sutton062

I think many of us can agree that reading is a huge part of a child's education. There are so many different programs out there and all have their pros and cons but the one thing I can say across the board is that allowing students to read independently MUST be included. Not only reading independently but allowing students to choose the texts that they want to read, rather than being told what to read. That's right, even our students with the most significant needs should participate in self selected/ independent reading. It may look different but giving them the opportunity is what should be occurring in classrooms. Students in my room get 20-30 minutes everyday for self selected reading. During this time I do not tell my students what to read and the only instruction happening is behavior/classroom management. I even encourage the staff in my room to bring their own reading material as this is a great way to model for the students. We start the year off trying to do this for ...

"I am coming to observe you tomorrow, what would be a good time?" These may be the exact words you have heard from your administrator sometime in your teaching career. So many things may be running through your mind, is anytime a good time? tomorrow won't be good, I need more time to prepare, Thursday's are better can you do that? What the heck am I going to teach? What if I told you that you CAN nail your observation with 1 day, even 1 hours notice? It is possible!! Keep reading to see the 3 steps I take to help me nail my observations. 1) Invite your administration in regularly. Keep your doors open and create a welcoming space. If your administrators see you in your environment regularly they are taking note of all of the great things they are seeing and how hard you are working. Hopefully they will also see the rapport you have with the staff in your room. Having them in regularly should start to calm your nerves and your students will get accustom to it. That way...

A few years ago the thought of having to teach writing to students with complex communication needs was overwhelming. I didn't know where to start and every curriculum out there was way too involved to support the basic needs of my students. However, after a few years of researching and testing out different things in my classroom I can now say writing is one of my favorite things to do with students. I see the most progress and it is easily implemented into my day. Keep reading to see how I am able to have all of my students participate in independent writing. The first thing to know is that all of my students do independent writing every single day. We incorporate our writing routine into our emergent and conventional literacy blocks. You can read about those here and here .  The students in my class all have complex communication needs and use some form of AAC. Word Wall The word wall is a vital part of our independent writing routine. Students need to have access to an abundan...

If you have read about my emergent literacy approach and you are wondering what to do with students who are more conventional readers and writers keep reading to see how I implement it in my classroom. I have to be honest, I actually have both emergent and conventional readers in my groups so my conventional readers still do some emergent stuff (they love it), which is okay! All of my students have complex communication needs and are learning to use AAC and Core Vocabulary. With this I am able to differentiate and model a ton during my lessons. Reading During reading instruction I use Unique Learning System (ULS) and pull some of my favorite highly engaging read alouds from my shelf. In my classroom I choose to use the same story M-F but you could change your story multiple times per week if you had the time. As mentioned before, reading instruction is a great time to model core vocabulary and AAC. When working with my conventional readers I follow the Anchor, Read, Apply model. Befor...