If you're an occupational therapy practitioner or student looking for cognitive intervention ideas, check out our article covering the all the basics here.
Occupation-based treatments are crucial for OTs, but we can't always do the real thing. Check out these simulated OT treatments to help!
If you're searching for functional occupational therapy group treatment ideas for your adult rehab patients, check out our favorites here!
Learn 10 easy items that you can use as an OT practitioner to complete a stroke treatment with your patients!
Thousands of teachers have used these tried and true GUARANTEED tups to stop students from blurting out. Chatty Class? YOU NEED TO READ THIS!
Hi friends! Tonight I would like to take you on an inside tour of my No Prep Math Intervention Binder! It was just posted to my TpT store today and I am
Looking for occupational therapy activities using free or household materials? This list of OT activities supports development of OT goals.
I am always looking for ideas to shake up my OT treatments and try to get creative with activity tolerance activities, because it is just NOT functional or
Do you do all of these 6 essentials of reading intervention? Each is a must-have for effective intervention and will make it so much easier...
Don't get overwhelmed by data collection! These Google Sheets with make tracking academic interventions, IEP goals, and progress monitoring data, easier than ever!These sheets include 7 pre-entered dropdown areas of concern that are color-coded with 38 intervention drop-down options for each area, m...
If you're an OT looking for occupation-based dynamic balance interventions to use with your patients, we've got you covered in this post!
For our ADL Building Blocks Series, we're covering the foundations to ensure successful gains with your OT treatments, focusing on Posture and Balance here.
As an OT, you'll likely see patients with decreased fine motor skills. Here are the best functional fine motor coordination activities
NO PREP! PRINT AND GO! These logical consequences ensure that misbehaviors are met equitably and fairly. This intervention is great for students who: Push back against consequences. By giving students choice in the consequence, it increases the likelihood that they will both accept and participate in the consequence. Have with behavioral needs. This product includes: One set of class expectations 8 behaviors, with 2 consequence choices for each behavior 3 non-negotiable behaviors with consequences Reflection sheet (a consequence choice for several of the behaviors) COLOR and BLACK AND WHITE print options Please be sure to leave a review!
Do you have struggling readers you just can't reach? This mega list of reading intervention activities will help you teach all students how to read!
Want to create a MTSS behavior intervention plan or academic intervention plan, but don't know where to start?Say goodbye to stress and hello to simplicity! This resource does not just give you the tools to implement tier 1, 2, and 3 interventions, it gives you the plan. The Multi-Tiered System of S...
Coming up with OT fieldwork in-service ideas can be tough. For a list of 13 ideas for adult rehab fieldwork, we've got you covered here.
Feeling stuck with functional activity tolerance interventions? We cover activities from low to high level to increase activity tolerance.
Unilateral neglect is a common effect of strokes. It goes by many different names. Learn the current evidence-based OT interventions to help
Feeling stuck with functional activity tolerance interventions? We cover activities from low to high level to increase activity tolerance.
Learn six ways to help reluctant readers gain confidence and improve their reading skills in upper elementary and middle school classrooms.
I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!
In room occupational therapy treatment interventions are a necessity when a patient is isolated or you are working with limited supplies.
Unlock Reading Magic: Dive into animated shorts and task cards for captivating main idea and details lessons! 📚🎬
Check In Check Out is an evidence-based tier two behavior intervention. Here's my best tips, tricks, and resources to help you succeed with CICO.
10 whiteboard activity ideas. A compilation of ideas for activities to do on a whiteboard. A versitile tool for anyone working with others.
Setting up a math intervention class can be overwhelming. Here's how I set up the right mindset, design learning activites, and choose high-impact concepts.
We cover the importance of meaningful and functional occupational therapy interventions to use with your patients affected by dementia.
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. It most commonly impairs one’s ability to gauge and execute movements (pivoting, turning, reaching, and stepping, to name a few). The Parkinson’s Foundation estimates that over 10 million people worldwide are living with PD every year. Physical and Occupational Therapy are standard interventions for PD, with programs like LSVT BIG leading the way. To supplement such programs, 5 balance exercises favorites are listed below from the Haas Balance Book: 100+ Exercises for PTs and OTs): Standing + Reaching Across Midline [Exercise 15] reinforces trunk rotations and improves balance during reaching to the side or behind midline. Targets are positioned laterally or posteriorly (behind patient) to challenge range of motion and balance. Functional carryover includes improved safety and ability to prepare meals, take showers, don clothes, etc. Reaching Overhead [Exercise 13] emphasizes standing and raising arms above one’s head, similar to motions of changing a lightbulb. This exercises challenges balance (center of gravity moves posteriorly) while also helping improve trunk extension and arm flexion motions. To integrate cognitive challenges with overhead reaching, add Balance Games [Exercises 88-93 & 95-97]. Randomized Turning [Exercise 78] requires patient to pivot, turn and face the colored target called out by therapist. Colored cards are used to randomize color order. The benefit of this exercise is on improving safety and stability when changing directions in standing and walking. Stepping On/Off Obstacle [Exercise 57] helps improve steadiness when lifting and setting foot on an obstacle, such as a curb or step. The patient is asked to set their foot on the obstacle and then return it back to the starting position while attempting to minimize balance deviations. The sequence is then repeated with the opposite foot. Selecting higher obstacles (second or third steps) is helpful for increasing step height and reinforcing movements into hip and knee flexion. Randomized Stepping (with Balance Dots) [Exercise 73] or Clock Yourself App [Exercise 75]. Random cues help simulate reactionary movements. Steadiness, quickness, and strength with stepping movements are important for balance recovery and fall prevention. For more information on stepping strategies see previous blog titled “Tips to Improve Stepping Strategies.” Other Balance Exercise Groups: 1. 5 Balance Exercise Favorites Following Hip Replacement
As an OT, you'll likely see patients with decreased fine motor skills. Here are the best functional fine motor coordination activities
Learn how OTPs should be using both a biomechanical frame of reference & occupation based techniques, to help our patients achieve their optimal outcomes.
This resource covers information on the proprioceptive sense and includes proprioception sensory activities for kids.
Proprioceptive input activities throughout the day improves sensory integration, self-regulation, and also prevents inappropriate sensory seeking behaviors.
Hand therapist Josh Albarado, OTR/L shares his go-to hand therapy interventions with protocols, treatment ideas and resources in this guide
Progress monitoring is critical in any setting, but it is especially important in the special education setting. And while I know it is important, I also know that it needs to be quick and informative. If you use my special education reading intervention, I’m happy to tell you that you’ll be able to progress monitor […]
Discover the top 10 must-have materials for effective literacy instruction aligned with the science of reading. From whiteboards to games, letter tiles to graphic organizers, find essential tools to engage students and enhance learning. Plus, explore tips for organization and practical strategies fo
If you work with children, I can promise you that you will come across at least one student that has these difficult behaviors. Not only are they really stressful for the teacher but they impact the student’s life in many ways. Behaviors like disrespect and defiance can make classroom's chaotic.
Creating adapted books is a lot of work. I found this wonderful website with over 400 free printable adapted books you can download. Read more...
Time to inspire and motivate your students with these 4 fun bulletin board ideas that are perfect for schools, classrooms, or libraries!
