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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Community Places Curriculum

I love teaching my students about places in their community.  In order for our students to be successful in their communities, they have to know what places are out there! Plus, community places are naturally meaningful for students, so they are often motivated to learn about them as well.

When to teach it? Community places is a perfect social studies theme, life skills or daily living, English/Language Arts, or you can even sneak in some math!

Of course, it all depends on your students and the time you have available, but you can easily teach one place a week, spending about 15-30 minutes each day on this topic. For students who work at a faster pace, teach three places a week.

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Community Signs UNO Card Game

When helping my students learning environmental print such as community signs, repetition is key. So I like to include the signs we've learned in as many places and ways as possible. We have signs hung up in our room, in our journals, in our math lessons, and even in this UNO game! I won't lie, this game is my favorite because my students don't really even think they are working or learning, they are just having fun playing a game! This community sign UNO game helps students learn and review 10 important community signs while having fun. #WINNING! :)

This game is relativity easy to play and to learn the rules, because most students are familiar with the game UNO, and this game follows those rules, except instead of numbers, it uses signs.

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Functional and Community Lessons - read my post at Special Education Guide

Hey everyone! I'm blogging over at Special Education Guide today. Head on over to read my thoughts and ideas on planning functional and community based lessons for students with special needs.

I talk about how I use worksheets, where I find curriculum, how I make my own lessons, and how I set up real world practice opportunities. So, head over and if you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear those as well!

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Grocery Shopping in the Classroom

Sometimes you have to practice grocery shopping without going to the store. Our official grocery store community trip won't be until January, but we will be practicing our grocery shopping skills, specifically shopping from a list, all year long!

One way we do this is through a simulated grocery shopping experiences. 

Bookshelf Grocery Store: I created a mini shopping experience on a bookshelf. We have a variety of empty food boxes and containers. My first thought was to make mini departments and have a "refrigerated' section...but I haven't had time to be that awesome yet. :)

I created two levels of shopping lists, one including pictures and the other with only words. Each list has 3-4 items on it. I taped a folder with the directions written on it and each level goes in one of the two pockets. 

Students will take a shopping bag, fill it up with items on their list, and then put the list in the bag and move to the next one. I have students complete it this way so that we can check to see if they got the correct items. If you can find the same items I used, feel free to download the lists I created for free.

Work Task Shopping Lists: Another way we practice this is during our work task boxes. This is very similar to the grocery shopping set up, just on a much smaller scale. Student look at a shopping list and fill the bag with those items. I have shopping lists with pictures or with words, ranging from 3 to 5 items. This task is available to download at my TpT store.

Online Tutorials: I've talked about how much I love the GFCLearnFree website before. Seriously, if you are looking for functional life skills, you will find an interactive tutorial in their Everyday Life section! The grocery list tutorial goes over finding the right aisle and then finding those items on your list. Did I mention its interactive? Awesome! :)

Grocery Store File Folders: And then there's my grocery store file folders that I've talked about in detail here. There are a total of 10 file folders, 2 which specifically deal with shopping from a list and the other cover a variety of grocery store topics.

Grocery Store Field Trip Prep: I created this grocery store community unit that is packed full of materials including Bingo games, social stories, vocabulary, coloring pages, worksheets, and more! We will start using that unit the month of our grocery store trip.

Honestly, I didn't realize I had so many grocery shopping resources when I started to type this post! What other things do you do to prepare your students for grocery shopping? I'd love to hear about them!

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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.

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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Extended School Year - Community Trips

I really thought I'd be posting more about ESY, but wow do those days fly by! I forget to take pictures that I can share with you guys, but with some cropping I am at least able to share these from a few of our community trips so far.

We went to the grocery store to pick up from materials to cook with this summer. We are able to use one of the culinary labs, which I absolutely love, because each student can have their own microwave and sink! I made a visual shopping list of the items we need for cooking, and then cut it up so each student had a section to shop for. (Check out our shopping list here for our easy cooking ideas). 

Each student had $5 to spend (which they put in their pouches/lanyard wallet things that we got from the bus presentation we had earlier. It's perfect since not all students bring wallets or have pockets, and this way students can hold onto their own money.)  At then we saw a Burger King in the same parking lot, so we stopped there for ice cream and ICEEs for only a $1!

Update: I've recently added these visual cooking materials that would be perfect for ESY or year round!

Our theme is Chicago this summer, and the White Sox gave us a tour of U.S. Cellular field! The kids all had a blast! We also went to the Chicago History Museum and if you follow me on instagram @BreezyBrieJoy you will see me as a Chicago style hot dog. I, of course, made all of the students become hot dogs as well. The museum was a lot more fun than I expected it to be.

We walked across the street to a local diner one day to have lunch. It was great to see my students order. Some of them were fabulously independent, like this student, who unexpectedly asked for a diet coke to go with his burger and fries! Plus, we got to work on skills like crossing the street at the light when the walk sign is showing. I have a couple of runners who all behaved like angels on this trip. YAY!

I have a couple more trips planned for the rest of this summer (we have a break this week and then only two more weeks left!) We are planning on going to the Willis Tower with another class which should be a blast! And then we will also take the train to the library. Taking the train with my students kinda terrifies me in a way so I'm going with another class and that teacher will show me the ropes. :) I just don't want anyone to be annoyed while we load the wheelchairs!

How's your summer going? ESY or relaxing? I'd love to hear about it!

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Grocery Store File Folders

I am so excited to add these grocery store file folders to our collection. They work on a variety of skills with a fun real life application of shopping or working at a grocery store!

There are a couple category sorting, such as this fruit and vegetable sort as well as a meat and dairy sort! Students can practice "stocking the shelves" with these folders.

Similar to these two, there is also a file folders that distinguishs between half and whole gallons of milk.

And I love this size sort between small an large food items.

There are also file folders that work on stocking shelves, this time working on matching rather than sorting skills. These include matching cans and matching a variety of different food items.

Two different file folders work on money values. One matches the amount to the dollar. The next requires the student to match the money to a bill that is larger and can pay for the total.

Then there is also a file folder with the theme of finding the items on a shopping list. One has picture supports, the other just has the word that the students has to match the picture too.

I love sneaking in teaching life skills using fun file folders!

Head over to my TpT store to get the digital download to make these file folders for your own classroom.

Also available here on Etsy, already prepped and ready to ship to you.

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Community trip - Bowling unit for Special Education

Last month our community trip was to go to a bowling alley. Before we went I wanted to make sure my students understood the basics of bowling as well as the social skills needed for bowling, so we had some fun during our resource class exploring these concepts.

First, we went through a coloring book.

This book has descriptions of different bowling terms (strike, spare, gutter ball) as well as concepts like waiting for friends and cheering for our friends. We went over this as a class and made it into a following directions activity as well (Such as color the pins red, color the shirt blue, etc).

I also threw in some math concepts, such as this number matching 1-10 cut and paste activity.

And also a money worksheet where students have to color in the amount of money needed to buy each item that you might find at the bowling alley. I'm sneaky hiding these math skills into fun bowling worksheets :)

Then we had this social skills game that we used two different ways. To introduce I passed out the green cards to students. I then read the blue card and if the student thought their answer fit, they told me what their card said. After we went through the activity as a class, I had students work on these individually as a matching or memory-type of game.

Of course we played some bowling Bingo too :)

As for our actual bowling experience, it went great! I was a little nervous when some students would step just about over the line into the slippery lane, but luckily no one fell! Also, we were right by the center so when we had balls that were rolling way too slow we were able to walk up and grab them which was really helpful. And check out that high five. That was all natural (aka we didn't tell them to high five and I didn't stage it - which I do sometimes so I can use the picture as a teaching tool) and I am SO proud of that high five and he's proud of his strike! :)

If you are interested in the learning materials we used, you can find these (and more) in this Bowling Unit in my TpT Store.

Anyway, it was a great experience! Have you taken your students on a bowling trip? If not, you should really think about it! We had a blast!

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Planning Community Trips for the Year

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Planning community trips was always so stressful for me, at least my first two years teaching. Each month, I'd think I should probably plan a community trip...but only ended up planning a few because other things always came up and I focused on those instead of trying to plan a trip. At the beginning of this year I decided, as a high school life-skills teacher, I need to make sure community trips were part of my curriculum. In August I planned a calendar of community trips I thought we could go on. In the beginning, I wanted to start with something simple, so it was just a short and sweet trip to McDonald's. Once my students had more exposure and were used to going on community trips, I figured they'd be able to handle more which is why towards the end of the school year I have us going to both a store and a nearby fast food restaurant in the same trip. 

 And I have to mention that looks might be deceiving...this is not the same calendar I started out with in August. I would scratch things out and move trips around, but since I like things to look neat, I would then update it and print out a new one. 

I also like having this prepared ahead of time, because I then work on lessons that go with our community theme.

Fast Food Restaurants: For McDonald's and Wendy's we used this fast food unit. We also spent time looking at their websites and their online menus. I created a visual menu from the dollar menu to help my students choose items while staying in their budget as well as a scavenger hunt in case we had some time to kill - you can see those things here. It was also helpful to use our environmental print Fast Food book and worksheets.

Sit Down Restaurant: For Denny's we prepared by reading some books I had about sit-down restaurants. We looked at the Denny's website at their menu, logo, and location. We also practiced by having a restaurant in class with menu items of chips and pretzels. Afterwards, I created this book that my students continue to read. During language, I have my student identify restaurants in their community based on their logos.

Dollar Store: The Dollar Tree website was great to look through and they had cool videos that we showed as well! I also really enjoy that at a dollar store, everything is a dollar, so it makes it easier for students to budget. We practiced picking out items and counting how many items we had to know how many dollars we needed, adding one dollar at the end for the tax. 

Mall trip: Every year before Christmas, my program takes our students to the mall to go shopping for presents and we get to watch a movie and eat at the food court too! We were able to go to the mall's website to get some background knowledge and I printed a map of the mall and we matched logos for the bigger department stores. I blogged about our experience last year here

Stores: Since they were all right next to each other, we went on a trip to ALDI, Five Below, and PetSmart. I had students complete "research projects" like the ones found in my Store Environmental Print packet. The students had to trace the name of the store and then cut and glue items from ads I brought it or ones that we found online of things they could find at those stores. We also went through a PowerPoint of actual stores that I found on Google images, so students could get used to recognizing the logo on actual buildings. The materials I used to teach these three stores you can download here for free. We used this Taking Care of Pets unit to prepare for PetSmart.

Bowling: More details to come in a post soon, but I used this bowling unit to help my students prepare for this trip. Update - read about our bowling preparation and trip here.

Thrift store: I'll admit, I really wanted to play "Thrift Shop" for my students....but even the clean version sounds a little dirty, so I didn't feel comfortable enough doing it. Sad day! I hope to create materials that I can use next time for this trip, but for this time we just went on Google images and talked about the Goodwill logo and how you can buy "good" stuff at Goodwill. We discussed donated and buying things cheaper, and how they have a lot of different things there. My students are excited to look for video games.

Update: Library - see post and materials HERE and Ice Cream trip - we used this unit!

Now, when a new month comes up, I check my community calendar, see if there is any conflicts with the date I suggested and then fill out the necessary paperwork for that event. I don't have to "think" which is SO helpful! :) And therefore we guarantee that we will have a community experience each month.

Need help preparing your students before they go out in the community? Grab this Community Trip bundle and receive 8 different trip units all planned for you!

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Environmental Print Signs Resource from PCI

Most of the resources that I used in my classroom I have created or received from other teachers - as I don't have a specific curriculum and usually am looking for very specific things. However, I LOVE this Environmental Print resource from PCI. It is appropriate for all my students and works on teaching important environmental print signs as well as reading. 

Each story has 3 signs. We spend 1-2 weeks on each story. I display the sign posters in my room.

 

First, we read the story on the projector (it comes with a PDF on a CD) together as a class to introduce the story and signs. I then store the current story we are reading by our binders, so we can review the story with the students before we do the worksheets during our binder time. Also if we review the story enough, many students are able to tell the story on their own towards the end!

 

Here's a few of the worksheets. There's about 7 for each unit. I have my students just do 1 a day so that we get practice on the symbols every single day.

I checked the PCI website, and you can download a sample and read more about what all is included.

This is not a sponsored post, I just wanted to share what I think is a really awesome resource! Please share any other resources you have found that you think have been helpful because I am always looking for new things!

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