Peer to Peer Club (Links Club)

My favorite accomplishment this past school year was starting a club with the speech language pathologist (Kelley) at my middle school.  
We wanted to bring more awareness to our school that will hopefully filter into our community about Autism and other disabilities.   I searched the internet for existing clubs that were similar to what I wanted to do. Here is the link to the site I stole most of my ideas from Peer to Peer Project.
During Autism Awareness Month in April I went on the morning announcements and told the students about an upcoming interest meeting about the club.  Kelly and I were hoping for at least ten students to attend.  We were overwhelmed (in a good way) when over 70 students showed up.  At that meeting we showed the presentation linked below and answered questions from students. We told them that this year it would be a work in progress since we were just starting and that if it went well, we would be ready to go full force in the 2017-2018 school year.  
It was so crazy awesome!  My students and the students from the other Communication Behavior Social Skills class all participated. Each student with Autism ended up with between two to eight Links (volunteer students from the regular education classes).  One of their Links would eat lunch with them in the cafeteria and another would hang out with them at Team Time (like recess for middle school).  Some of them even came into my room during activity time (study hall) to play games with my students and work on their communication skills. We had a party at the end of the school year to thank the Links for all of their time.  We played a game called Castle Ball that the students learned in PE, had a water balloon toss, and then came inside for ice cream sundaes.  There were so many smiles.  It was a great experience for everyone.  I can't wait to get it started up again when school starts.  

Autism Presentation

Catching up

So, it has been about 5 years since I have created a post.  I think I am finally ready to do this more frequently- at least more than every 5 years.

I just completed my first full year teaching in a Communication Behavior Social Skills class in a middle school.  It has been a big change from teaching resource for 20 years.  On thing that was new was a focus on celebrating Autism awareness month in April. My students and the students from the other CBSS class created a video that was played during the morning announcements.  My favorite thing we did was starting a new club at our school.  I will tell more about that in my next post.

My classroom door. It says "Together We All Fit."

Copies of this poster were posted around our school. 

I got this from The Autism Helper on Teachers Pay Teachers.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/The-Autism-Helper?aref=sy5kxxyt
Her unit on Autism Awareness is great!

I got rid of my beanbags and switched to beach chairs this year.  I love the beach chairs and so do the kids.  They can still be comfortable without laying across the room.  I've noticed they are more engaged in what they are doing in the beach chairs than they were in the beanbags.  This was an unexpected surprise. I just made the switch because my beanbags were getting old and starting to rip.  The chairs are cute as well. 

I got this idea on Pintrest.  Someone did it in a pocket chart.  I have a small hallway at the entrance of my room so I covered it with paper and stapled up laminated sentence strips.  I let each student choose their own strip and we wrote their names on the bottom right corner in Sharpie.  Each week the students post a message using a Vis a Vis marker.  They are loving it and I am learning interesting things about them.  Some of the kids aren't sure what to write and will write simple things like, "I rock!"  Others are adding interesting facts about themselves or just sharing something they did.  I am loving this. The only part I don't like is wiping them off on Fridays so they are ready for the next Monday. 

Resource Schedule

I am a resource teacher and struggle every year with how to best meet the needs of my ever increasing number of students on my caseload.  This year I adapted and idea from the other resource teacher at my school (she's great).  She teachers the younger kids and has them on centers schedule with working with her as one of the centers.  I decided to to this with my students as well.  Now that we are a few weeks into school it is really starting to go more smoothly.  Each student has their name on the wall with their individual schedule underneath.  Next to each time frame is the letter G for Guckenberger, I for independent work, and C for computer.  When students come in they know exactly where they need to go and what they need to do (most of the time).  I am still working on the independent work time.  I find I am taking time away from the students that are having time with me to remind the independent workers what they need to be doing.  I just need to come up with a system that reminds them of their individual activities.  If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them. 

Fluency Practice

When measuring fluency it is important to make sure students are
understanding what they are reading.  Once way to do this is with
true/false statements.  I write 10 statements and instruct students
to read them as quickly as they can so that they still understand
the sentences.  After reading each sentence, the student is to

circle T for true or F for false.  Below is an example of the
statements I use.  I am new to blogging and couldn't figure out
how to make the columns with the T's and F's.  I do let the students
know that a statement is "true" if it is something that could happen.

I have a meeting at 2:00 today.                                             

Tomorrow it will be the year 1988.                                       

I told him dinner will be at six.

It’s a nice day for a walk on the beach.

People wear shirts on their legs.

We’re going to the movies later this evening.

After the snow storm, it was very hot.

We eat grass for lunch.

He flies in an airplane to school everyday.

Thanksgiving is a holiday.

Just Bragging

Setting up the room:  I teach resource and this past year I had a student who spent about 4 hours of her day in my room.  She is autistic so I set up one corner of my room like one of the Communication Behavior Social Skills classes in our school district.  It made a big difference in her ability to focus on instruction and complete tasks.  There was a pocket chart on the wall near her desk for her daily schedule.  It was her job to put up the parts of her day in order. Then we'd review what was coming up each day.  Most of it was the same except for which specials class she had or if she had speech or OT.  On the bookshelf near her desk there is a basket for work to do and one for finished work.  On the shelf below that I kept all the tasks she needed to do throughout the day/week.  I only put the work she needed to complete in one sitting in the "Work to Do" side.  Keeping all of her materials organized and having the room blocked off so that other students were not in view was so helpful.  The noise from other students coming in and out of the room and working in small groups was still a big distraction but the room set up decreased the amount of times this student needed to be redirected.