Thanksgiving Dinner

We survived our 7th annual Thanksgiving Dinner!! For the last 7 seven years my daily living classes have prepared a Thanksgiving Dinner for their parents, teachers, and some classmates. We start by having the students create the menu and make invitations. I then had the students estimate prices for the groceries we needed to buy. They also had to look through the local grocery flyer's to look for sale items. After this, we went grocery shopping to buy all of our supplies. On the Monday before Thanksgiving break we cooked the turkey and made 6 pies. It was quite the adventure but went pretty smoothly. On Tuesday we peeled the potatoes. This is a great experience for the students. It is interesting to see the different levels of kitchen skills. On Wednesday the students were in my room for the morning putting everything together. Each student had a job that needed to be completed, whether it was making buns, punch, corn, cutting pies, mashed potatoes, stuffing, or sweet potatoes. With so much going on at once with many people in the kitchen, it is extremely important that the activities are organized. We also had to decorate the room and get it set up for our guests. It was a lot of work and we were putting on the final touches just moments before our guests arrived. We severed about 40 people and all of the kids loved it. I have one student that is very fragile emotionally. She really shined during this time. She had a smile on her face the entire day and was interacting with several students. It was so great to see. I truly enjoy doing this activity with my students. They look forward to putting this meal on every year. It allows them to show their parents and other teachers what they are able to do and they are very proud of themselves.

Cookie sales

For the last 3 or 4 years my daily living class has done a cookie sale. We make cookies for about 2 weeks and sell them during lunch breaks. We sell them for a quarter and usually make 3 different kinds. At the end of the sale we use our profits to 'adopt' a family in need during the holiday season.

I really enjoy doing this activity with my students. They have an opportunity to learn so many skills and they also have a lot of fun with it. We take turns making the different recipes. This way they all get to learn 3 recipes. They all also rotate selling during lunch. This gives them an opportunity to interact with their classmates and are able to practice their money skills. The kids have a great time with this.

This year we sold about 2100 cookies in 9 days!! Let me tell ya' it is a relief to be done!! Our next step will be to take the money that we earned and buy gifts for a family in need this holiday season. This is another great lesson for my students. It gives them an opportunity to give back to their community.

I am excited to be done baking but even more excited to go on our shopping trip.

Redos and Retakes Done Right

I read the article "Redos and Retakes Done Right" by Rick Wormeli from the Nov. 2011 edition of ASCD.
This article talked about the positives of allowing students to redo and retake assignments and assessments. The article explains how when allowing students to redo/ retake assignments/assessments and giving them only partial credit or giving a student a 0 for not turning in an assignment on time, will only slow down the student's achievement and maturation. This can cause student's to lose hope. Without hope student's will disengage from school and from the adults who care for them.
The article goes on to talk about how student's learn at different speeds. Wormeli points out that curriculum goals don't require all student's to reach the same level of proficiency on the same day but rather, every student achieve the goal. He also talks about how practice is very vital. He compares this to running. When a runner is in the learning-to-run stage, they practice, practice, and practice. When the runner has reached its final race, like the Olympics, they are in the proficient-runner stage. At this point they are no longer able to redo the race. He also has built this confidence because each time he ran his time was not an aggregated compilation of all his digressions woven with his more successful time. He was also able to practice and repeat until he had mastered the skills. When learning, we will master the skills that are repeated and we will be better at retrieving those skills the more we experience them.
Wormeli goes on to compare education like a conveyor-belt learning. He points out that curriculum taught in K-12 schools in the United States would take to about grade 22 teach (I found this to be amazing). This can cause us to fall into "here's a bunch of stuff you have to learn; now take a test. Here's the next bunch of stuff you have to learn; now take the next test, etc. So when students fail to learn the content we keep moving them foward, like a conveyor belt.
The article goes on to say that in the real world we are always doing things over and over until we have reached mastery. For examples, a lawyer will practice debate and analysis of agruments before stepping into a court room; a pilot will fly multiple times in a simulator and solo flights before taking passengers; and surgeons practice on cadavers before performing surgery on a live person. All of these things can be redone until mastery is achieved. Why don't we do the same in education? He goes on to talk about how teachers who allow retakes/redos, are not considered 'soft'. Student's are quick to figure out that the teacher is not soft but rather wants to be sure that the student's have learned the material and will require the student to do the work over and over until they are correct. The final point that I found interesting was "to let a student settle for work done poorly, ensuring that he or she doesn't learn the content. Is this really the life lesson we want to teach? Is it really academically better for the student to remain ignorant?" I thought these were good questions to ponder. The article also listed 14 points to consider when allowing student's to retake/redo assignments/assessments.
Do you allow student's to redo/retake assessments/assignments? Do you think the pressure of what needs to be covered in our classes interfers with the learning process?

Cooking

In my daily living class, we have been focusing on making lunches. My students decided to make sandwiches. We decided to make peanut butter and jelly, turkey and cheese, and grilled cheese with soup. We started with peanut butter and jelly. Each student had one class period to make the sandwich. My one student struggles with cooking as he has not had much experience in the kitchen. He knew to get out all of his material. He then was not sure what to do next. He figured out that he needed to put jelly on one slice of bread and peanut butter on the other slice. He did not spread his jelly or peanut butter out and he did not match up the pieces of bread correctly. We talked about ways to improve his sandwich and he worked on fixing it. The next time he made his turkey and cheese sandwich. Again when he put his mayo on his bread he put it all in one spot as well as the turkey. However, he knew to line up his bread correctly. We talked again about spreading out his turkey. The next sandwich was the grilled cheese and soup. This student chose to make tomato soup. He needed help reading the directions on the can but was then able to make the soup independently. He then went to make his sandwich. I had him use a sandwich maker instead of cooking it on the stove. He was able to put his sandwich correctly, however; once he put it in the sandwich maker he separated the pieces of bread. So when he was done he did not end up with much of sandwich as all of the cheese was stuck to the sandwich maker. We then talked about why it didn't work and he tried again. Overall, I was pleased with his success. We have some work ahead of us but he is making progress. It is great to see what he has been able to do.

Modified block schedule

This was our 3rd week doing our new modified block schedule. So far, I have been very pleased with this schedule. I have really enjoyed the longer class periods and feel that most of my classes have been successful. I like how I am able to implement more hands- on learning and not run out of time in the middle of a lesson. In my daily living classes we have been able to complete cooking lessons from start to finish. I like that we are not rushed during this activity. In the years prior, the kids would start cooking, I would have to finish the project, and then they would enjoy the food the next day. It was not always very productive. In my academic classes, I generally try to implement station teaching. This has worked out really well. It keeps the kids going and they aren't stuck doing one activity for a long period of time. This also allows me to check progress on IEP goals as most of my stations are based on their IEP goals. My biggest struggle is preparing for these days. It takes a lot of time to get everything in place for each class. Now that I have done it for a few weeks, it is getting easier. I have enjoyed this type of schedule so far and am looking forward to the weeks to come.

Team meetings

One of my goals this year was to communicate with my paraprofessionals on a bi- weekly basis. We met as a department during the first week of school. It was nice to touch base with everybody and to be able to discuss our goals and expectations for the year. We also were able to remind everybody the importance of confidentiality.

I have sent out emails to all of the paraprofessionals. This tool seemed to work very well, as I received a lot of positive feedback from most of them. I think it will be a great way to connect with them. I will not only be able to give them pointers or suggestions but also compliments.

I am looking forward to continuing my communication with my staff.

Ipad

I am very excited that I have had the opportunity to use an Ipad in my classroom. I have found many apps that have enhanced my lessons. In math, I have found several apps that have reinforced learning targets for my students. I have a student that is working on adding and subtracting and have several apps that focus on this. I have another student that is working with number recognition and he also has several apps to access to practice this skill. I have found that the Ipad also keeps the students engaged and on task better than any other activity.

I have experienced some frustration with the Ipad as well. We are suppose to have wireless internet in our school and I am not able to access it. This can create problems as some of my apps require internet connection. We will be having another training tomorrow during our inservice so I am planning to inquire about this.

I am excited to be able to explore more apps and to continue to integrate this piece of technology into my classroom.

1st weeks of school

This school year is off and running. The first couple of days seemed to be chaotic as not all schedules were in place (students and para's). After getting schedules in place, it is now trying to get lessons underway. With having new students and new classes to teach, it is finding the right placement and curriculum to use. I am also trying to find new ways to document IEP goals that is convenient and accessible. I have ideas in mind and now it is trying them out to see what works best. I am excited for the year and looking forward to having new students and new classes.

Summer Trainings

This summer I had the opportunity to attend three trainings that will hopefully improve my instruction. The trainings that I attended were: Promethean Board, Ipad, and Modified block schedule.

Our special education department has a promethean board within our department for all of us to share. The training I attended went over how to care and clean the machine. We also touched on the basic maintenance and tools of the board. During the afternoon, we were given a quick run down on how to utilize and implement the board. I was very impressed with what the machine is capable of doing. I felt the training was beneficial; however, all of the information that was covered was a little overwhelming. I am excited to be able to use this with my classes. The only obstacle that I will encounter will be getting into the classroom where the board is located. It is installed in another teachers room so I will have to coordinate with him and the other special education teacher times to use it.

Our district also has provided Ipad's for all of the special education teachers. The first training that I attended set me up with an itunes account and gave me a quick run down on how to download apps. We then were given time to go home and download more apps and familiarize ourselves with the device. At the next training we were able to share the apps that we found. This was very useful because most of the apps that people had pertained to classes that I teach. I am looking forward to using the Ipad in my classroom.

This year the high school has decided to go to a modified block schedule. Last year we tried it for a 2 week period. It seemed  like a success for teachers and students per the survey monkey that was completed. This training gave us an opportunity to get ideas on how to break up the 82 minute class period. We also were able to discuss as a staff things that worked well and things that did not go so well last year in order to work out the flaws before we begin the schedule. Again, I am looking forward to being able to teach a longer class period. However, I knot that it will be difficult for some of our students and we will need to work together to get through it.

I am excited to have 2 new tools to use within my classroom. I am also excited to see how the modified block schedule will work.