March Madness

A good day for me is when I only feel about three steps behind where I'd like to be.  It is the nature of special education and I love the constant activity.  I wouldn't change it for the world.  Every day is different and I always have new things jumping on my to do list.  In my opinion, this is truly the best time to be a teacher because of the unlimited resources we have available to us at our fingertips.  

I have recently taken on three different math intervention groups (first, second, and third grade).  What this means is that I need to very quickly whip up programs materials that my instructional aides and I can follow.  Lucky for me, Teachers Pay Teachers has a million wonderful games and units to choose from.  I did some browsing and found some winners that have gone over well with my groups and I thought I would pass them along.  

To start, Second Story Window, has these spectacular homework add-on packs.  These are common core aligned, which is always a plus for me.  I ended up printing these out and making them into packets for my aide to work on in a small group.  There is just enough content in each page to cover my 30 minutes with them and there are a lot of learning opportunities embedded in the content.  

For my third grade group, I went over to In The Math Lab and I found this seasonal packet of math activities for the month of March.  They have several different packets for each month of the year so take your pick!  These are meant to be daily activities, but with my group meeting only once a week I can stretch them out a little longer.  

With conferences, report cards, progress reports, and evaluations looming it feels great to have these tasks checked off my to-do list!

Present Levels Remix

When I was going to school to be a special education teacher, I was told over and over again, "Get ready for all the data!"

I knew that there was a lot of data collection, I figured it couldn't be that hard.  What I was not prepared for was the task of keeping data for 15+ students across four grade levels on a regular basis...HELP!  

My classroom services students with mild-moderate learning disabilities.  This means that the majority of my students spend most of their time in their general education classroom.  This makes it very difficult for me come IEP time to get a good understanding of where they are at with their present levels.  It also doesn't help that each teacher has a different style of working and collecting student info.  It would be great if each of them had a nice little binder waiting for me with student work so that I could dive in and get what I need.  That's very rarely the case.  We all have our own organizational styles and that's fine with me.  

What I've done to tackle this issue is I've typed up a present levels form that I can fill out when I meet with the general education teacher prior to the IEP.  It helps to give our conference a direction and to work efficiently.  To expedite the process I went through each of the standards and notated a reference in the measure section to the curriculum so that we have a starting off point for each standard.

One thing that I never quite developed is that beautiful teacher handwriting.  My penmanship skills peaked in the fourth grade.  For that reason, I like to bring my laptop to meet with the teachers, type directly in the document, and print it out when I'm done.  If you have beautiful handwriting, I'm jealous...you can just print it out and fill it out by hand as you go.


See my mini-tutoral to find out how to add your curriculum reference points to your document.

Below are some samples of my third grade PLOP packet. There is a peek at the blank document and a shot of what my document that I use looks like. Of course, it's up in my TPT store, stop by and check it out!

 
  

Reflections on Teachers and Third Grade "I can..." Math Posters

My elementary school growing up was relatively small.  At the time it did not seem like it but, now, after working in several different schools I see how quaint it truly was.  We had three teachers in each grade level and they were pretty much the exact same teachers throughout my elementary career.  My sisters and I often had the same teachers as we moved down the line.  Each time I would get a teacher that one of my sisters had I always felt like I had a little bit of an in.  Being the youngest, I always got the inside scoop before the first day.  I knew my third grade teacher had an obsession with Pee-Wee Herman, my fourth grade teacher played the guitar, and I knew that my fifth grade teacher loved the color brown.  I was, for some reason, very bothered by this.  

I love bright fun colors so I just couldn't imagine why someone would want to wear brown every day.  I mean it, it was every day.  Some days it was mixed in with shades of taupe, but there was always some element of brown. She even had brown chalk.  Sometimes I think back on my teachers and I wish I had the opportunity to go back in time to see them now as my 30+ year-old self.  I wonder if they really were that strange or if it was just my perception.  I think back on this particular teacher and I remember she had very long finger nails and she would clack them together constantly.  She always wore kaftans or knee-high boots...brown of course.  I wonder how much of it was her and how much of it was just her teaching persona.  

I had a student a few years back who would obsessively ask people what color things were.  

"Do you have a car?  What color is it?"

"Do you have a boom box?  What color is it?"

Do you have a phone?  what color is it?"

This would go on and on indefinitely.  Until one day, I told him "My favorite color is hot pink and everything I own is hot pink. Now you don't have to ask me what color anything is anymore, because everything I own is hot pink."

He sat there and thought about it for a minute and I thought this was it, I had solved the problem.  Until he said, "Do you have an exhaust on your car?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

And that's how every question about anything I owned went for the rest of the year.

"Do you have a couch?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

"Do you have a microwave?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

"Do you have an x-box?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

There is some truth to hot pink being my favorite color, I definitely gravitate towards it, however, everything I own is not hot pink.  But in his mind, he believed it, and my defining trait for him is that "everything she owns is hot pink".  I didn't stay at that school long enough for it to become part of my official persona, but whenever I choose a hot pink item for my classroom I smile and think back wondering where that kid is now.

I have found as I've gotten older that I have transitioned to liking more neutrals with pops of color.  Which brings me to my latest set of Common Core "I Can..." math posters.  I set up the design and fell in love with it and then I thought...Is it too brown?  Am I turning into my fifth grade teacher?  Have I already turned into my fifth grade teacher?  After much deliberation, I decided the answer is no.  

These colors are great and I like the soft mellow vibe.  While I love a hot color, I know that it can be a distraction for my students.  I find that minimizing bright colors and mellowing out the room helps them to focus better.  I hope others like it too!