Learning update: Oct 24

Hi everyone,

Last Friday's movie day was a success! The students enjoyed helping make the popcorn with an air popper, adding melted butter and salt, and then eating it while watching our movie (they chose "Sing").


While movie day is a fun activity to end our busy school week with, there is also a lot of learning involved! Social and leisure skills like participating in a group activity, joint attention, sitting appropriately, and requesting are all part of watching a movie. We will have movie day every Friday, though we will maintain our usual morning schedule with the movie activities only running from 11:00-12:00.



This week we have started some exciting new literacy programs with our students. We have introduced an alternative pencil activity where the students can write based off a picture prompt using an iPad app called "word wizard". We have also begun a writing program called "predictable chart writing". Check out the following link for more info on this program: PCW. Stay tuned for updates on our students' progress, as these programs are being used in other CSSI classrooms with great success.

Here's some other photos from the week of our students participating in various learning activities during their school day!

Lastly, here's some photos from today's art project. The students followed 7 steps of instructions to complete their own jack-o-lantern!

Sharing

I wanted to talk a bit about how we're facilitating sharing in the classroom with our students, in light of talking about social interaction goals on IPPs. Sharing is a difficult skill, as it involves negotiation (asking for a turn, a peer responding yes or no, and sometimes accepting an alternative) and waiting (impulse control). In our classroom, we are using visuals to support turn taking with preferred toys or during preferred activities. For example, we use a sentence strip during circle time to visually display whose turn it is to pick a song during song choice time, as this is a preferred activity and some students find it challenging to wait their turn. The visual says "it is ____ turn", and in the blank space a student's photo can be placed to signal to everyone else whose turn it is. Along with turn taking visuals, waiting visuals and sharing solution visuals are also helpful (i.e. some solutions to sharing are to: use a timer, split up the toy, trade toys, or pick a different toy).

Another important tool we often utilize in the classroom is social stories, as they can give more information about social situations and what the expected behaviors are surrounding these situations. For example, a sharing social story that we read to some of our students talks about strategies for how to problem solve when 2 students want to play with the same toy, instead of arguing or grabbing. We try to practice sharing in many aspects of our school day, as we know this is a challenging skill that all of our students need support with.

Another strategy to support sharing that I want to incorporate into our classroom is turn taking projects. One project could be building with lego, with 2 students building a structure together from a photo. The structure would be made of 2 colors of lego but each student is only given one color of lego to add to the project. This would encourage the students to take turns building the structure together to complete the task.

Important dates this week:
Wednesday, October 16 is Spirit Day (Retro Day) & Fun Lunch. 

Learning update October 3

Hello parents,

We've been doing some new and exciting things in the classroom this week that I want to share with you! First- and this may only be exciting for some- we have gotten to experience SNOW in Calgary already! Thank you for sending your children prepared for the weather, as being able to go outside for recess is extremely important for our students. Exploring the sound of crunching snow under our boots and learning how to navigate the extra slippery playground equipment has created some unique learning opportunities as well.

We have also started daily gym classes this week. We are leaving it fairly unstructured for now, starting the class running laps and then bringing out balls and scooter boards for the students to explore. As we get more used to the space we will create a more structured gym schedule to follow, incorporating stretching, gross motor/fitness goals, and games. At Cambrian Heights we are lucky enough to have a phys-ed specialist who teaches all our gym classes, and she has been spending some time in our classroom everyday these past few weeks to get to know our students in preparation for leading our gym class.

Finally, we have started incorporating some classroom jobs into our daily schedule. Students help wash tables after meals, check the mail in the office, greet our office staff, and sweep the classroom floors after messy activities like sensory time. Many of you expressed during conferences that doing chores at home is a skill you have been working on with your children, so I think it's beneficial to generalize some of those skills by practicing them in the classroom, too! We are also looking at targeting some personal hygiene skills in the future, so I would love some parent feedback on what types of skills you may want practiced at school (i.e. face washing, brushing hair, brushing teeth, etc.). These are skills mentioned in our CSSI curriculum, the Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills (ABLLS) books I showed you at conferences, and many other CSSI classrooms in CBE work on these skills in their classrooms, too.

Just a reminder to please let me know a date and time that may work for you next week to meet to discuss IPPs. Thank you to those of you who have already discussed this with me. Have a great weekend!