Story Boxes

This year I have been given the pleasure of working with a student with a visual impairment. I struggled with how to get him more involved during our reading instruction time. My speech path helped me come up with this story box idea. For our October book I choose to make the story box for There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. All my students love books that have a repeating pattern. This student loved it too.

We are blessed to have a specialist come in twice weekly that only works with our students in the district who have visual impairments. She was nice enough to braille all the words in the book for us. She gave me a cheat sheet thankfully! My student doesn't read the braille but we want him exposed to it and he enjoys having me move his finger across the works as I read. In the box, I got every object from the book that she swallows. As we came to the object I got it out of the box for him to touch. He loved that at the end he had all the objects to hold. His favorite was the pipe!

I plan to make more of these boxes as we go through the year. They are not only good for this student but for all my students. Let us know if you have ever made any story boxes!

Classroom pet

Royal: Room 113's classroom pet

I got Royal from Petco's Classroom pet grant. I went to the pet store and asked them if they had a good pig for a group of kids. Luckily, they knew their pets. This little guy was in a cage all alone instead of with the other pigs. Apparently he HATES other pigs, but he LOVES people!!! He had never been aggressive towards people and he just loves to cuddle. 

So we started by learning about guinea pigs. We made charts, did research and made lists of materials we needed. The students helped pick out every aspect except for the pig himself. He was my responsibility. 

Now because I know our kids. I was not going to leave the responsibility of naming him all on their own. Each of our three classes came up with some names. We voted and each room suggested one name. We then let the building staff vote. That is how we got Royal! One year after the Kansas City Royals win the World Series.

I went and got him  and we were all so excited! We get to feed him and take care of him. He helped us practice for Job Olympics actually!! 

He is hands down one of the best pigs ever!!! He likes to dance when he is fed carrots! Let me know if you have questions about the great time that is having a classroom pet! 

New material!

New Material!!!! 

New FREEBIE added to our TPT store!!! Get it by clicking the link below. 

Topics of Conversation

We use the pictures to identify what people might like to talk about based on what is in their rooms. Below are a few pictures of them being used in my room! Please let me know what you think and if you enjoy this new FREE product! 

Jody's Class Reveal 2017-2018

Hello friends! Today I'm going to give you a little tour of my room. It's not pretty and perfect but this is what my classroom looks like pretty often. It's well loved!

This is the wall right by the door into our classroom. This is where we have our calendar, job board, attendance and daily schedule. Above the board is our word wall. The door to the right goes into our apartment. I'll do a post on it in a few months.

These are the tables that we sit at. Each table has the student's colored schedule. This helps the paras keep track of what the students need to be doing at a certain time. Each table also has a little bucket that we keep all of our supplies in.

This little bookcase houses all of the morning binders and the drawers where they keep all the papers that need to go home. This helps keep us organized. They know to go there first thing in the morning to get their binder. The closet that is between my room and my teaching partners room houses all of our job and work boxes.

This is on my board that is at the front of the classroom. I just got this put up last weekend so I haven't been able to use it too much yet. Over the summer I worked with some other educators to write curriculum and we aligned it to the state standards. This is something admin looks for when they visit the classroom. I plan to make cards to put here with the standards listed and what we are doing for the week. I love the way it makes things looks very organized.

This is on the side of my board. This is where we will put up pictures that have been taken from each month during the school year. It is always fun for my students to be able to look at pictures and talk about what we did. Next to that is a stocking task I have hung on the wall. I got the stocking pieces from Breezy Special Education's blog. If you haven't checked out her shop or blog you really need to!

This is where my we do our task cards. I have them stored in the rainbow box. My paras look at the schedule to see what the student needs to do and put them in the drawers accordingly. On the wall is a bulletin board idea I got from Breezy Special Education TPT shop. You can find it here. I use all of her community units and we just love them.

This isn't very pretty to look at but this is where I keep a bulk of things we use daily stored. Each student have a colored box that I keep their daily schedule books, markers, writing notebooks and other materials for the students. In the grey and blue baskets I store a variety of teaching materials. On the top shelf I keep monthly teaching materials stored to be used from year to year.

Lastly, is my desk area. I have everything that keeps myself and the classroom running in that area. It is usually a mess but I can always find what I'm looking for. :)

I hope you enjoyed the classroom tour. I look forward to sharing more of my classroom with you in the future!

New School Year!!! 2017/18

Amanda's Classroom

So we know it's been a while since we posted! We are working this year on posting regularly. We should see Jody's classroom soon. I want to give you guys a sneak peek into my new classroom! 

So last year I switch classrooms to a different program. I spent last year getting accustomed to all of the changes and started my Master's of Science in ABA to get my BCBA. It was a great year, but super busy! 

So let's look into my new classroom!

I really struggled with posting this because it isn't "Pinterest Perfect" but it is real, it is what my room looks like day to day. It's messy, it's well loved, and it's real. It works for us. 

 This area is where I have all of my math stuff set up. I have my kids do a rotation where an Instructional Assistant runs a station either math or reading and all of the materials are right there within reach. 

This is where we line up. We are color coded throughout my classroom. They line up on their color. You can kind of see our "lining up" bootcamp anchor chart in the background!  

I have 3 kids that sit along this wall because they need to be more sectioned off from the rest of the group. The dividers do that as well as hang their classroom rules posters and any other materials we need for them or for staff.  

 In the middle of the room here I have 3 other students that sit in their squares here. The colors match the rest of the room 

 Here are my independent work boxes. On top I put file folders for them to do for independent work. 

This is the table with all of my ELA/Reading materials and work. This is also where I will pull everyone if we do any all group work. I typically utilize this table and have it set up in a way that makes sense to me. 

So that is my classroom! Please let me know if you have questions! Thanks for reading!