Using Structured Learning Activities to Build an Effective Social Center

Today's post explores a center that is new to our classroom this year, the social center.  The social center was designed for students to learn socially appropriate ways to interact and participate with peers and teachers.
 

Some students rotate to "social" with only a teacher while others come with one or two peers.  It depends on each student’s level as to how many peers join them at the center. The idea is that we provide structured learning activities in which the students can learn skills like sitting and listening, wait their turn, sharing with a friend and/or teacher and keeping hands to themselves.  A little side note—we work on hands to ourself and wait your turn using these two visuals.  A quick prompt given by the teacher and/or a wait my turn card. 

  

Not all kids use or need this visual. However, we have it Velcroed to the side of our social cabinet so whenever a student needs a reminder to wait his/her turn we have this visual at a close proximity.  You can print both the quick prompt and the hands waiting at Boardmaker Achieve Community (formerly known as Boardmaker Share). 

Back to the social center, the students stay at social for 10 to 15 minutes depending on their ability to attend.  We want them to be in the space at a level that challenges them without getting into unwanted behaviors or forcing them to stay in the area. With that, I have a series of 5 to 6 structured learning activities for them to work on. They are usually based on the theme we are doing and get switched out every two to three weeks depending on students’ mastery, interest and upcoming themes. All activities are stored in trusty fabric boxes. 

Thifty Teacher Tip: You can now buy fabric boxes at Dollar General!

As obvious in the above photo, the boxes and carpet in the space are red. The color uniformity defines the space and helps the kids transition to social as well as other carpeted spaces in the classroom using color-coded picture icons.

As you may recall from our classroom tour, every space and center in our classroom is defined by a different color.  I am excited to say thanks to Miss Susie from our PT department, we even have red chairs in our social center now!!

So you may be wondering what is actually stored in the fabric boxes....the answer is simple, STRUCTURED LEARNING ACTIVITIES! Structured learning activities are simply activities with a clear beginning and end.  Visually the students can tell what they need to do and can see how much work they have to do to complete the activity.
 

In the below video, my boys and I are modeling the social center.  Notice how I modify the activities specific to each boy's interest and ability level.  For example during the first activity, the boys know how much work they have to do by how many eggs are in the fabric bag.  You will also see that I remove some of the eggs so that the boys can finish before they lose interest and/or start acting out.  

Instructor's Insight: I use fabric bags to increase random drawing.  We often use the phrase “take one” and have the kids practice following directions and working on impulse control by only taking one item out of the bag. By using a fabric bag, we eliminate the sound of a plastic bag.  It also stores easier than a box or bucket.  I love them too, because the fabric gives the student an element of surprise.  If the student can see in the bag, he/she may get stuck on picking out a certain item which makes for longer wait time and promotes unwanted behaviors.  I have several fabric bags that a foster grandma made for us several years ago.  I have also picked some fabric totes up in the craft section at Wal-Mart for a dollar!
  

My staff and I continually monitor student performance and if someone is struggling with a task or activity, we modify the amount of work done or the level at which it must be done.  That being said, my staff and I are always the ones to set the limits.  If a student is very resistant to an activity, we will empathize with their opinion by saying something like "you want to be all done" but then end on our terms by saying "you need to do one more and then all done.”  

We also modify the workload another way.  If a child is really interested in something or needs to practice a task more, we will add work.  Either way we want the students to feel as though they have accomplished the task.  We never undo their work in front of them and always celebrate the work accomplished.  It's important to produce activities that are one level beyond the student's individual skill level so the task is realistically achievable. 

This is demonstrated in the provided video by using my 2 and ½ year old and 6 year old.  They definitely have different skill sets but I try to keep them both interested and engaged at their level.  For example, I ask my 6 year old questions like "How do you spell the color, blue?" and "Which one has the most?".  I then ask my 2 year-old questions like "Is that the same or different?" and "What color did you get?".  

Note: He did not know his colors at the time the video was taken, but interestingly enough he was able to use some color words when I facilitated learning with an aided-language board that had colors on it.
 

Here is a closer look at the structured learning activities that were featured in the video.  They are all part of our dinosaur unit.  I store the unit in a tub with all my other thematic unit materials.  In the future I am hoping to share a blog post specific to each thematic unit that we have done in our classroom.  But for now, here are few examples from our dino unit.

Box One:  Same or Different Dinosaur Hatch

I simply use some plastic dinosaurs from discount school supply and put them in plastic easter eggs. The children use their fine motor skills to open the eggs and decide if the egg and dino were the same color or two different colors.  They then put the dino and egg in either the "same" or "different" can.  Note:  I cut four slits in the lid of the can making the students have to push the egg and dino through.  This is a nice way to add a little sensory input and it adds a feeling of accomplishment.

Box Two: Magnet Dinosaur Match

This game was printed from Kid Soup. (Kid Soup is a subscription based website where you can print off amazing thematic unit activities. I highly recommend it!!)  Note: I packing taped my version to a cookie sheet and then added adehesive magnets to the back to make it more stationary.  I also added an aided-language board for the kids to describe what dinosaurs they selected. 

Box Three: Dinosaur Color Clip

This is a game I made from some dinosaur bookmarks Miss Molly had left over from her nephew's birthday party.  It is amazing how many little trinket toys and party favors can be made into a task!! :)

Box Four:  Dinosaur Number Puzzle

This is a simple triceratops puzzle where the kids have to request certain numbered puzzle pieces.  The pattern is from an old Mailbox Magazine. (Next time, you will see how this game can be modified for older students at the math center! )

Box Five: Dinosaur Sorting and Cave

For this game, I hot glued a piece of brown felt over an old Lean Cuisine tray.  The kids pretend it is a cave to pull out dinosaurs and then place the dino in the appropriate spot in the sorting tray from Lakeshore.  I have the complete set of these trays.  They are well worth it!! They make any math activity more hands on!

You may have noticed in the video clip that I did not do Box Six.  At the time this video was recorded, Box Six had reinforcing activities in it for one of our afternoon kiddos.  We do not use the social center for the afternoon kids. Instead, we do math games at the table. Since we don’t use the space for the afternoon, it became a great place for one of our students to spend his earned downtime with preferred toys and games.  You can see more details about it in the reindeer reinforce post shared in December.

Before I sign off today, I do want to share the latest and greatest at social.  As I have mentioned many times before....Our classroom is a work in progress!!!  A few weeks ago I noticed that the kids needed a little more visual structure in the social area.  Most of the students who use the area do not have a good understanding of numbers and the sequence of numbers.  As a result, I added a farm animal icon to each box.  

Why farm animals you may ask???  Well, because they are of interest to several of our kiddos.  Currently, they are really excited by farm animals. In fact, some of our students are just starting to imitate animal sounds so it gives us a chance to work on verbal imitation by saying things like "Time for the cow box say 'Mooooo'" and the child can have a little practice imitating the sound. 

After labeling each box with a farm animal, I made a chart for all the boxes at social and slid it in a 5x7 plastic frame.  

This allows the group to mark off what has been completed or the teacher can even mark off a box or two that they are not going to work on for the day.   The kids love this addition to the social center.  I do too!! It makes staff working in this center that much more accountable for completing the boxes they intended to complete as we all get a little lax after repeating our centers day after day.  But repetition is what makes it work for our students so we, as their instructors, struggle through!! 

Presentation: Visual Schedules & Other Supports in the ECSE Classroom

As promised here is the powerpoint I presented to the Junction City Early Childhood Team on December 20^th.  Sorry it is being posted a little later than planned.  Family Christmas festivities got the best of me! :) 

 

All the slides regarding work systems and work tasks I added after printing the handout are in green. Since we met I also added tips on how to find specific blog entries that were discussed during the presentation in red.   The easiest way to find things on the blog is by searching the month it was created or keyword in the search bar in the right column.  You can also check out my Pinterest board and do an image search.  My tech guru (aka my amazing big sister) is working on better ways to search the blog but this will have to do for now! :)

If you have questions regarding the presentation or any of the blog entries please feel free to email me at considerateclassroom@gmail.com.  I would be happy to share any of my boardmaker files as boards or pdfs just let me know what you would like.  Please note that although the videos I shared at the training are very helpful they are not on this Slideshare.  I have permission from parents and staff to share them at presentations, but unfortunately at this time, I do not have permission to share them on the internet.

   

I would like to thank the TASN Autism and Tertiary BehaviorSupports Project for allowing me the opportunity to share with the Junction City Early Childhood team.  You were a great audience and I wish you all the best in the future.   

Encouraging Appropriate Behavior Through Reindeer Reinforcements & Santa's Surprise

When our afternoon students came back from Thanksgiving break, we quickly realized we needed some back up to reinforce and support good behavior to survive until Christmas break.  Not only were they feeling the Christmas spirit but they were also "outside time" deprived as we hit a patch of bitterly cold weather. Sadly, there was no outside insight! 

So as I frantically searched my toolbox of ideas, I remembered the class treasure box intervention we did last spring.   It worked like a charm then so I began tweaking it for this group of kids’ needs. I decide this group of children needed something more individualized. Hopefully by this spring we will be able to work toward a class goal but at this point we are just not ready for that.  We needed something that made every student accountable for their actions and aware of what they needed to work on and do to be a good friend, listener, and participant in the school setting. 

I used each child’s IEP goals and my own observations of their behaviors to decide what  each child would be working on:  listening to the teacher, waiting hands, following directions, etc.  I took the top two or three needs for each student and made visuals for them that would then be added to their individual schedules.  I then added reindeer to each child’s schedule.  With the idea being that each child needed to earn 12 reindeer in order to get Santa’s surprise at the end of the day. 

The students could earn reindeer at the end of every activity.  There are actually 14 activities each day. This helps the kids know they still have a chance to earn Santa surprise even if they don’t earn a reindeer or two.  Kids make mistakes (just like adults). After all, we are only human! :) We don’t want a student to lose their first reindeer of the day and then give up for the rest of the day.  What we do want is for the student to be aware and accountable for their mistakes so they can learn from them.

 

Here is a look at each individual system. The individualization of each system at every child’s own level is what makes Santa’s Surprise successful for the whole classroom.  System one is a name tag system that simply shows the students where they need to go and in what order. 

Front

Back

Beside each activity there is a reindeer. If it is earned, staff circle the reindeer with a visavis marker at the end of each activity.  If they did not earn their reindeer, staff write an X over the reindeer and then show the student what skill they struggled with at the bottom of their schedule.  This helps students become aware and learn from their behavior.  This system is the easiest to manage and is used by most of our students.  We use a name tag for this schedule as it helps the students be responsible for themselves.  They attach the name tag to their shirts and are accountable for its use the whole day.  

Over the years, I have realized that if I have students on a schedule that makes sense and means something to them, they will take responsibility for it and become completely independent with it because it becomes important to them.   

Teacher's Tip: Our name tag schedules are in Ziploc name tag covers.  I found these at our local office supply store and I love them!  They are a little more durable than typical name tags and they can be sealed shut so the kids don’t get water on them while washing their hands or playing at the sand table.  I keep a few extra schedules on hand so if I have a change in schedule or a kid is out sick I can adjust the students' schedules to be with different children or do activities in a different order.

This schedule was designed for one of my little guys whom really needs movement, especially with limited outside time during colder weather.  We tried the name tag schedule for him but he took it off and chewed on it or threw it so we needed to adapt the concept.  Therefore, we mounted a velcro wall schedule with a library pocket for tickets.  Each time he is presented a ticket, he knows he must walk to his schedule, put the ticket in and pull of the next icon on his schedule.  

At first this took a little extra training as he envisioned the icon schedule as a choice board and he would try to take the icons for the activities he enjoys first. But with a few gestures and prompts to redirect him, he figured it out and got the movement he needed by going to and from his wall schedule between activities.  Note that the tickets he puts in his library pocket are ‘reindeer’ tickets.  At the end of the day, he counts his reindeer tickets to see if he gets Santa’s surprise. 

This next schedule was designed way before Santa’s Surprise was created.  It is a flip schedule that really speaks to another student.  Remember I said I know I have the right schedule if the child takes responsibility for the schedule.  Well, this is definitely the case for another little guy.  He carries his flip schedule around like it is his most prized possession.  He is a student who is always seeking power and control so originally the schedule had a small key velcroed to the last page.  If the student made it through all his activities for the day, he was able to open a locked box with small surprises in it for himself and his class at the end of the day.  This really spoke to him as he felt he had control.  It was also very reinforcing because if he didn’t complete all his activities for the day the key was removed and his peers would get the surprise in the box (fruit snacks, goldfish, stickers, etc) and he would not.  

When Santa’s Surprise began we simply added Velcro to each flip page in this schedule.  On the velcro, we put mini reindeer. As the student completed each activity, he would move the reindeer to the last page of his schedule to be counted at the end of the day.

In theory this worked beautifully...but in reality, this student had his own plan and would move the reindeer back and forth from page to page, not really understanding the concept of "earning" reindeer. So instead we taped reindeer to each page and vis-à-vis marked each one he earned rather than moving them to the last page.  In the end, the system worked and the student was able to participate in Santa’s surprise. :)

Finally, I have saved the best, or in this case most complicated, for last!  This student uses a DVD case schedule.  As all of you know working in special education, not one technique works for every child and no two students are alike.  That's what makes our jobs challenging, exciting, and frustrating all at the same time!  

Anyway the little guy that uses this schedule has some pretty significant needs, as well as a very short attention span. My staff and I knew reindeer tickets or a reindeer name tag was not going to cut it.  He needed something more.  Something where he was reinforced for good behavior on a more regular basis...say every 10 minutes!  His schedule was actually also developed long before Reindeer Reinforcement and Santa's Surprises. 

The front of his schedule was simply a "time for" icon and then a Velcro spot to add an icon for his next activity. When we started the Reindeer Reinforcement, I simply moved the "time for" icon over and added a Ziploc pouch for the student to earn reindeer each time he transitioned to a new activity.  

This particular student has the most difficult time with transitions that is why one of his goals is to ‘walk to where I need to be’.  He actually earns his reindeer for transitioning to each activity successfully.  Then while at each activity he works for one of 5 preferred choices.  He chooses between playing on the iPad, getting five mini m&m's, playing a mini basketball game, playing live angry birds (where he tries to knock down cardboard blocks with a stuffed animal angry bird), or playing a soccer game on my iPhone.   

On the back of his schedule is a place to put an icon representing what he wants to work for, the rules he needs to follow to earn it and then five token spots he must earn to receive his preferred item.  

The beauty of this schedule is that all his preferred items are in one small area in the classroom.  Each time he earns one, he is asked to match the icon to the preferred items in that area. Then, he can play with the preferred item.  

When his time with the preferred item is over (usually 1 to 2 minutes later), he makes his next choice of what to work for and puts it on the reinforcement side of his schedule. Staff then flips the schedule over and asks him to go to the next activity.  In turn making him practice the skill of transitioning twice as much as his peers by transitioning to and from activities and to and from his preferred choice area.  

It works like a charm most of the time and puts him in a movement pattern of successful transitions and errorless movement.  Are you a bit perplexed?  Click on to this video of my son and I reenacting the use of this schedule and reinforcement system.  In practice it is actually quite simple and very effective!

All of his schedule icons and reindeer reinforcers are velcroed inside his DVD case schedule.  

THANK YOU to DIXIE TEETER for the great idea of using a DVD case as a reinforcement system!

Putting It all Together

Okay, now that you have seen an inside look at each schedule and Reindeer Reinforcement System, I want to share a little bit about the end of our school day and how the kids earn Santa’s Surprise.  During our last circle time of the day, all the students bring their systems with them.  Staff members then help the students count up how many reindeer they earned and circle that amount on their Santa ticket.  

The students need twelve reindeer to be circled in order to get Santa’s Surprise.  Remember there is actually the possibility of earning 14.  If all twelve reindeer are circled on the ticket, then they circle "yes" I get Santa’s Surprise.  

Instructor's Insight: My students’ parents know about our Reindeer Reinforcement and Santa Surprise so each day the kids take their ticket home to show their parents, which makes both parents and students more accountable.  I write an extra note on the ticket if needed to tell parents about the day.  Sometimes these notes are to describe good things that happened and sometimes it is tell them why their child didn’t get Santa’s Surprise that day.  Interestingly enough, no student has not earned Santa’s surprise two days in a row!  I like to think this is because they are becoming accountable for their actions and learning what they need to do to earn it.

Santa’s Surprise is usually hidden in Santa’s mailbox or if it is too big to fit in his mailbox there is a note that says were Santa’s Surprise is hidden.  

Sometimes it is a choice of Christmas candy or stickers, other times it is the choice of trying out one of two toys from Santa’s workshop (AKA: Toys from my sons' toy box at home-a toy firetruck, helicopter, or other interactive fun toys).  

Santa’s Surprise is always a mystery.  If the students know what they are working for and don’t like it, they will stop trying.  The motivation is in the mystery!! I also always have two options for the students to pick from or play with as Santa’s Surprise making it even more effective because we all like choices! What would happen if Santa’s Surprise was one thing and not something a student liked? Well, he/she may not try for it the following day.  There is motivation in the mystery and choice of the surprise.

With that, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!! May your Holiday be filled with your very own Santa Surprises!  Make the most of your time off and spend some well-deserved time with family and friends.