New Years Resolutions and Activities for Special Education Classrooms

Are you ready to go back to school after winter break? 

These four free new years activities will help you get back into the swing of things, and spend less time planing so you can enjoy what you have left of break! 

All of these activities are perfect for special education classrooms and have little to no prep, just print and go!

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Christmas Gifts for Paraprofessionals

A special education classroom relies so much on their paraprofessionals! It's especially nice to show them how much they are appreciated, especially around this time of year!

No matter your budget, I think I have some really good ideas here for you :)

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Mess Free Ornament Painting

How many of you have your students make gifts for their parents? Ornaments are one of my favorite simple gifts to make! You can easily pair it with another gift, or give it by itself!

This is a sponsored post by The Pencil Grip, Inc. - the makers of Kwik Stixs and Magic Stixs. 

All thoughts and opinions are my own.  Links in this post are affiliate links.

I think that wood ornaments like the ones I used or these on Amazon are perfect for all ages, even age appropriate for high school aged students (so many ornament crafts I see on Pinterest wouldn't be appropriate, such as handprint ornaments for high schoolers, obviously a no - and others seem to childish as well). However, wood ornaments are perfect for everyone! Joann's had a bunch to choose from, including ones with spaces for a picture or without.

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How to Host a Thanksgiving Feast with Your Special Education Class

Yes, your special education students can cook and should cook a Thanksgiving dinner! 

One of my favorite parts about teaching life skills is cooking. It's a lot of fun, kids are usually motivated to cook, and it helps them become more successful young adults. Win, win, win! So, of course, around Thanksgiving time it is 100% necessary to cook a Thanksgiving feast!

Not only is Thanksgiving a perfect time to work on a variety of cooking skills, but a great time to practice manners at a nice sit down dinner as well!

What was on the menu for our Thanksgiving Feast? Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole and stuffing. And of course, pumpkin pie for dessert!!

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New Work Task Boxes for Special Ed

Who is prepping more work boxes this summer? I just love getting new ideas, especially for our older life skill students!

Christina Bailey, a transition life skill teacher, offered to share a bunch of her work boxes on my blog! Thank you Christina! Christina works with transition aged students (19-26 years old) with severe cognitive and/or health impairments. Her school serves students from multiple school districts within the county who learn best in an alternative placement.

Are you ready? Here they are!!

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No Prep Work Boxes for Special Ed on Amazon

You all probably know how much I love making task boxes for my work task station from materials that I can find laying around at home or in my classroom. Free is always best!

BUT...there is something about the ease of Amazon (Dear Amazon Prime, just take all my money already!), and time is valuable, so if you need some quick new ideas, here's a few of favorite work tasks that you can find on Amazon! (The following links provided are affiliate links)

I had a similar set of nuts and bolts in my classroom and highly recommend these!

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5 Things to Know When Printing Online Resources

I love that we live in a time when we have so many resources available right at our fingertips. Gone are the days of flipping through workbooks at the copy machine, just find what you need online (lets be honest...on Pinterest or TpT) and print!

When printing your digital resources, check out these tips and let me know if you learned anything new or if there are any tricks I missed!

First, ALWAYS, print from Adobe (or maybe another PDF reader). If you print directly from the internet, things are more likely to get messed up and you don't have as many options.

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Incorporating Theater into the Special Education Classroom: Five Myths

I know what you're thinking, theater in my classroom? Yeah right, my students don't even talk. Well, I beg you to think again! I've recently met Katie from 4th Wall Theatre Company, and, guys, she writes plays for people with disabilities for a living! What a cool job, right?  I was so excited when she asked if she could talk about theater with you all on my blog.

As a special education teacher, you might be thinking how on earth could you incorporate theater into your own classroom, why you would even want to, how hard would it be, and how you could do it. Well, keep reading!

At 4th Wall Theatre, we teach that theater is made up of three elements: Singing, Acting, and Dancing.  Every student is bound to have a favorite (just like the professionals!), but all students are capable of participating in each of these elements.  Within each “element of the theater” are opportunities for supporting all abilities.

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How to Prep Adapted Books for Special Education

I love making interactive / adapted books for my students! By giving students something tangible to interact with on each page, you promote engagement and can check for comprehension through out the story. 

Interactive / Adapted Books also give students a clear purpose for reading books if they don't see the value in reading yet. You can adapt the current books you have in your classroom by adding symbols or you can print and create your own books! Here's the steps I go through when putting together adapted books that I have printed.

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Pageant Fundraiser for Special Needs Princesses

Every little girl loves dressing up and looking beautiful. What a better way to do this than a pageant?

One of my fellow special education teachers and blog readers, Lori Bush, put together this amazing pageant as a fundraiser for her special education classroom and featured princesses with special needs. Check out how she created this wonderful experience for special princesses and raised a ton of money for her classroom as well!

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How to Write Amazing IEP Goals (and take Data like a Boss)!

How often have you gotten a new IEP goal and thought, how in the world am I going to track that? Or even worse yet, wrote an amazing IEP goal only to later realize you aren't really sure how you were going to collect data on that goal. Been there, done that. My first year of teaching I found myself writing really good IEP goals that were specific and described how students needed to grow...but sadly I found myself unable to keep track of their progress as detailed as I would've liked.

Sure, you can read a million different ways to collect data and maybe you've tried them all: clipboard, notecards, binders, and the list goes on. But your data collection might not get better until you make your student's IEP goals work for you!

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Why Fidgeting is Helpful + Focus Fidget GIVEAWAY!

As special education teachers, we know our students need to fidget, right? But usually the question is what is an appropriate fidget that will help our students focus AND aren't too distracting at the same time.

I was contacted by the Focus Fidget and knew I just had to do a giveaway for you guys so you could check this out!

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Calendar Skills (Days of the Week and Months) File Folders

Some kids learn calendar vocabulary quickly and easily with a simple daily calendar activity during morning meeting. Other kids, well, a lot of our kids, need more explicit practice. Enter: file folders!

As I have said so many times, file folders are one of my absolutely favorite ways to practice skills. For some reason, my students don't see file folders as work, but as a fun activity, so I definitely use that to my advantage!

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