It's all about the little moments
I spend day in and day out with my students for three years, and every year I'm so sad to say goodbye to my eighth graders...and then come the new 6th graders! New relationships are built with time, and we learn together. Below are pictures of our adventures!
Math with mr. tobakMr. Tobak invites us to his class to do hands-on math activities. We've learned about measurement by measuring our limbs and height, we've learned about fractions by using a socket wrench, and we learned about liquid measurement by pouring water into an array of containers. In all of these activities, the students have had to make a hypothesis and then test it by exploring the resources.
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Pair workWork Skills |
Coffee DeliveryStaff members placed their orders online, and the students filled the orders daily. Coffee, along with cream and sugar, was delivered right to the classroom door. This was part of our work skills class, as well as part of our service learning.
Students work daily in the cafeteria washing and stacking trays, refilling utensils and condiments and putting down benches.
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Motion & Optical Illusion with the praxinoscopeStudents studied motion and optical illusion using the animation praxinoscope. A paper disc was placed around a central metallic cone. The images are viewed reflected in the cone, and as the disc is spun, the images flash in sequence at high speed on the mirrors. The stills produce an illusion as they are moving in a continuous sequence.
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Magnetism and race cars
After testing various magnets, students chose the magnet they thought would get their cars to the finish line. It took trial and error to get the cars to travel without touching them and without the cars flipping over and sticking, but once they got the hang of it, the races got really exciting!
Force and motion with water rockets
We're learning about Newton's laws and the principle of action and reaction. Students used a bicycle pump to pump air through water in a bottle. When the pressure built enough, the bung was pushed out, causing the rocket to soar upward! Some of the prerequisite skills that were taught during this lesson were designing an experiment to test the effect of force on an object, contrasting situations where work is done with different amounts of force to situations where no work is done, identifying and describing the changes in position, direction, and speed of an object when acted upon by unbalanced forces and measuring and graphing changes in motion.
The Voting Process
My students set up a voting booth outside the library to invite all Lopez students to vote for their favorite soda. Over 200 votes were counted in the primary election, and the campus winner was sprite. Our class then held a general election between the winners of the dark soda party and the clear soda party, and the final winner was coke. Some of the prerequisite skills that were taught in this activity were identifying ways that public officials are selected, including election and appointment to office, identifying governmental services in the community such as police and fire protection, libraries, schools, and parks and explaining their value to the community, identifying functions of governments such as establishing order, providing security, and managing conflict, identifying and describing the role of a good citizen in maintaining a constitutional republic, and identifying and describing the roles of public officials in the community, state, and nation.
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During this week-long lesson, students learned important critical skills such as delayed gratification, cooperation, peer interaction, losing gracefully, making prosocial statements, cooperation and prioritizing what is most important. They also used math skills such as making tally marks, skip counting, adding and graphing.
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Body systems and frog dissection
Students in my class explored the anatomy of a frog in the science lab. We identified the lungs, heart, eyes, muscles, tendons and other internal structures. Students peeled back the skin to compare the body systems of a frog to the human systems that we already learned about earlier in the year. Prerequisite skills we practiced before and during this activity included differentiating between living and nonliving things based upon whether they have basic needs and produce offspring, exploring how adaptations enable organisms to survive in their environment such as comparing birds’ beaks and leaves on plants, and examining evidence that living organisms have basic needs such as food, water, and shelter for animals.
Building simple machines
We joined a science lab in Mr. Porter's class to build simple machines using only paper and tape. My students drew out their plans for their machines, and after several drafts, of course, reviewed by myself and Mr. Porter, the plans were ready to build. Students built their machines on poster board using folded paper and tape. The goal was to drop a marble and get it from a starting point to the end of the machine in the longest amount of time. A bonus was to work in as many simple machines as possible, including inclined planes, pulleys, levers, wedges and screws. A.L.E. delivered, meeting the goal of having the slowest travel time to the bottom!
Trial and error video |
Prerequisite skills taught before and during this activity included investigating how inclined planes and pulleys can be used to change the amount of force to move an object, measuring and graphing changes in motion, identifying and describing the changes in position, direction, and speed of an object when acted upon by unbalanced forces, designing an experiment to test the effect of force on an object such as a push or a pull, gravity, or friction, demonstrating and observing how position and motion can be changed by pushing and pulling objects to show work being done such as swings, balls, pulleys, and wagons, comparing patterns of movement of objects such as sliding, rolling, and spinning, and tracing the changes in the position of an object over time such as a cup rolling on the floor and a car rolling down a ramp.
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Paraprofessional appreciation day
To show their appreciation for the paraprofessionals on campus, we created the first annual Paraprofessional Appreciation Day. Students each had an assigned job, and they practiced not only how they would do their job, but also how they would communicate with the paras around campus. Some students memorized their lines, some read them from cards, some used pictures and others used communication devices. Students pushed a coffee and pastry cart around campus, inviting paras out of their classrooms to be given a complimentary treat. Leadership opportunities such as this give students in the alternative learning environment a chance to give back and feel pride in helping others.
There is a leadership opportunity for every student on our campus. We make every effort for students to find a role that fits their personality, builds off their ability levels and instills confidence in their role in the community.
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Work Skills in the cafeteria
An elective available only to students in the alternative learning environment is Cafeteria Support. Students are expected to wear aprons, gloves and hairnets, depending on the jobs they are doing in the back and front of house. Students learn important critical skills such as active listening, responding to questions, following directions, asking clarifying questions, peer interaction, joint or shared attention, accepting criticism or feedback, taking the initiative, cooperation, reminding yourself and others, accepting responsibility, accepting and providing compliments and praise, responding to and initiating greetings, hygiene, grooming and clothing for various situations, knowing what is expected in a given situation, personal goal setting and prioritizing what is most important. Students have a Work Skills book filled with step-by-step visuals they need in order to complete their tasks, and as students master tasks, they are put in charge of training other students on how to complete those tasks.
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force, motion and measurement
Students from the alternative learning environment joined a lab class to work in small groups with their peers. Students created a pendulum that was released from varying heights. The released pendulum came into contact with a wood block that moved varying distances, depending on the height from which the pendulum was released. Some of the prerequisite skills taught during this activity were designing an experiment to test the effect of force on an object such as a push, pull, or gravity, measuring and graphing changes in motion, calculating average speed using distance and time measurements, identifying and describing the changes in position, direction, and speed of an object when acted upon by unbalanced forces.
Work Skills folding popcorn boxes
One of the leadership opportunities our students participate in on campus is a collaboration with the Social Network Club. Our students fold the boxes every Friday, working on critical skills such as following directions, peer interaction, cooperation, taking the initiative, recognizing the need for and asking for help, self-management, staying engaged in a task and planning what needs to be done. Students deliver the containers of folded boxes to the Social Network Club who pop and sell popcorn after school on Fridays.
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morning warm-up graphs
Students complete their morning warm-ups daily by choosing one graph from a wide array of graphs offered. They attach it to a clipboard and travel between rooms asking students and staff questions that will help them to complete their graphs. Students learn important critical skills such as getting attention appropriately, asking "-wh" questions, active listening, self-management, taking the initiative, following directions, being aware of personal space, peer interaction and shared attention. We discuss the results of their graphs every morning during our morning meeting, and then we discuss what other topics we could graph.
Students also learn important prerequisite skills such as · organizing a collection of data with up to four categories using pictographs and bar graphs with intervals of one or more, using data to create picture and bar-type graphs, collecting data and organizing it in a graphic representation, drawing conclusions and generating and answering questions using information from picture and bar-type graphs, and using data to create real- object and picture graphs .
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leader in me symposium
Our campus is working to be the first Lead middle school campus in Texas, and I am the special education representative on the Lighthouse committee helping our students to meet this goal. My focus is on creating opportunities for students with special needs to be leaders. One student job I created was the morning greeter. I have one student who puts on his leader lanyard every morning and independently goes to the front doors of the school to open the door for visitors and take them to places on campus. This student was a little reluctant to use his communication device, though. That was, until he had the opportunity to speak to a crowd of well over 100 people at the Leader In Me Symposium. He stood in front of the crowd and welcomed them, and since that day and the roar of applause that he got, he has been using his communication device regularly to express his needs, make conversation and even lead warm-up exercises in adaptive P.E.