last year I began going into my 4th-6th grade SDC classroom 30 minutes a week to do a social skills lesson. Each week I planned an activity and tried to tailor it around the needs of my students. The teacher and I would often collaborate via email or in the hallway as we would pass each other throughout the day. In the beginning, I spent 3-4 sessions reviewing and teaching social skill vocabulary such as expected vs. unexpected behaviors, good thought vs. not so good thought, how we make an impression, whole body listening and keeping our brain in the group. This gave my SDC teacher time to watch me teach and use the vocabulary. It also allowed her to assess how she could infuse my lessons and social vocabulary into her curriculum.

My SDC teacher DOES NOT write in social development time into her academic schedule because she uses the vocabulary concepts ALL DAY long during classroom instruction by using the "social vocabulary" to provide feedback when students are making a “good” impression, displaying an unexpected behavior (i.e. shouting out in class, knocking over chairs, refusing to do work, etc) or when their brain isn’t in the group. Since I have been pushing in her classroom, the students are now using the vocabulary with each other and beginning to identify when their behavior, words, and nonverbal cues are expected or unexpected for a social situation. The success with my SDC student’s social skills is largely due to using a TEAM APPROACH and the teacher using these terms throughout the day, which means that the student's are getting DAILY practice with their social interactions as opposed to once or twice a week. More opportunities means faster progress and ability to generalize into more settings and across different people. This approach does not require additional planning either just learning the vocabulary and using it!

Most of my resources and vocabulary concepts come from Michelle Garcia Winner who has broken down the layers of social communication, so that it is easier to teach these skills to students who have a hard time grasping the big picture of social thinking! I would recommend attending one of her conferences and/or purchasing her resources Thinking About YOU, Thinking About ME, 2nd Edition and Think Social! A Social Thinking Curriculum for School-Aged Students to help you with assessment, writing goals and conducting therapy. I have found that Jill Kuzma's blog to be very helpful as well. I also want to share some fabulous resources I have been using from my fellow SPEECHIES that I grabbed off of TPT.

My Help! I Need Social Skills pack has lessons to work on perspective taking, tone of voice, identifying expected vs. unexpected behaviors, identifying what is missing from a social situation, and explaining the impression people are making.



Speech Room News blog by Jenna Rayburn has lots of great social skill packs. The pack I have used the most is her In Your Shoes feelings, problem solving and inferencing pack. It is based on teaching students that expression “thinking in someone else’s shoes”. You can change the activity to have students answer the questions the way a teacher might think, a 3 year old or a mother. The possibilities are endless.



The Super Social Skills pack was made by If I Only Had Super Powers blogger. It is a great pack filled with super hero posters, social stories, and game activities to work on expected vs. unexpected behaviors, emotions, asking questions in a conversation, thinking about others, problem solving and how to be responsible.



The Speech Bubble has created a very cute Social Skills Circus pack that works on perspective taking, conversation starters , problem solving, and working on how to keep a conversation going.



Speech2U has a great product that works on the Nonverbal Social Pragmatic skills such as tone of voice, personal space, and body language. Grab her Zombie Themed Social Skills Pack to use in the classroom!



Hope this was helpful! Remember that your Speech Therapist is a great resource for how to implement all sorts of skills throughout the classroom day!! Visit my blog, facebook, TPT, and Pinterest for more ideas and resources.

Five Ways to Store Autism Visuals

As we all know, classrooms supporting students with autism typically have lots of visuals.  I mean lots and lots and lots of visuals!  Trying to figure out how to store the visuals is always a challenge.  You want them to be easily accessible and you want to be able to find the one you want quickly.  But you also want them organized in some way and out of the way, or they get lost.  With everybody packing up at the end of the year and reviewing how to set up the room next year,  I thought I would share some strategies I've seen and used over the years that have worked well.  Sometimes you can keep them in a shoebox and it works.  But when it doesn't, here are 5 more ideas.  

1. Store them in a pocket chart.  Just make sure that you hold the pocket chart on the wall with something really sturdy.  After about a week, this one fell down because we hadn't used enough velcro to keep it on the wall.  Believe me, you don't want the pocket chart dumping all the visuals on the floor!
2. This is a set of visuals that gave information to students on the way in and out the door.  So for instance, one is a visual of the playground with an X through and a picture of rain--meaning no playground today because it's raining.  This teacher stored the visuals in a ziplock baggie that was taped to the door.  That allowed them to be handy for where they needed to be used.
3. This is a jewelry holder which work wonderfully for smaller visuals and can be easily hung on a wall or a door, so you don't have to sacrifice shelf space or table space.  I found this one at Michael's and thought it was pretty.  Target also sells them regularly.
4. This is a variation on #3 if you can't find jewelry holders or have larger visuals, shoe holders work well with all the same advantages.  These are also great because you can store similar visuals in the same compartment and they are see-through so you can see the ones you need.
5. And finally this one is baby food or pudding containers organized within a basket.  This works well if you want to organize them in smaller groups.

So, how do you organize your visuals in your classroom?

This just in!  We have a winner in the 200 Follower Giveaway!!  Lacey D. check your email to claim your printables.  

I Can Do It Myself! Structured Work System Presentation

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for Weather Kids, Behavioral Visuals and the Money Essentials bundle.  You have a great chance to win--just enter at the Rafflecopter at this post.

I had the great opportunity to present to a group of parents and teachers in Huntsville, Alabama last week.  They were such a great audience and I got to present about 2 of my favorite topics.  I presented in the morning on work systems for home and school and in the afternoon on addressing challenging behaviors.  I told them I would put the color version of the handout up on the blog so that they could access it and share it.  To download the handout, click here.  Please feel free to share it but keep my name on it and do not publish it on other blogs or in any other way.  If you want to feature or include it on a blog or other internet site, please do so with a link back here.  In the handout there is a list of resources like my Pinterest board on work tasks for ideas for other tasks.  I thought I would highlight a few here that would be great for families over the summer in using work systems with their children.  For more ideas about work systems, you can also check out our book that includes the data sheets, directions for developing and teaching work systems, and lots of ideas for younger and older students.  You can also check out the following blog posts for information about setting up the system, ideas to remember in using it, and resources.

For little guys I thought this one was a good one for practicing play skills.  Take a picture of Mr. Potato Head created in different ways and have the student build him to match one of the pictures.  Click on the pin to get to the original source of the pin.


This one comes from The Autism Helper blog and has a freebie for of dark and light clothes for sorting. You could do a variation of the one in the picture with real materials in a work system too with the trash can and recycling bin.




Or use laundry baskets:


This one is also from The Autism Helper. Great idea to organize putting lunch together independently.



This one is cute for those working on fine motor activities and it's portable if you need something to do while waiting.



This one comes from Tasks Galore, another set of great books with ideas for work systems.





An oldie but goodie and very easy to make to practice motor skills of putting tops on containers.


I could go on forever with ideas...and I'll do another post soon with others. Basically I think I just got lost in Pinterest and I'm afraid if I don't stop, I will never return to the real world in which people want me to do real things. :) And because I must claim this (along with clip art) as my addictions, I hooked up with Diving Into Learning's Time Spent on Pinterest Should Equal Professional Development Hours!  Check out more pinterest posts at her site.

So, check out my Pinterest boards. Here is the link to the freebie presentation on work systems that has more ideas for tasks. And don't forget to enter the giveaway--Weather Kid and the Money Essentials are activities that would work wonderfully with work systems. What pins and other ideas do you have for parents to use work systems at home?  And I'm linking the free presentation up with Freebie Friday...so hop on over to the TBA site for some more freebies!

Thank You for Following Giveaway

Wow!  Over the past months I have built up a number of followers!  As I write this, there are more than 200 fans on the Facebook fan page, almost 600 on Pinterest and 119 on Teachers Pay Teachers.

THANK YOU!  

To celebrate I am having a Giveaway.  Enter below to win 3 fabulous packages from my Teachers Pay Teachers Store and the store of Superteach56!  The contest runs from today (5/12/13) and will close at midnight on Saturday (5/18/13).  If you follow my Facebook page, you already meet the minimum requirements to enter and get 5 entries.

The Money Essentials Bundle for Special Education is a bundle of 5 different products for teaching money skills.  It was designed for students on a functional curriculum, but would be great for younger students in general education learning money skills.  It contains 4 sets of task cards.  Two focus on matching change amounts to prices--see my post about them here.  Two focus on the Next Dollar strategy--see my post on that here.  And there are the Next Dollar Worksheets in the package as well.  Click on the picture above to connect to the product in my TPT store and check out the preview to see all you would get.  

Behavioral & Schedule Visual Supports for Students with Autism 

from Superteach56's store.

This set of visual strategy items was designed for elementary-aged children needing extra behavioral/visual supports in the classroom. Penny and dinosaur tokens have been included. Use whatever motivates your student. These behavioral support could be used with different token systems for older students. Click on the picture above to see it in her store.

 And finally Weather Kids.  This is the best selling products in my store.  It's a reusable set of file folder activities in which students dress figures for the daily weather.  There are 2 boys and 2 girls in this set with different skin color, clothing, rain boots, snow boots, a coat, a sweater, swimsuits, shoes, a snow shovel, an umbrella, and sunglasses. Click on the picture above to see it in the store and check out my blog post on it when I released it.

So enter below before next Saturday to win!  Good luck!



a Rafflecopter giveaway