Are you okay?

I'm a pretty positive person and tend to wear a smile as my resting face, lol.  With that said yesterday just about everyone I interacted with said "hey...are you okay?".  I really tried to fake it but I guess I just don't have the best poker face.

Nope...it was a particularly rough day on top of a rough week. I'm a solver.  I LOVE challenges.  I love problem solving but some days or weeks can be just too much.  I really have a hard time seeing my teammates stressed out or even worse hurt.  Sometimes the behaviors in our classrooms can really just drain us.   For lack of a better word, it sucks.

I consider myself blessed to be a part of an amazing team!  We ended our day by going to our local watering hole.  We laughed, we problem solved, and then we chose to our end of day by agreeing to unplug and take care of ourselves this weekend.   Without a doubt, Monday will come.  By taking care of ourselves this weekend, we will be better able to address the issues and behaviors at hand.

I fell asleep watching a movie with my family at 7:30 last night.  So sad but SO needed.  Today, I went out to lunch with my hubby, took a nap, and now I"m working on my lessons for the week while I catch up on all my Dateline and 20/20 shows.  Tomorrow, we are headed to Six Flags as a family.  I''m not gonna lie, I'm still stressed about what Monday will bring but I know that by taking care of myself, I'll be ready.

How do you take care of yourself?   What do you do when things aren't "okay"?  What are you watching?

Listen and Do

Do you have students who you know ARE listening but who don't always demonstrate that they are by following through?  Many of my students REALLY struggle with this!  Many of my students understand the concept of following the group plan but don't always demonstrate the skill without prompts.  Is it prompt dependency?  Processing time?  There are so many variables...What to do??  The intermediate teacher and I decided to provide some explicit instruction and practice with our students during group last week.

First, the intermediate structured learning teacher, defined what "listening" is by reviewing whole body listening with the students.  She utilized the Whole Body Listening book from the We Thinkers curriculum. 

I then introduced a social story to teach the idea of "Listen and Do".  While reviewing the story, we prompted "listen" and "do" on our classroom core board.  We then practiced this skills with a game of following directions.  We utilized the "pretend to be like a" Boardmaker activity that I used when teaching the core vocabulary of "like".  The students had a blast listening to the various animals and vehicles and then pretending to "do". 

https://boardmakeronline.com/Boardmaker/Play/20728881/false

Finally, we ended the week by practicing many of the "all calls" the general education teachers are using in their classrooms.  We thought this would be a great way for our students to demonstrate to their peers that they are a part of their classrooms, help them to recognize that this is a cue for them to attend to a direction, as well as to "listen" and "do".   J emailed the general education teachers requesting all of their all calls and then I created a slide deck for our practice.

How do you support your students to "listen" and "do"?

Becky

What do you "like"? Or what do you want to be "like"?

What do you like???

I like a lot of things...coffee, wine, date nights, sleeping in,... :)
The things we like make us happy, they fill our buckets, and are what we seek.  Here's my plan to teach this vocabulary to my primary classroom this week.

Mini-Schedule	Core Group Mini-Schedule
Video	Power Words 16 Part 3 “Like” (TeachersPayTeachers)
Book	https://boardmakeronline.com/Boardmaker/Play/20640911/false
Practice	https://boardmakeronline.com/Boardmaker/Play/20642629/false
Song	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frN3nvhIHUk&t=0s&list=PLfglx-VvJeZGir6oQtz6RHupzMYeyGhVp&index=2
Mystery Item “Do you like?...I like!	Balls, cars, bus, ipad, ipad, candy, popcorn, farm animal, gears The mystery box this week will be filled with things that are liked. What do you like? Great opportunity to practice "I like"

We will also target what we can or want to be "like".  I can pretend to be "like" anything I want to be and so can my students.  Here's the plan to target to teach being like something else.

Mini-Schedule	Core Group Mini-Schedule
Video	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LIiyadPA6E&list=PLfglx-VvJeZGir6oQtz6RHupzMYeyGhVp&t=74s&index=13
Book	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUcdM5KbqwE
Practice	https://boardmakeronline.com/Boardmaker/Play/20643193/false
Song	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwRmivbNgQk&list=PLfglx-VvJeZGir6oQtz6RHupzMYeyGhVp&index=9&t=0s
Mystery Item Be like...	various vehicles and various animals

What do you like?  How do you teach "like"? :)

Becky

Teaching expected behavior

We need to teach our students EXPLICITLY what is EXPECTED behavior.  But how do we do that?  

Michelle Garcia Winner uses the language “expected” and “unexpected” to define behavior within a group.   For some students the terms expected and unexpected can be a bit abstract. In order to make the concepts a bit more concrete, I've been using the terms "stop" and "go".

GO behaviors are things people do that are “expected”.  They often make people feel good or comfortable.

STOP behaviors are things people do that are “unexpected”.  They often make people feel bad or uncomfortable.

As soon as my students have an understanding of "stop" behaviors and "go" behaviors, I begin to introduce the vocabulary of "expected" or "unexpected".

I often teach this concept by simply sorting behaviors into stop and go with a Boardmaker sort Stop and Go Behavior Sort.   There are MANY books that can be used to teach this concept as well. Here are some of the books that I like to use.

How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Cookies?	Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
I Can Make Good Choices	David Parker
I Have Manners	David Parker
Clark the Shark	Bruce Hale
David Goes to School	David Shannon
Duck Rabbit	Amy Krause Rosenthal Tom Lichtenheld
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?	Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
How Do Dinosaurs Say I'm MAD?	Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
How Do Dinosaurs Stay Friends?	Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
How Do Dinosaurs Stay SAFE?	Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker	Christianne Jones
Little Dino's Don't Hit	Michael Dahl
Little Miss Chatterbox	Roger Hargreaves
May I Please Have A Cookie?	Jennifer E. Morris
May I Please Have A Cookie?	Jennifer E. Morris
No, David	David Shannon
Should I Share my Ice Cream	Mo Willems
The Busy Beaver	Nicholas Oldland

Here's a fun video my students have really enjoyed that further illustrates this concept. :)

Becky

"Think About Others" kind of person vs. a "Just Me"

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE Social Thinking?  I personally think Michelle Garcia Winner is a genius! Teaching others how to think about being social can be extremely challenging but the ideas and vocabulary she has shared has been game changing.

This week during a 2nd grade social language group, we will be introducing the students to the idea of being a "Just Me" vs. a "Think About Others" kind of person.  We all have "Just Me" moments but most of the time we try to "Think About Others".  We think about others ALL the time... in the grocery store, in traffic, in the lunchroom, etc.   For some of our students this is a really difficult concept to understand let alone apply.

In order to introduce this vocabulary, I wrote a story that we will review at the beginning of our group.  If you have a BoardMaker account you can check it out  here Just Me vs. Thinking About Others   If not, here's a PDF  Just Me vs. Think About Others

After we review the story, we will be watching some youtube videos and identifying if the characters are being a "Just Me" or a "Think About Others" kind of person.   Moving forward, we will follow one of Michelle Garcia's lessons in which the students each take a turn during group time being a "Just Me" while the "Think About Others" group has some fun together.

I try my best to be a "Think About Others" kind of SLP.  Let me know what you think!

Becky

"go" core vocabulary explicit instruction

Hi All,
We will be introducing the core words of "go" to the primary classroom this week .  I've attached the 
group instruction plan for this week!  I'm excited!

I will upload a picture of my mystery box later this week. :)

Hope someone finds this helpful!

Becky


Group #1

Mini-Schedule	Core Group Mini-Schedule
Video	stop and go (wing woroks)
Book	Go! Go! Go! (BM Core first book)
Practice	Animated Power Point -GO (TPT purchase)
Song	Go Video Model Song (TPT Purchase)
Mystery Item	Balloon rockets

Group #2

Mini-Schedule	Core Group Mini-Schedule
Video	Where are you going?
Book	Look at them Go! (TPT Purchase)
Practice	Animated Power Point -GO (TPT purchase)
Song	Go Video Model Song (TPT Purchase)
Mystery Item	Balls in a jar

SuperHero Goal Setting

This week in the intermediate classroom the theme is Superheroes.  With it being the beginning of the year, I thought it might be a great way to tie in “goal setting” by having the students identify a goal or two they’d like to work on during our group or in general at school.  They can create a superhero name and then develop an "I can" statement for their superhero.  If time allows, we will take a picture of the students wearing some fun props and then either use seesaw or the chatterpix app with seesaw to have them share these with their classmates and parents.  I've linked a google slide deck that we will be using as well as

Goal Setting Choice Board  via Boardmaker

SuperHero Goal Setting

Can't wait to see how these turn out!

Week 2

This week I FINALLY put the finishing touches on my interactive core board.

Mike, my awesome hubby, was super creative and found a way to attach it to an extra rolling pocket chart stand that we weren't using.  I'm excited to put this in place not just for groups but to also be rolled over to the various centers in the classroom!!!  

This week in the primary classroom we continued to revisit requesting by targeting the core word "want" with the following activities

Each week I'm planning on following a similar schedule for the primary classroom group.  Next week, I'll try to remember to add a picture of the mystery boxes that I made.

Mini-Schedule	Core Group Mini-Schedule
Video	What do you want to do?
Book	When I Want From Boardmaker Core First Learning
Practice	https://boardmakeronline.com/Boardmaker/Play/20158245/false Boardmaker stamping activity of students’ favorite items
Song	“I want” from Tuned Into Learning http://www.tunedintolearning.com/product/volume-7-emerging-speech-oral-motor-skills-music-cdcd-rom-set/
Mystery Item	Windups