sutton062

Writing can often be over looked in classrooms of students with significant disabilities. It's no fault to you or your staff, there are just so many things to focus on; behaviors, speech, following directions, toileting, eating etc. If you had to give up something, I am sure writing would be the #1 thing as it may not seem like a very functional thing for our students, especially those who struggle to hold standard pencils. That is... until you introduce an alternative pencil. I started using alternative pencils when I went to a conference last year on emergent literacy, read more about that here . It honestly changed the way I taught. Usually you go to conferences, they get you super excited about the new teaching method, you come back, implement it into your classroom and a month later you give up on it or find something else. Well folks, I have to say, I have never gone back to the way I didn't teach  😁  taught writing! Alternative pencils allow our non-verbal students a w...

If you are anything like me you're always searching for new and easy ways to keep track of student work to have on file for conferences/IEP meetings etc. For years I struggled with binders, file folders, digit files on my desktop and so much more. I was so tired of it and knew I had to find something that would make my life easier. Tah-dah!!!!!! SeeSaw is a FREE (you can pay for certain subscriptions but the free one is perfect!) app that allows you and your students to build digital portfolios. It is super user friendly, the kids love it and best of all.....it makes collecting student work samples SOOOOO easy. Once you get signed up, add your students, download the app and connect it to your account (simply snap a picture of the class QR Code) you are ready to start. The students are able to add photos, videos, drawings, notes or links right away. We use photo and note the most in my classroom. Here are a few examples of student work from my classroom. 1) Rainbow writing. I snappe...

I know I am not the only one who has spent hours prepping materials. Printing, laminating, cutting and velcroing. You set everything up in your classroom so it is picture ready and then......they come! The kids who are excited about learning and using all of the cool materials you have made. One thing I have learned about kids during all of my years of working with them is no matter how much you "train" them, there is still that possibility that not all of your little velcro pieces get put back exactly where you intended them to be. Keep reading to see how I organize all of my velcro pieces. This post will show you how I organize my awesome monthly themed binders from Melissa over at Autism Adventures !! Step One: Prep all of your mateirals as you normally would. Step Two: I label all of my title pages with numbers 1-12. I label mine in the bottom right corner. Here is binder #5. Step 3: Label all of the pages of that binder using a decimal system. For example since all of t...

The IEP process can be a very daunting task. Even though I feel very comfortable with all of the paperwork I sometimes forget the "timeline".  I have put together timelines and procedures for Initial Referrals, Annual Reviews and 3 year re-evaluations that we use in my district. These may be different than your district so be sure to double check. I just thought it would be good to share :) Here are the PDF versions of these forms. Feel free to print and use for reference. Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Do you have access to a motor room at your school but don't know how to utilize it? Are you looking for some new ideas? Do you wish you had a routine that was easy to teach for your students and/or your paras? Keep reading to see how we manage motor room time at our school. We start out by having each student grab their motor room visual . This allows our kids the opportunity to be "independent" in the motor room. It is also a great mini-schedule for your students who need to know exactly what is going to be done in the motor room. The kids also have access to dry erase marker to cross off the activities once they have completed them. Each group of my students spends 30 minutes of structured time in the motor room a day.  (5 minutes) Each week our OT (occupational therapist) selects one of our gross motor activity visuals and posts it under the gross motor sign. The visual shows a picture of the object the kids will be using and a description on how to use it. Our studen...