Time to take a look at room two of our kindergarten through fifth grade life skills classroom. Click below for the video tour!
This room is more small group and center based. Our kindergarten through first grade students work through a rotation of teacher led and student led activities twice a day in this space.
This took three adults, and significant planning, zoning, scheduling and structuring for our little guys, however by the end of the year they rolled through it like rock stars! Each working at their own individual level on everything from following one step directives and attending to teacher instruction to reading sight words and adding and subtracting with objects.
The best part of the whole thing is that students learn how to manage their time safely and independently at the technology center (iPads and laptops), independent work area, and self-directed choice area between teacher led times.
I will get into the logistics of that later but I wanted to draw attention to it because so often I hear "I don't have enough staff to teach at each student's individual level." By training students to work independently, we are able to maximize quality teaching time! Each student can work one on one with a teacher or in a 2 to 1 ratio depending on their needs and what they are working on. If they need to work on turn taking, waiting or social skills we pair them up with a friend with the ultimate goal of getting them out into the inclusion setting as they gain skills. If they are at the early stages of learning, and need to work on following teacher directives, in seat behavior, communicating appropriate, etc then their time at the teacher rotations is on a more one on one basis.
Howdy, I am finally back and I proud to say. . . I survived my first year teaching elementary students! The learning curve was steep coming from the world of early childhood but absolutely AMAZING! I can't wait to share everything my staff and I created throughout year one. I started the year with 11 students and 5 paraprofessionals and end the year with 14 students and 6 paraprofessionals. All 14 students, have a variety of needs and abilities, ranging from a cognitive level of 12 months to 8 years. Each student has their own programming, schedule, and range of inclusion time, I will get into the specifics of those at a later date.
I want to start my re-entry back into the world blogging by visiting my classroom. Click below to see part one of a two part classroom tour. . .
Today, I walked you through half of our space. We are blessed to have two connecting classrooms. The first as you witnessed in the video has individual student desks and services as our large group area and individual work space.
It also has free choice and social (play-based) centers in it. Kindergarten and first grade students, who need support in play and socials skills, use the space as a center rotation when they are not in inclusion time. Our second through fifth graders use the space to do desk work. As they finish their desk work, they can earn play time at the various centers.
In the afternoon some of our students who are not ready for large amounts of inclusion time and need practice with using time safely and appropriately, use the space as a free choice area in which they get to choose where they want to play and move from center to center for thirty minutes as long as the center they choose is not full and they have cleaned up their previous center.
They use the choice board container above to request where they want to play. Then they take the clothespin with their name or picture on it to that center, if there are two clips at the center they have to pick a different place to play so not to overload one center in particular.
My higher students also use the round table in the corner of this room for our writing lessons. Our district recently adopted Readers' and Writers' Workshop, a fabulous program but one that is a little too abstract for some students. So we work from the workshop's philosophy of having a love for reading and writing but made the work more concrete for our students using a language based technique from Utah State University, called SKILL- Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy, which I will share more about at a later date!
That is all for now, join me next time for part two of the classroom tour, where I will share 6 more classroom spaces!
