Teaching Money Skills in Special Education

When teaching life skill math, make sure that what you are teaching is able to be transferred to life outside of the classroom. Seriously, you don't want to waste your time (and your students' time) on skills that won't be used in the real world! 

One of the easiest ways to do this when teaching money is to make sure the materials in your classroom are realistic.

Realistic Cash Register

I don't know why, but every "play" cash register I have found has spots for 3 bills. Why? I wish I knew! Pretty sure all normal cash registers have 4 (and maybe some bank specific ones have more). So when working with money in your classroom, buy a cash register drawer (amazon affiliate link) to use instead of a play cash register. It is just about the same price as the play version from Lakeshore learning!

Another great option is to see if anyone is donating an old cash register. Ask your local Buy Nothing group on Facebook.

Use Pretend Money...but Realistic Money

Obviously, the real thing is the best thing, but keeping cash in the classroom might not be the best option. Don't buy the play money that is all the same color. 

Students with special needs, they need something that is closer to the real thing like these ones (amazon affiliate link). Plus the color (like on our real dollars) makes it easier to identify which bill is which, which is especially helpful for students who aren't recognizing numbers.

5 NO PREP Resources for St. Patrick's Day and March Special Education

Are you feeling the drag of the school year by this point? Let me make it a little bit easier for you by showing you these resources that you can click, print, and use without any additional prep work or modification for your special education students.

Sound good? Here are 5 resources for March and St. Patrick's Day that are differentiated and ready to go!

Thankful Turkey Journal and Craft Activity for Special Education

The act of gratitude is important for everyone, and that includes our students with disabilities. It might be hard for our non-verbal students to express what they are thankful for, so I created these differentiated thankful turkeys to help!

Symbol Support

With this thankful turkey resource, students will be able to use the symbols to help them think about and choose the things they are thankful for. Then they can paste them on a turkey or on a journal to show what they are thankful for.

Creative Alternatives for IEP Transition Planning (COVID-19 friendly)

Being a special education teacher instructing remotely is far from easy. There are limited aspects of our jobs to see the benefits of teaching virtually over teaching in-person. For my friends who are special educators, you likely are facing double the challenge of having to wear two hats - one as a classroom teacher and the other as a special education case manager.

If there’s a silver lining in all of this, my Case Manager hat would be screaming “TRANSITION SERVICE PLANNING!”.  Formerly a process that was case-manager designed and facilitated around school-and community learning opportunities has been flipped upside down where students and their families are expected to take a more active role in-home and community-based activities.  Thanks to the shift to remote and blended learning, the top-down transition planning model is now a three-way shared responsibility (teacher, student, and parent/guardian).

Here are some creative alternatives to your traditional transition planning and implementation steps. These alternatives allow you to get the data and information you need to meet policy and planning purposes while providing students with opportunities to strengthen their self-determination skills and social skills. All the while making the parent/guardian experience stress and hassle-free by placing more responsibility on their child. For best results, confer with your IEP team members to solicit feedback and recruit support before attempting these alternatives.

Resources to Teach Women in History for Special Education

The month of March is National Women's History Month. What a great time to teach about some influential women in history. I've compiled some of my favorite resources to use with your special education class to get you started.

Introduce the month by using this free national day journal activity that introduces the month of March as Women's History month. There are four different levels to help you reach all of your learners. 

Celebrating Each Day with National Day Journals

Add some more fun to your calendar routine with your special education class by talking about the national day. National Day discussion journals are the perfect activity to add into your morning meeting! Why might you want to include the national day during your morning calendar routine? There are a ton of reasons including:

• Predictable routine - format stays the same while the topic changes
• Knowledge - learn and discuss random topics
• Relevant - people of all ages enjoy talking about the national day
• Language Arts - listen, read, and write about the national day
• Fun and Motivating - obviously :) 
• Differentiated - Four levels of differentiated journals are included along with a symbol supported classroom poster to encourage classroom discussion and participation among students of ALL levels
• NO PREP - use the BSE Symbol Supported National Day resource and simply print (or digitally assign) and GO!

Here's what the classroom poster and 4 levels look like and how you can use these in your special education classroom with multiple levels of learners: