BACK TO SCHOOL SALE

Today and tomorrow my friends! That is it! The big Back to School sale will include everything in my store! 

Yes that's right EVERYTHING is 20% off and if you use the code in the picture above, you can get an extra 8%!

Don't miss it! Stop by!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Superteach56

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IT'S A SALE!!!

Need some great little tidbits for your classroom ?

Want to snag them at great sale prices? 

All of my products will be on sale Thursday and and Friday of this week in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. All of my product are discounted and when you use the TPT3 code at checkout, you can save 28%. Be sure to swing by and check it out!

 

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GoodNotes- a versatile app for the classroom! Monday FREEBIE!

GOODNOTES APP

Has anyone  used the app GoodNotes in the classroom?

I know this is been on several blogs, but I thought it deserved another look because it can be such a versatile tool in the classroom.
 When I first read about it I downloaded the app and I now have several sets of worksheets in the app and have been using with my kids for a while now and thought I would share my experiences with you about it. Below you can see screenshots of my bookshelf in the app where I have added a few of my teaching worksheet sets.

When you initially open the app you view the  empty shelves of your bookshelf.  Select  the  + button and you open an entire world of possibilities. With GoodNotes, you can create your own notebook and take notes, import notes and worksheets into the product.

Selecting the + produces a blank sheet of paper.  You have choices of lined, unlined, grid paper as well as music paper. I find the line paper  particularly useful when having parent conferences or phone conferences to take notes with. You can use a stylus or just your finger, making it convenient when you get those impromptu phone calls from parents and don't have paper/pencil. The notes you take with this can then be printed or exported. When you export, you can email, save to places such as SkyDrive, Google Drive, Box , or  Dropbox.
My favorite thing to do with GoodNotes is to import worksheets for my students to complete on the iPad.  Select the + button once again and choose your preferred online storage option as your source and download PDF files and even PowerPoint files. I have had a few minor problems with the PowerPoint files. I think it depends on the size. Some of the PowerPoint files downloaded fine and then were converted to PDF by GoodNotes. The possibilities are endless as to what this app can do for you in the classroom.
One of the biggest advantages for me is using it is as an incentive for students to complete their work. Some of my students will complete anything when its on the iPad! What about YOURS?

This extremely versatile app lots of great features, but I am just going to highlight a  few of the most useful to me. Here are some of my favorites.
Shape Recognition
Turn on shape recognition, select the pen color and thickness you desire and you can circle important items on the screen. When you hand draw your circles, lines or boxes on your notes, it immediately changes them into proper shapes.
Text Boxes and Images
When creating or presenting a document, you can add text boxes and images to your document. I can make a worksheet of math problems and add clip art or photos to it, straight from the iPad camera or from an online storage location.
Lasso Tool
Move things around on your worksheet/ notes using the lasso tool.

 In the example of the Choice Board above, you will see several of the items circled, but prior to circling the grapes on the bottom row, I used the SHAPE tool and it immediately turned my hand drawn circle around the grapes to a formal circle.

In the example above I imported some task cards for number recognition. You can see where different colors of marker were used to select the answers for the task cards. A great opportunity for saving paper, awesome incentive for those kids that hate worksheets ....the possibilities are endless.

Have you used GoodNotes? If you have, share how you have used it!  If you haven't used it, give it a try. There is a free version and a paid version.


Its Marvelous Monday and here is your freebie for the week. Here is a small gift of one set of my alphabet bingo cards.

Be sure and check out our friends at Manic Monday!

Have a great week! We will see you soon!

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Fostering Communication Through Choice Boards

A delightful 1st grader on the autism spectrum entered my classroom and my life this year.  He can cry, but beyond that, has no verbal communication skills. He can sign a few things, but those signs are often poorly executed and difficult for others outside his world to understand. He often runs through his repertoire of signs when asked to use them just to see if he "hits" one that will work. So here I am! I am a new person in his world and I need to communicate with him and him with me. Where do I start?
I chose to start with things he liked. His preferred items.  Luckily, I have one of the most awesome paraprofessional and together we have walked this path together of working our way into his world and him into ours.
 We systematically introduced him to items in our classroom finding a variety of activities he demonstrated interest in doing. One of his first was a 2nd hand office chair I had gotten from a fellow teacher to use at my teaching table. Fortunately, it is very sturdy and safe because we soon discovered he loved to spin in it. The preferred item we found was through his behavior analyst. He shared that he enjoyed gummy bears.
Once I had found 2 items he preferred, I made a choice board with those two items. We set up a schedule for him that alternated work time and choice time. At the end of each work time we asked him to "make a choice".








We started with a board with just two items. A food item of gummy bears and a picture of the chair he LOVES to spin in. It took several weeks to get a good pointing action from him and the moment we got a close proximity of indicating a response as to what he wanted -he got the item.

It was AMAZING to watch this learning in progress. I've worked many years and in many ways with kids with disabilities but I am still in awe and humbled every time when I see learning taking place like this.
The next thing we did was increase his items. We found he like grapes and jumping, so those were also added to his choice board. The jumping was an fantastic find, as it added to his physical activity and seem to funnel some of his energy into an appropriate physical outlet.
Here is an example of the 4 item choice board I made.

 

As you can see I try and use real pictures when at all possible, but sometimes, its quicker and easier to use clip art.

Now we have built up to a choice board with 12 items on it. 

Here are some other examples of choice boards. 

Thanks for stopping by. Check out our Freebie using the link below.

 

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THE SIMPLEST THINGS!!!

Its the little things sometimes that get noticed and work so well in a classroom of special education students. Don't get me wrong, general education classrooms need to work well also, and the little things count there too, but in special education, the littlest things can make or break a day sometimes.  Sometimes its colors of chairs, pencils, who touches your lunch box or moves your chair.

This summer I found a  simple, but cool pin on Pinterest. It was one of those things that seemed so simple, it was like "How did I not think of this before?"

When school rolled around and my tennis ball solution for my chair and table legs scraping on the tile floors began to be a problem because the balls were falling off the legs when the chairs were moved, I remembered this pin. While I cannot claim this as an original idea, I have modified it and wanted to share it with all of you.


An idea of putting felt booties or socks as we call them in my room has been the BEST thing since sliced bread.
They are quiet, easy to install, economical and easy to replace if they get too dirty. My tennis balls were so dirty. I had tried to dress them up by drawing faces on them but it really didn't help. The cuts in them were expanding and I needed something different.

Here's how I did them.
1. Materials:

• 1- 9" x 12" piece of felt cut into 4 equal pieces. 
• 1 zip tie at least 7 inches long (length helps in ease of fastening) Mine would work with a 4 inch zip tie, but it took longer to get it fastened and secured. Depends on your chair leg circumference also.
• Pair of scissors to cut felt.

chair socks

2. Turn the chair upside down and cover one leg glider with one piece of felt.
3. Use a zip-tie and fasten it around the felt and pulled tightly to secure.
4. Cut off any loose end of the zip-tie.
5. Spread out the felt as seen with the yellow sock on the right in the picture above. You can choose to leave it gathered like the purple sock on the left.



The possibilities are endless I think as to what you could do with these. I did several color variations in my classroom just to add pizazz and to satisfy certain color preferences of a couple of my students.
We have a couple of chairs with football team colors, one chair with all pink feet and chair socks coordinated according to the location in the room to which they belong such as the reading table, computer center or individual centers.

Coordinated Center Chair socks

I have several center areas specified by color. You can see by the picture to the right how I color coordinated the center colors with the chair socks. This red center table has red tape around the edges. The chairs have red tape on the back to designate the chair belongs at that particular center and NOW, the chair at the red center has red chair socks. All color coordinated!!! 

Over the years I've tried many things on chair legs but so far this is my favorite. Sometimes simple is the best!

Last week I showed you a preview of a product I was working on for my students to improve reading comprehension. It has simple 1 sentence text with basic WH questions. This activity has limited clip art so as not to distract from the content and includes answer prompts that can be cut out and placed in the answer square or they can left intact on the card and used as a worksheet. They can even be laminated and then you can use wipe off markers for students to draw a line from the answer space to the correct answer.
So as promised, just for you, my blog readers, here is a FREE sample of this new product.

Its a SALE!  Its a SALE!  Its a SALE! Its a SALE! 

Are you still needing those last few things to make your classroom complete?  Check out Superteach56's TPT store!  I am having a SALE this week!  15% discount on practically everything. Be sure to check it out! Sale starts Tuesday September 24th through Friday, September 27th.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Superteach56

Don't forget our friends over at Manic Monday as well! Check them out for all the great freebies. I"m posting early this week but Manic Monday won't live until tomorrow so come  back and visit again.

Until next time!

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