JAZZ UP Your Morning Meetings with Social Skill Greetings

Morning Meeting is one of the most powerful teaching tools in the classroom.
Each school year when developing my morning meeting components, I make sure my goals of what I want the kids to work are firmly in mind and I am addressing each students IEP goals.
I want to make sure I take into consideration what skills students they a have mastered and what they need to work on. What are their strengths and weaknesses and what accommodations would they require?
Here are some of the more common goals I have used.

With my Morning Meetings I want to:
1. Build community in the classroom
2. Set a positive atmosphere for the day of learning ahead.
3. Integrate academic and social skill learning.
4. Reinforce skills.
5. Engage all students at their functioning level.

At the beginning of the school year, I start out  with 4 very basic parts to my Morning Meeting. Those parts usually consist of something like these.

I. GREETINGS

II. FINISH THAT

III. CALENDAR

IV.  SHARING

As the year progresses and the student skills grow, I always change it up; adding more components and modifying the ones I have, to grow and change with the students and to keep things fresh and interesting.

Today I want to share some ideas about the Greetings portion of my Morning Meetings.

Greetings are paramount, especially at the beginning of the school year.  The greeting activity should be fun and positive. Its one of the first things the students do each day. Greeting can be done on so many levels, but I want to make sure the activities I incorporate reinforce social skills and extend verbal skills. We also work on eye contact, different ways and appropriate ways to greet others.
Here are a few ideas to try. When I have used these, I have always had nonverbal kids and  for whatever greeting activity I used, I made sure I had visuals to be used, or their ACC device programmed for the activity. Instead of speaking these kids could select the other child's name from their board.

GROUP CHANTS FOR MORNING MEETING

BROWN BEAR BROWN BEAR
1. Group begins the chant using the first name of student A.
    First name, first name, what do you see?
2. Student A turns or goes over to to student B and  replies using their first name.
    I see first name SMILING at me. Hello, first name!
3. Group chants again using the first name of student B.
    First name, first name, what do you see?
4. Student B replies using the first name of student C.
   I see first name SMILING at me. Hello, first name!
The chant pattern continues around the circle until all students have been greeted. At that time
the group chants:
Everyone, everyone, what do you see?
I see children smiling at me.

With student names as examples, and using waving as a greeting,  it would go as follows.
Student A: Sally
Student B: Sam
Student C: Michael
Student D: Roger

Group: Sally, Sally, what do you see?
Sally: I see Sam waving at me. Hello, Sam.
Group: Sam, Sam, what do you see?
Sam: I see Michael waving at me. Hello, Michael.
Group: Michael, Michael what do you see?
Michael: I see Roger waving at me. Hello, Roger.
When all the students have had a turn, the whole group chants
Everyone, everyone, what do you see?
I see children smiling at me.

VARIATIONS:
A. You can change the action verb for what the students are doing during the greeting such as the word SMILING to other words such as WAVING, LOOKING, or WINKING to name just a few.
B.  You can vary the greeting each student says such as Hello! to other ones such as Good Morning, How are you? or Nice to see you!


HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?
Students take turns in a circle greeting their neighbor (or assigned greeting partner) with this chant.
Hello, hello and how are you?
I'm fine, I'm fine and I hope you are too. 
As the students chant, they can turn and greet another student using a wave, a handshake or high five.

2, 4, 6, 8 CHEER
Assign an order of the students to use in this cheer or the teacher can stand/point to the next student in turn in the cheer. You could also assign a helper to select the next student.
This one doesn't necessarily practice specific greetings, but it does give an opportunity for all the students to be positive toward each other.

1. Students stand/sit in a circle. Students clap and chant, naming the first student.
Two, Four, Six, Eight
Who do we appreciate?
First name, first name Yeeaaaaah, first name.

2. As the students are chanting, the named student walks inside the circle giving high-fives. When he/she returns to his/her place, everyone shouts out, raising their hands above their heads,
Yeah, first name
3. Continue in the same manner until all the students have been named.

VARIATIONS:
You can modify this by adding the use of different voices for the day or for each student. For instance, you could whisper the chant, put it in a song, do it in a crying voice, a deep voice, or even a squeaky voice.

MATCHED PAIRS GREETING 
This activity has unlimited variations. This activity requires you to make a set of cards for the class. Some of the easiest ones I start out with at the beginning of the year is colors, numbers or letters. You could also use any other type of patterns. For a class of 10 you will need 10 cards of 5 matching items.

1. Distribute cards to students.

2. On the teacher's signal, the students locate the classmate with the matching card and greet them appropriately. 

I adore this activity since it can be modified in so many ways to fit the needs of the students. Usually with this activity at the beginning of the year, I start with one type of greeting such as "Hi!"  or one skill such as eye contact to focus on. As the students skills progress, I can add different types of greetings.

Thanks for joining me today for some ideas on greeting activities in Morning Meeting. Store the ideas away for next school year.
Come back next week for another portion of Morning Meeting activities.

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Fire Drills-Another look from past posts

Do you have one of these your Special education classroom?  I did! One in the main classroom, One in my office, one in the bathroom, the storage room...well they are everywhere and continually are frightening our kiddos. What can you do to help your students with fire drills. Here are ideas from posts of yesterday.

When I was a kid, fire drills were a welcomed interruption to the day. However, fire drills  can be a very difficult thing to students with disabilities.
Fire drills, especially for those on the Autism Spectrum or those with auditory sensory disabilities, can be a frightening event that is dreaded sometimes for days in advance and whose effects last way beyond the 15 or 20 minutes a routine fire drill lasts in schools.
Some of the most common behaviors I had in my classroom, were  screaming, crying, hiding under furniture and even escaping the situation entirely by running away. I had one student that could anticipate when the fire drills would occur and would start crying, attempting to run away and scream prior to the drill.
For some children its the loud sound of the fire drill, for others its the disruption of their normal schedule that frightens them. Some children don't know what to do or what is expected of them during a fire drill.
Behaviors such as these whether  they occur before, during and after a fire drill  can be a major strain on the teacher, the classmates and staff and of course the student.

Other students in the class are often negatively affected by the behaviors and staff is diverted from you what you need them to do in order to tend to the screaming, yelling, hiding or escaping. It takes a toll on everyone.  Fires drills are an important part of safety awareness and preparedness. They are not something we can abandon.

What can we as teachers do to help children when this happens to them?

One thing that can be important in the classroom is for the teacher to work with administration.

•  See if  you can be informed about the fire drill ahead of time. The administration at my school puts it in our weekly teacher bulletin and calls me 15 minutes prior to the drill. This gave me some time to put some calming strategies into place with the students.
• Go over the rules of a fire drill. Walk the class through the process of a fire drill, step-by-step.
•  Role play what will happen during a fire drill.
• Desensitize the student to loud sounds such as the fire alarm. Try using an app on your smart phone or tablet that has loud sounds on it. There are even some apps that have examples of fire drill alarms. Start off with the sound soft, introduce it to the student. 
• Try doing mock drills with a lowered fire drill sound. As the student becomes more acclimated to the lowered sound, raise the sound level up and continue mock drills. Continue doing this until the sound is at full level.
• Purchase an alarm such as a smoke detector, and follow the same procedure as above for desensitization. Muffle the sound, then progress as the student gets used to the sound.
• Take the student outside prior to the alarm going off. Doing this could alleviate the behaviors that occur during the fire drill as the alarm may not be as close or loud, as it would be in the classroom. This option should really only be a stopgap solution. We need to be teaching the students what to do and how to be safe in emergency situations.

One thing that has worked in my classroom and in many other classrooms is to use Social Stories. Social Stories were created by Carol Gray  in 1991 to help teach social skills to people with autism. They are stories with short descriptions of situations with statements about what is expected of the student or what the student can expect.

Here are a few suggestions for using Social Stories for situations such as fire drills in the classroom.

Use of Social Stories

1.   Prior to implementation of a new social story, be sure to communicate the new task being taught to all the people involved in your student’s program. Provide a copy or share the steps of the task being taught in the story to those professionals working with the  student so everyone is approaching the task in the same manner.

2.   Introduce the book to the student as you would other literary selections (i.e. look at the cover, discuss it, look at the pictures. Adapt as necessary for your student. 

3.   Read the story aloud. Reread the story on a regular basis so you can review the steps and the student(s) become very familiar with what is expected. 

4. After the student becomes familiar with the book and its content, send a copy of the book home with the student. Integrate the parents into the teaching process as well by sharing the book with them.
5. If you do practice fire drills as I  have done, also review the book immediately prior to the fire drill practice as well as on other days to make sure the information presented in the book becomes second nature.  Review the book as necessary to keep the steps fresh and supplement the teaching with the visual schedules and step poster.

 Check out the revised social narrative.
Click the pictures to visit my store.

WHAT SHOULD I DO IN: A FIRE DRILL IN SCHOOL

http://bit.ly/superteachfiredrills

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Fire Drills- Can Be Frightening!

When I was a kid, fire drills were a welcomed interruption to the day. However, fire drills  can be a very difficult thing to students with disabilities.
Fire drills, especially for those on the Autism Spectrum or those with auditory sensory disabilities, can be a frightening event that is dreaded sometimes for days in advance and whose effects last way beyond the 15 or 20 minutes a routine fire drill lasts in schools.
Some of the most common behaviors I had in my classroom, were  screaming, crying, hiding under furniture and even escaping the situation entirely by running away. I had one student that could anticipate when the fire drills would occur and would start crying, attempting to run away and scream prior to the drill.
For some children its the loud sound of the fire drill, for others its the disruption of their normal schedule that frightens them. Some children don't know what to do or what is expected of them during a fire drill.
Behaviors such as these whether  they occur before, during and after a fire drill  can be a major strain on the teacher, the classmates and staff and of course the student.

Other students in the class are often negatively affected by the behaviors and staff is diverted from you what you need them to do in order to tend to the screaming, yelling, hiding or escaping. It takes a toll on everyone.  Fires drills are an important part of safety awareness and preparedness. They are not something we can abandon.

What can we as teachers do to help children when this happens to them?

One thing that can be important in the classroom is for the teacher to work with administration.

•  See if  you can be informed about the fire drill ahead of time. The administration at my school puts it in our weekly teacher bulletin and calls me 15 minutes prior to the drill. This gave me some time to put some calming strategies into place with the students.
• Go over the rules of a fire drill. Walk the class through the process of a fire drill, step-by-step.
•  Role play what will happen during a fire drill.
• Desensitize the student to loud sounds such as the fire alarm. Try using an app on your smart phone or tablet that has loud sounds on it. There are even some apps that have examples of fire drill alarms. Start off with the sound soft, introduce it to the student. 
• Try doing mock drills with a lowered fire drill sound. As the student becomes more acclimated to the lowered sound, raise the sound level up and continue mock drills. Continue doing this until the sound is at full level.
• Purchase an alarm such as a smoke detector, and follow the same procedure as above for desensitization. Muffle the sound, then progress as the student gets used to the sound.
• Take the student outside prior to the alarm going off. Doing this could alleviate the behaviors that occur during the fire drill as the alarm may not be as close or loud, as it would be in the classroom. This option should really only be a stopgap solution. We need to be teaching the students what to do and how to be safe in emergency situations.

One thing that has worked in my classroom and in many other classrooms is to use Social Stories. Social Stories were created by Carol Gray  in 1991 to help teach social skills to people with autism. They are stories with short descriptions of situations with statements about what is expected of the student or what the student can expect.

Here are a few suggestions for using Social Stories for situations such as fire drills in the classroom.

Use of Social Stories

1.   Prior to implementation of a new social story, be sure to communicate the new task being taught to all the people involved in your student’s program. Provide a copy or share the steps of the task being taught in the story to those professionals working with the  student so everyone is approaching the task in the same manner.

2.   Introduce the book to the student as you would other literary selections (i.e. look at the cover, discuss it, look at the pictures. Adapt as necessary for your student. 

3.   Read the story aloud. Reread the story on a regular basis so you can review the steps and the student(s) become very familiar with what is expected. 

4. After the student becomes familiar with the book and its content, send a copy of the book home with the student. Integrate the parents into the teaching process as well by sharing the book with them.
5. If you do practice fire drills as I  have done, also review the book immediately prior to the fire drill practice as well as on other days to make sure the information presented in the book becomes second nature.  Review the book as necessary to keep the steps fresh and supplement the teaching with the visual schedules and step poster.

 Check out the revised social narrative.
Click the pictures to visit my store.

WHAT SHOULD I DO IN: A FIRE DRILL IN SCHOOL

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