Personal Portfolios

This school year I plan on having my students maintain a Personal Portfolio throughout the school year.  This portfolio will include information about the student, picutres, work samples, writing samples, field trips, and anything else we feel should go in the portfolio.  I hope this will help better document the progress my students make throughout the school year since it is typically not the progress you see with their grade level peers. 

Please feel free to download the document, all I ask is that you follow my blog and leave a comment since it took me a while to make.  Thanks

My Personal Portfolio

Daily 5 Posters

So I have decided to do a form of Daily 5 during my intervention time with my 4th grade students.  My main goal with implementing Daily 5 with these students is to make them more independent before they go to the middle school next year.  Throughout most of their elementary career these students have always had people watching them and overlooking their work, this will not happen as much in the middle school.  So, I plan on making these students more independent before they leave the elementary school so they are able to be successful in the middle school.  Here are the posters I made to mark the 5 task areas of Daily 5.  Please feel free to download and use, all I ask is that you follow my blog and leave a comment.  Thanks


Daily 5 Posters

Please visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store to also download this document...

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.