Circle Time Activity

Here is our circle time/attendance activity. We usually do this right after lunch as some of our students are at integration in the morning and three days a week we have gym.

On our attendance page students move their name/pictures to the picture of the classroom. "Jessica's" picture is attached to an invisible line and using "Move along a path" it only allows her to move it a certain way in order to teach her to move items on the board.

 

On the next page we are working on identifying staff members and answering yes/no questions. The universal no, and the green yes circle are done with "drag a copy" allowing the students to use as many as necessary. We ask the student if they saw the person today/if we will see (referring to our visual schedule) and then model a yes/no response for them. The students then select the appropriate response and move it to the person.



 

On the next page we dress "Billy" for the weather. We discuss what we wore today and what he needs to wear and students take turns adding a piece of clothing.

On the next page our special helper gets to select a song for us to sing. When they press the song picture it jumps to the visuals for that specific song.

 

 

Here is a sample of the visuals for the songs. (This is our current favourite).

Calendar

We do Calendar everyday. I designed my calendar routine to allow for the most amount of skill acquisition and demonstration as possible while still being engaging and fun for the students. I have a picture of every page of our calendar except the weather graph which I am changing to a more user friendly version. I did start my Calendar with a Calendar activity I found on Smart Exchange, and it is an ever evolving activity.

 The first page is our sign in page. Students move their name from AWAY to HERE. Some students who are working on recognizing their name have a colour coded name while the others are black. There is also a small star in the HERE column which acts as a target for students who are learning to move items with purpose on the Smart Board. After student count how many people (including staff) are here or away and how many people are in our class altogether.

The second page is our monthly calendar. Students are in charge of writing the day of the week, following a two colour pattern, and adding the type of weather for that day. The weather images are infinite cloned.

Then we have our weather graph which I don't have a picture of. Next is the days of the week. We sing the Days of the Week song to the tune of the Addams Family. The days are colour coded to allow for more success for students. As well by colour coding words, students actually access a different part of their brain when retrieving the word. We have had great success with this for not only the days of the week, but in teaching one of my students to print their name in order.

 Next we dress Billy for the day. We sing a simple song "What will Billy wear today, wear today, wear today. What will Billy wear today, what will he wear" and then students take turns selecting appropriate clothing for Billy. I had to make snowpants for him as there were no snowpants in the Smart Notebook Gallery. At the end we sing "Billy's dressed for the weather today thank you very much."

Since we do Calendar after recess, we use our Calendar to assess recall and observation skills by asking students what vehicles they saw outside. As we have a construction site next door half of the vehicles are construction trucks. Students move one or two vehicles into the boxes.

The last part of Calendar is about choice making. We give the students a selection of 8 songs to sing and the daily helper gets to pick. When they touch the image of the song they want it jumps to that page. I've included the visuals for two of the songs we do.

Google Docs for Calendar