School Assembly / Pep Rally BINGO Freebie

Our homecoming was this past week, and while it's a ton of fun and full of great experiences for our students, there's lot of new experiences. One of those being the school assembly! It's loud, different, and new! We prepared for the assembly in the funnest way I know how....BINGO!
pep rally bingo
I went though all of the cards as I would in a social story type of way. If that doesn't make sense, here's an example. "Today after class we are all going to go to the...'GYM!' In the gym we will sit on the bleachers and Mrs. Holtrop, Annie, Megan, and Kathy will all sit on one side because they are all....'GIRLS'. The 'MARCHING BAND' will play and it might get kinda 'LOUD.' If it's too loud for you, you can wear...'HEADPHONES'. You kinda get the progression.

I uploaded the school assembly boards and calling cards to BoardMaker Online, so if you want to download it and edit to fit your school you can do so! Just switch the school, principal, and colors and you should be good to go! Our school does competitions between girls and boys, but you might want to switch those to grades with a couple others if your school does something different.

I hope this Bingo game will help your students prepare for a pep really or school assembly as well!
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Our Fast Food Community Trip to McDonalds

Our first community trip of the year was a great success and that came with a lot of planning! And it doesn't hurt that fast food is extremely motivating...and I allowed my students to eat ice cream for breakfast. I won't lie, I had a hot fudge sundae before we left, because, it's not everyday you get to go to McDonald's during school! :)

Anyway, let's start at the beginning. I sent home this parent letter in order to inform parents of our upcoming trip as well as give them the words to practice at home.

We did these worksheets pictured above and these ones here scattered throughout the month to work on our regular skills while including some fun fast food trip prep!

There are a few different ways I like to play this "game" with my students. I usually introduce the activity as a class and give each student a red card (a couple students may have to share). I then read the yellow card and asks who has the right response. After going through all the cards like that, each student goes through these on their own and matches them appropriately. You can also do this activity without the red cards and the student actually has to respond like they would in that situation with the clues. 
The social story / coloring book is definitely my favorite part of my community trip materials. It goes through each step very simply and tells you what to do. We read this together as a class. I give directions like "color the tray green" in order to practice some following directions / listening skills. And we also practice and role play each step.

Here's our vocab cards on our pocket chart on our whiteboard. We did a few activities with these, such as taping them to the walls and going on scavenger hunts to find all the symbols. And of course...

We also played BINGO. I love Bingo, my kids love Bingo. It's a win-win all around! I store all of my Bingo boards in sheet protectors in a large binder. It's the best system ever.

We also working on recognizing logos of other fast food restaurants using this adapted book and these flashcards.

We did a lot of role playing and practicing ordering our food, as well as getting our money out of our wallets and handing it over to the cashier. I tell my students if they can't order, they don't get to eat! We aren't going to do it for them, so they have to do it! We also had a countdown going on our calendar. Oh my, my class would be so excited and giggly whenever we were talking about that!

So, even though we spent all month working on saying and recognizing typical food at fast food restaurants like McDonalds....we had to order off the breakfast menu since our trip had to be scheduled in the morning! Since many of my students are non-verbal (and our iPads aren't loud enough to be used as communication devices in the community, I've tried), we used these sentence strips to order our food. It was a great way to allow my students to be independent!

And look how well she's doing ordering her food with her sentence strip!


In case we have extra time after eating, I quickly created this scavenger hunt to go with the steps at McDonalds. You can download it for free here.

Fast Food Community Trip Unit (special education, multi-ne
I was so proud! I love a good, successful community trip! Get many of the resources mentioned above in this fast food community unit!
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Eric Carle Adapted Books and More - downloads for you!

A while back, I wrote this post about how to adapt books for students with special education. I've had some requests lately to share some symbols with you so you can create your own, and of course I will!! I have linked the book to Amazon (using affiliate links), sometimes you can find great deals online, especially used, but of course, it's better if you already have it or can find it at a thrift store of something!

Book: Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Eric Carle
Symbols: Adapted Symbols for Polar Bear...+ pictures of the book for adapted pieces (I just copied one of the pictures from the google image, pasted in word and enlarged to an appropriate size)

Book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Symbols: Adapted Symbols for The Very Hungry Caterpillar + pictures for adapted pieces (same method to use these as Polar Bear...). You'll also notice pages, such as the one pictured don't include all of the words, rather it simplifies it to "Wednesday, 3 plums."

Book: The Way I Feel by Janan Cain 
Symbols: Adapted Symbols for The Way I Feel - These are an added sentence for each page that follows the same format, "I feel ____ when ...."

Book: Frog's Lunch by Dee Lillegard
Symbols: Adapted Symbols for Frog's Lunch

Book: Dinosaur Days (Step into Reading) by Joyce Milton
Symbols: Adapted Symbols for Dinosaur Days - This one was created by one of my awesome paraprofessionals, John, who was kind enough to send this to me so I could share it with you! It has a sentence for each page, like a summary, as there are a lot of words on this one.

Want more? Be sure to check out this post for more symbols to add to existing books!
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September Currently


Listening: On the phone with AT&T, trying to figure out our internet pricing after our 1 year promo was up. Not too much fun. But it all worked out in the end. Ask to speak with their customer representative service department (or something like that) and they can give you way more deals than the billing department, We ended up paying $2 more a month and get twice the internet speed. A lot better than the $20 more a month that showed up on my bill!

Loving: Once a month, we have teacher planning time in the morning for an hour and a half. It's amazing what I can get done in this time...and it's also amazing how quickly the time goes by!

Thinking: I've loving feeling more prepared and organized this year. My TpT store has motivated me to do a lot of work this summer and I'm feeling more organized because of it! Plus I've built up materials and resources over the last couple of years so that's going well.

Wanting: These no-bake cookies. Now. They are delicious.

Needing: I have students with some severe needs and issues going on, both at home and at school. I just want to fix it all and come up with the "magic" solution. It's never as easy as I hope, but I'm so motivated!

3 trips: I know these are slightly random but I've really always wanted to go to Italy, India, and Hawaii.

So what's up with you currently? :)
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