Candy Corn math! In my practicum classroom, I did a math lesson on pairing numbers in numerical form, word form, and object form. To do this I used candy corns! The students loved it (and getting to eat the candy corn at the end)! I gave the students the number in the word form to practice writing and they were pretty much able to figure out what number it was on their own! This was great for my kindergarteners!
This last week at Jacksonville State I had the opportunity to speak at the 2nd Annual Autism Conference along with five of my classmates and my professor. This was something that I will never forget. It was an absolute honor to speak on such a huge topic. My group and I presented apps that are great for students with autism. We presented apps to current teachers, classmates, JSU personnel, parents, and parents with children on the autism spectrum.
The conference allowed us to gain ideas on we can do as a future teacher that may have students with ASD in our classrooms. As future educators and JSU teacher candidates we understand the importance of creating a comfortable and welcoming learning environment for ALL of our students.
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In my kindergarten practicum classroom, I did a retell lesson. In a retell lesson the students tell the sequence of events from the story back to you. This is a Alabama state kindergarten standard. For this lesson, I used the book called The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid Of Anything. This book is so much fun!
To allow the kids to retell the lesson to me, I used a felt board and an app called pic collage. The app allowed the students to build the scarecrow from the book in the order that the clothing items came along. The students also wrote what happened at the end of the book and drew the picture themselves!
Osmo works with an ipad, base, and front camera mirror. Osmo allows students to create, collaborate, use critical thinking skills, and collaborate. With Osmo, you can use the free correlating apps found in the apple app store. With Osmo you can work on puzzles, writing, critical thinking games, drawing, and so much more. Here we are playing with the Osmo in class!
This is Dash and Dot! Dash and Dot use apps from the app store to set them into motion. With these guys, students will learn how to code. Students can create paths, sounds, and emotions for their robot to make. My group played with Dash today during class!
Social stories are a great way to get across directions in your classroom. Social stories can be used as a tool to help students learn how to act in an effective and appropriate manner. Social stories can be a huge help to any child on the autism spectrum. Students with autism often struggle with remembering how to act in certain environments. Here is an example of a simple social story:
With this type of social story the child could read it over and over again until they learn. This type of social story could be printed out for a class chart or for just a specific student. The possibilities are endless! You could do something as simple as putting my hand up or how to act when you are sad or angry. Children with autism have a hard time with these things so a quick reference will help both you and the child. You can also create social stories using apps like Little Bird Tales, Kid in Story, Stories2Learn, and My Story! These would be great for children who can't read yet or for children who need it expressed in a different way. Here is an example of one from Stories2Learn:
As you can see, you can create a social story for just about anything! Social stories do not have to only be for children with special needs. Sometimes we all need a hand on remembering things!
Using these pictures, we sorted them by sh, ch, and th.
Here they were separated by the first letter sound.
Same letter, different fonts! Different fonts can be difficult to those just learning letters. Introducing them to different types of fonts will help greatly.
How do you make this more fun? Finger pointers! Dr. Trucks kindly gave us this tool to use with our students in the classroom!
Today in
one of our classes we completed some STEM challenges. These challenges
included science, technology, engineering, and math. Our challenge's
outcome was based on our engineering skills!
Here were our rules:
Where is the STEM?
Science-
The energy is stored into the arm of the spoon when the string is
pulled and then the energy is released causing the army man to fly
forward.
Technology- For this challenge we filmed the outcome of our design.
Engineering- Using all of those objects, we had to come up with our own design to make it work. The possibilities were endless!
Math- Using the tiles on the floor, we counted the feet in which our army man traveled.
As
you can somewhat see from the video, our group made a catapult. We used
the string to pull back on the spoon to launch the army man. My hand
was inside of the cup for support. We also used our six popsicle sticks
for support as well. Our man ended up launching thirteen feet!
Our reaction after our army man launched 13 feet!!!
