Teaching Tip Linky Party

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!  I'm enjoying some cooler AZ weather, planning adventures and enjoying some time with family and friends.  I'm REALLY looking forward to Thanksgiving next week and having 5 whole days off so that I can catch up with my life.  We only have two days of school next week, so not much teaching going on with all the special activities next week (Turkey Trots, Thanksgiving celebrations etc. in my students general education classrooms).  This will give me time for the whirlwind of iep meetings, testing and paperwork that I will be handling before Christmas Vacation.  Thank goodness I have an great student teacher who will be helping me out!

Anyway, on to teaching tips.  This week I'm linking up with Miss Kindergarten for her teaching tip linky party.

Here are my teaching tips-

1) Touch Math- Does anyone use it?  I'm a big fan of it and love it for teaching math to students, especially those students who are new to adding and subtracting.  My goal is to eventually get my students to a point where they can count and add and subtract in their head.  Until then I introduce them to using touch points for adding and subtracting.  It helps them alot when they're learning how to add and subtract successfully.  I've also used it for multiplication, division and money.

2) Skip counting-I really feel that this gives students a strong base when they're working on their multiplication facts.  When students take state and district tests they are not able to use multiplication tables, but if they know how to skip count they can solve their multiplication and division problems (something that is reinforced in multiplication touch math).  Skip counting by 5's also helps teach time and money.

Happy Sunday everyone!!  Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Stuffed with Thankful Thoughts

It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is next week.  I'm grateful for a three day weekend this week and a five day weekend next week.  Two short weeks.  The only frustration is that it makes it difficult to schedule meetings, tests and all the wonderful things I need to accomplish this time of year.

I'm joining Lyndsey at A Year of Many Firsts for her linky party Stuffed with Thankful Thoughts.

 

I)  I'm thankful for cooler weather.  After a long summer of hot weather this is the best time of year in Arizona.  It's cool and beautiful and there are so many different things going on that are a lot of fun.

2) I'm thankful for my family.  I love spending time with all of them.  My parents are snowbirds and live nearby this time of year.  So it's nice that we can get together and do things anytime we like.  My brother and his family live in Ohio and we try and get together anytime we can.

3) I'm thankful for my sweet boyfriend.  He's my best friend and always makes me laugh.  He's always up for a new adventure and trying something new.

4) I'm thankful for our summer cottage in Minnesota.  It was built by my Great-Great Grandfather and is more than a 100 years old.  My parents renovated it recently so hopefully it'll last for a 100 more years.  It's a place I go to every summer and see friends and family that I only see about once a year.  A lot of our neighbors are related, and if not our parents and grandparents have been friends for all their lives.  So much history there.

5) I'm thankful for a job I love.  It took me a long time to find my niche, but teaching resource is it.  I love the school that I work at, and the students that I work with.  It's a special place that feels like home. 

6) I'm thankful for the swing dance community.  I've been swing dancing for more than 5 years and have been able to develop a lot of amazing friendships, and countless hours of fun on the dance floow, whenever I'm feeling tired or blue a twirl on the dance floor always make me feel better.

7) I'm also thankful for yoga.  I always feel better after a yoga practice.  I'm lucky that the community I live in also provides a lot of inexpensive or free outdoor yoga.

Last but not least I'm thankful for all of those who serve in the military both past and present,  Thank you!!   

 

What to expect at an iep meeting

A lot of teachers (especially the new ones) ask me what to expect at an iep meeting and what happens there.  Before the meeting I talk to my student's general education teacher about their progress and ask them to fill out a form with feedback on how my student's are doing.  From this and my knowledge of the student's progress through my work with them as well as assessments I've given them, I create a draft of the student's annual iep.

At an annual iep meeting there are certain mandatory participants (this may vary from state to state, but generally remains the same.  The ones that are always there are the case manager (the special education teacher), the child's general education teacher, a representative for the administrator and the parent.  In addition, others that may attend would be the speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, or other related service providers that the student might work with. Our psychologist attends only if it's a re-evaluation (every 3 years), an initial, or if for some reason we need them for an issue or concern that we're dealing with.  This may differ from district to district.

I always start the meeting by stating the purpose of the meeting and introducing all the participants.  Then the general education teacher talks about the students progress in the general education class and strengths and weaknesses.  After that all the other related service teachers speak to the student's progress towards their goals,as well as their new goals and recommendations for the coming year.   Then I speak about their progress towards their goals, and discuss new goals for the coming year, asking for input from the teacher and the parents.  I go through the students iep and talk about the program the service times, and any accommodations and modifications the students can receive.  I open it up for questions, and other comments, then wrapping it up with the necessary signatures for our paperwork.  Once everything is complete (about a week later) I send home a copy with the student for the parent's use.

 

Organization on my mind!

There must be something in the air, but I'm really in the mood for organizing, rearranging and changing things up.  Once they added another half time resource teacher I was able to change my schedule and have smaller groups more appropriately geared towards my students ability levels.  Because of this I decided that it was about time to change some things up.  I've been reorganizing my lesson plan book and special ed book.  I'll report on it once I see if it works better for me.  I'm also planning on changing up the way I teach reading, focusing more on their classroom stories, pulling in other resources from my other reading programs that I've been trained in.  I'm hoping to make things more streamlined and efficient in the classroom.

Monitoring student's progress

How do you monitor students progress?  I use a variety of screening instruments that I've accumulated over my years of teaching.  I have a variety of Fry word checklists, a phonics screener, fluency screeners and a variety of math screeners that are geared towards different skills.  I'd love to find something better that monitors progress in writing-mostly I've just been using the 6 traits rubrics to score and use as a comparison.  

Lately I've been looking into new and different screeners that I can use for monitoring progress.  I've used intervention central and really like it, more recently I've been looking into using easy cbm.  I really like their screeners, but I'd like to find some additional ones for different areas (reading comprehension, reading fluency, basic reading, basic math, written expression and behavior).  What do you use?

Sunday Plan-Day

After a fun weekend of relaxing and having fun tonight was time to get serious about getting ready for the week.  My plans are finished, mainly need to tweak some plans and ideas, catch up on some school emails and prepare my plan of what I need to accomplish this week.  I'm working on making a plan for a clutter free classroom (I'm taking things in chunks) and trying to work on finding new ideas for helping my teachers differentiate with their students in the general education classroom.  Our district has started their implementation of the common core curriculum and it seems like the standards are much tougher for all students, but especially our special needs students as the teachers work to fill in the gaps between what they were learning in previous years, and this year. 

Enjoy your week everyone!!

November Currently!

Where did this month go?  It's hard to believe that it's already November and the holiday season is fast approaching.  I love this time of year!  There are lot's of breaks, the holidays and an opportunity to enjoy time with family and friends, and a good time to get creative with holiday themed lesson plans.  Here is my November Currently!  I tried to make it larger, but it went over the border of my blog.  I can't figure out why it's so big when I post it as the original size.  If anybody knows please share.  Otherwise, happy November!!

                                 Thanks to Farley at Oh' Boy 4th grade for this fun linky party!