Jungle Word Cards

I just wanted to say thank you so much to Erin over at Creating and Teaching for making Jungle Word Cards for my word wall and posting them for free!  I can not wait to use these in my classroom, they are going to go great with the rest of the classroom and our jungle theme.

If you are using a jungle theme in your classroom or looking for a cool cards for your word wall I would head on over the Creating and Teaching, she has a lot of great ideas!

Inclusion

I recently went to an amazing conference on inclusion, The 18th Annual Statewide Institute on Best Practices in Inclusive Education in Wisconsin.  The main reason I went to this conference was to see Paula Kluth.  For those of you who do not know of Paula Kluth, you need to.  She is an expert on inclusion, especially for students with autism. 

I got a lot of great ideas from the conference and a few more active learning strategies to add to my tool box.  I also picked up 2 more of Paula's books: From Tutor Scripts to Talking Sticks and A Land We Can Share.

From Tutor Scripts to Talking Sticks gives 100 ways to differentiate instruction in your classroom.  This book gives you real ideas of how to differentiate instruction in your classroom.  Each idea gives a description of the idea, directions, and examples.  If you have students with disabilities in your classroom this book should be a part of your professional collection.  I have not gotten all the way through this book yet but I am sure I will have more to say about this wonderful book in the future.

A Land We Can Share is a book about teaching literacy to students with autism.  I was happy to find a book, by a great author, about how to specifically teach literacy to students with autism.  This book gives examples and ideas for teaching literacy in your inclusive classroom.  I have also not read this whole book but I believe I will have plenty more to say about this book also.

Paula Kluth is a great resource for all teachers who have inclusive classrooms and/or work with students with disabilities.  You can check out Paula's website where you will find a tip of the day about inclusion and also check out her blog (Differentiation Daily) where you will find a new idea or lesson on how to differentiate instruction in your classroom each day, during the school year. 

Math Box & Book Box Labels

I have started to make labels for everything in my classroom and I thought that I would share them with you.  These are labels that I will be using for my math boxes and reading book boxes.  I am keeping with the jungle theme and I have added a monkey to the math box labels and a monkey to the book box labels.

 

Enjoy! Please follow my blog and/or leave a comment!

Summer Welcome Letter

I finally finished my welcome letter to my students and their families that I plan on mailing home next week.  I also included a student information sheet for the parents to fill out.  Being a special education teacher I do not typically receive a copy of parent/student information so this year I decided to send home my own sheet.  Hopefully this will save me time and energy during the school year when I am trying to locate a student's contact information.  I have attached the letter and information sheet for you to download, all I ask is that you follow my blog and leave a comment.  Thanks and enjoy!

Summer Welcome Letter & Student Information Sheet

Linky Party...Behavior Plans

I just began following The Lesson Plan Diva and she is having a Linky Party.  This is my first Linky Party and it could not be more perfect.  Most of my life revolves around Behavior Plans and this Linky Party is dedicated to different ideas and tools teachers have used with students with more challenging behavior.  I love this since I work in a small school district, it is great to get ideas from other teachers.  So, thank you Lesson Plan Diva!

This is a point sheet that I used with a student during the 2010-2011 school year.  This student was very impulsive and needed constant reminders throughout the school day to follow directions and finish his in-class work.  The points the student earned off of this point sheet were then traded in for tickets (50 points equals 1 ticket) then the student could "buy" thing with his tickets.  The best part of this point sheet was that the student never ended up buying any of his incentives, he was happy with earning points and tickets!

I have set up a link to the Point Sheet, please feel free to download and use as you see fit.  If you have any questions about the point sheet please feel free to ask.

If you download this document, all I ask is that you follow my blog and leave some feedback.  I am new to Blogging and would appreciate the feedback!



Fonts!

So, in order to create my own blog I have been finding and reading other teacher blogs like crazy.  I just found a great website that has FREE FONTS and I could not be more excited.  I always wondered how people had all of these crazy and cool fonts but I did not want to have to pay for any of them. So, I found kevinandamanda.com and they have a ton of free fonts to download.  I am sure most people already know about this website but I am pretty excited right now.  So thank you kevinandamanda.com, I really appreciate all of the great fonts.

Now that I have all of these great fonts I am off to get creative!

 

Welcome to the Jungle!

Well it is official, I have started working in my classroom and WOW, I have a lot of work to do.  I was thankful that I had my sister Katie come with me and help begin to organize my classroom.  I moved classrooms again this year so this is the third time I am setting up my classroom in 3 years.  It took us all Friday morning just to organize my Guided Reading books, but on the bright side, that was probably one of my biggest jobs and now its done.  While organizing the books, we finally decided on a theme for my classroom this year, Jungle and I am so excited.

I have never had a theme for my classroom before and I am excited to have a theme for the whole school year.  I plan on incorporating the Jungle theme into as many things as possible as I prepare for the school year and have already started today with my Summer Welcome Letter and Student Information Sheet which I will post later.  Now I just have to decide on how to decorate the classroom as a jungle without being too overwhelming and overstimulating for the students, especially since I have a student with autism on my caseload.  I will post before and after pictures of my classroom and hopefully you will not even be able to recognize that it was the same room.

Hello!

Welcome to my blog, my name is Jackie and I am a K-4 Special Education teacher in a small town in Wisconsin.  I am about to begin my 3rd year of teaching and am more excited then ever.  I teach mostly students with learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral disabilities both in my special education classroom and in the general education classroom.  I love being a special education teacher and I look forward to the challenges and accomplishments and the ups and downs each day brings.

I decided to start this blog to share my ideas and stories from my classroom along with my mistakes.  It is also a way for me to reflect on my teaching successes and failures (part of my Professional Development Plan or PDP), so please sit back and enjoy the journey!