Next Year

Next year I will be changing jobs. I am going to be teaching the Diagnostic Kindergarten at Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy. We have been approved for a SEA Claim for an Interactive White Board. We will be getting a Promethean Board - great news for all you Promethean users! I will continue to share ideas and inspiration from my program and am excited to try out new things on the Promethean.

Great Website for use with an Interactive White Board

I found (thanks Pinterest) a website that has some cool games and activities for an Interactive White Board. Some of the games don't seem to load, but my students have had fun with the ones that do. (Pop Balloons is a huge hit)

Cookie

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

This week we did our initial reading of We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. I created a short Smart Board activity to accompany the read aloud. During the read aloud, we pause to put the different settings from the story in the correct order. A few of my students are beginning to read, so I created a cloze activity from the last page of the story for them. I also took two pictures of the bear from the story and asked the students how they think the bear feels based on facial expression and body language (no, I didn't use those terms). My students are big fans of memory games so I created a memory game to play at the end with different pictures of bears.

 

We're Going on a Bear Hunt Google Docs

Big and Little

One of my students is working on the attribute stage of PECs training. She has mastered colours and I wanted to introduce her to other attributes. I decided to start with Big and Little as it is a concept that we use a lot. In this activity I also have one of the pre-made games from the Lesson Activity Tool Kit. I use the vortex to get the students to sort pictures of Big and Little objects.

Big and Little Google Docs

Letter Matching

Some of my students are learning to match upper and lower case letters. I have a task box (see Activities and Tasks) that does this but here is the corresponding Smart Board activity. I found that more than 4 letters per page was too busy. Just make sure to check your fonts to ensure that your 'a' is this type of a as it is the most recognizable for students.

Google Docs for Letter Match

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

Observation Class Blog

Here is the TDSB Assistive Technology Blog about the Observation Class I hosted for other DD teachers.

Observation Class