Moving Monday...Top 10 Lists

Here is the next active learning strategy to help get your students up and moving and learning at the same time, it is called Top 10 Lists.

This is a great review activity for the end of a lesson, day, week, unit, or year.  There are many ways to incorporate this active learning strategy into your daily lesson plans.

Let me know how you adapt this activity for your classroom and your learners.

Download Here: Top 10 Lists

From: Udvari-Solner, A. & Kluth, P. (2007). Joyful learning. Active & collaborative learning in the inclusive classroom. Corwin Press. See www.paulakluth.com for related content & ideas.

Moving Monday...CATCH!

Here is the next active learning strategy.  This is a great review activity after a daily lesson, unit, or important concept.

CATCH

From: Udvari-Solner, A. & Kluth, P. (2007). Joyful learning. Active & collaborative learning in the inclusive classroom. Corwin Press. See www.paulakluth.com for related content & ideas.

Moving Monday...Community Builder Activity

Welcome to week 3 of Moving Monday!

This week I have decided to highlight a community building activity.  Students have been in school for a couple of weeks now and they are beginning to feel more comfortable in their new classroom, with their peers, and with their teacher.  Most teachers do not continue to do community building activities beyond the first week of school, but as students become more comfortable with each other these activities can again be beneficial for the classroom community.

This week's activity is a play off of the old "Telephone" game we all played when we were younger.  Students pass compliments to each other while playing a familiar game.

Let me know how it works in your classroom and with your learners!

Pass the Compliment

From: Udvari-Solner, A. & Kluth, P. (2007). Joyful learning. Active & collaborative learning in the inclusive classroom. Corwin Press. See www.paulakluth.com for related content & ideas.

Moving Monday...Popcorn!

Welcome to week 2 of Moving Monday!

This week I am introducing Popcorn another active learning strategy from Joyful Learning.  This activity has endless possibilities and can be modified numerous ways to fit your classroom, learners, and preferences.

This activity, as described in Joyful Learning, "...is controlled chaos at its best."  Students fly around the classroom during transition times in random directions just as popcorn does.  "This activity is useful for the times when you want students to share information, teach and learn from each other, and get ideas or opinions from more than one person in a very short amount of time."

Please enjoy this activity and come back to let me know how it went in your classroom and how you modified it for your learners.

Popcorn



Enjoy!

From: Udvari-Solner, A. & Kluth, P. (2007). Joyful learning. Active & collaborative learning in the inclusive classroom. Corwin Press. See www.paulakluth.com for related content & ideas.

Introducing...Moving Monday

Hello and Happy Monday!  Today I would like to officially kick-off Moving Monday! 

Each Monday I will be presenting a different Active Learning Strategy to get your students up and moving in your classroom and to help promote differentiation in the classroom.  I heard a statistic over the summer that really made me think twice about the way I teach...elementary students are only able to concentrate and pay attention for 5-7 minutes at a time before they are unable to take in any more information.  That is not very much time, so I decided to start Moving Monday to help teachers incorporate Active Learning into their classrooms to get their students up and moving while learning at the same time.  Please try these strategies in your own classroom, then come back and leave me a message on how it worked in your classroom. 

Many of the strategies that I will be featuring will be from Paula Kluth and Alice Udvar-Solner's book Joyful Learning.  As I have said before, I have had the opportunity to see Paula talk numerous times in the past year and she has inspired me in numerous ways, I also had the amazing opportunity to have Alice has one of my professors at UW-Madison during my last semester.  She also has inspired me to make learning joyful in my classroom.

So, now I will get on with the strategy and stop talking so much!


Moving to the Music



Remember to please leave a comment if you use this strategy in your classroom.  I would love to know how it goes and how you would differentiate this activity to meet the needs of all of the learners in your classroom.

From: Udvari-Solner, A. & Kluth, P. (2007). Joyful learning. Active & collaborative learning in the inclusive classroom. Corwin Press. See www.paulakluth.com for related content & ideas.

Web Site Linky Party

Hi everyone!  Life in Special Education is having a linky party for our favorite websites.  I am always online and thought I would share my favorites.

1. Tumble Books-an awesome website with animated picture books and chapter books.  These are great up on my SMART board when we have a couple extra minutes or when I have a substitute teacher.  Students love these stories and ask to go on the website.  Also a great option for "Listening to Reading" during Daily 5.

2. Raz-Kids-another great website with animated books.  You can enter your whole class on this website and set each child's individual reading level.  Each book has to be read, listened to, and pass a couple comprehension questions.  You can also do running records on the website.

3. Reading A-to-Z--a reading website in which you can print off leveled books with complete lesson plans and comprehension questions.  Great for when you need something for students to do independently or when you have a substitute.

4. Read-Write-Think--tons and tons of lesson plans, interactives, and printables.

5. Enchanted Learning--great website to find a couple activities, especially around holidays.

6. Illuminations--National Council of Teachers of Mathematics website with interactive activities and lesson plans.

7. Differentiation Daily--Paula Kluth's website offering a website/lesson/idea on how to differentiate instruction in your classroom every day during the school year.

8. AAA Math--great website if you need something for fact practice with instant feedback if the student is correct/incorrect

9. Starfall-website to help children learn how to read.  Everything from learning the sounds of letters to reading.  Includes activities, interactives, videos, games, and printables.  Kids love this website.

10. PBS Kids-kids love this website, a good "free" time website.

I hope you enjoy these websites as much as I do, please follow my blog if you enjoyed my post :)

Thanks to Life in Special Education for this great Linky Party.

Student Strengths Profile

I just wanted to share one more form I plan to send home to the parents/guardians of my students this summer.  This form is adopted from Kluth, P. & Dimon-Borowski, M (2003) Strengths & Strategies Profile.  I have asked parents/guardians to come up with at least 20 strengths, gifts, interests, or talents for their child. 

So much of special education is about what a child cannot do, not what a child can do.  So I decided that this school year we are going to start out on a positive note and start with what each student can do.  This will be a great opportunity to get to know my students better and hopefully learn about some of the things they can do outside of school or things they enjoy that I might not ever find out.

Please feel free to use this form, all I ask is that you follow my blog by entering your email on the right side of my blog and leave me a comment. 

Thanks, enjoy and hopefully you learn something new about your students!  Student Strengths 
Or visit my TeachersPayTeachers site... Student Strengths

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.