Just Different

Here's a new thing I decided to do when planning for this year. Since I have students with such a wide range of abilities, I really want to individualize as much as possible. Duh, obviously! That's the goal, right? But I decided to approach thinking about it differently than I have before: I thought out and wrote up an IDEAL day for each student. What would they work on in the areas of self-help skills, vocational skills, academic skills? What gross and fine motor activities would they engage in? What sensory activities would they do? What are their preferred activities that I want to make sure they get to do when they are finished working? I wrote their IEP goals in red because those are the things I for sure need to get to. The black ink is things that would be awesome for them to have exposure to. The IDEAL scenario. So now, as I look at these charts for each of my 9 students, I can decide how I want to schedule our day. Can I incorporate all of the academic skills i

More Social-emotional skills! Yay! This actually is really fun for me to teach. Because it's so concrete. After teaching students appropriate things to do with their hands, students can use  this worksheet  to practice what they have learned. They can cut out and paste pictures on the correct side of the T-chart to show whether that activity is showing nice hands or not nice hands. Buy it  here  for $0.95

These  behavior posters  are one of my more popular items on TeachersPayTeachers. There are three basic rules which each have their own poster. On each poster, there are more illustrations so that students know exactly what each of rules looks like in action. Buy this product  here  for $0.99.

Welcome to my blog! I teach elementary students in a school that serves students with severe to profound needs. I have been teaching for 10 years. I believe that every person has value and has the ability (and desire) to make a contribution to their community. That is why I emphasize communication and vocational skills in my classroom. I love my job! I love the challenge of figuring out what my students can do and pushing them to the next level. I love figuring out what they are trying to communicate to me through their behavior. Thanks for visiting! ~Rachel