A compilation of ten things every middle school, high school and transition sped teacher wishes you knew about them and their students!
My students use morning binders during our morning meeting and throughout our academic portion of the morning. I love using binders because I can personalize and individualize each binder according to my students needs.
Teaching high school math can be a challenge in any situation, but it can be especially challenging in special education.
We are finishing up our Quadratics unit in Algebra 1 and I wanted to share some of my favorite foldables and activities. Below is a cut and paste activity that we did as soon as we finished going over the basic key terms of quadratics. For the ROXS column, I tell my students that the acronym stands for Roots, Zeros, X-Intercepts, and Solutions to help them with the vocabulary. Students did extremely well on this activity and in hindsight, I did not know how much I would appreciate adding the factors columns. Here are some Transformations of Quadratics interactive notebook pages that I used. I really liked these pages because students were able to visually see the transformation and explain what was "happening." After the foldable, students worked on their first partner activity of the new year. I forgot how much collaboration and communication occurs when students work together on partner activities. Students really enjoy checking their answers with a partner! We spent two days covering transformations of quadratics and on the second day, students completed the following Desmos Challenge that was created by MathyCathy and Michael Fenton: I absolutely LOVED this Desmos Challenge and so did students. If there are any more Desmos challenges similar to this one, please send them my way! This is all we were able to cover before Spring Break so I knew I had to create a review game when students came back. I ended up making a PPT review game where class periods ended up competing for the most point. The class period that received the most points received a jolly rancher and free homework pass. I don't know about your students, but my students LOVE companions! The following day, we went over the vertex form in their notebook and completed a Google Slides activity in Schoology. Below is a Google Slides activity that I assigned to students where they had to copy and paste the triangle to the correct location. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post. If you end up trying some of these activities and foldables, I would love to know! If you would like to use the activities and foldables, click on the links below: Quadratic Key Terms Quadratic Key Words Graphic Organizer Transformations of Quadratics Foldable Transformations Partner Activity Google Slides Vertex Form Activity (FILE - MAKE A COPY)
A blog about free resources for the secondary math classroom.
Check out all 13 fun & engaging activities for teaching volume of prisms. Includes print and go resources, online tools, and hands-on activity ideas.
Learn some ideas for supporting IEP and ESL students in the middle school classroom.
How to manage students with IEPs.
Using sentence frames to get ell students writing. Click here for more:
This social story designed for special education students, especially those on the Autism spectrum, will aid students in getting through the middle and high school lunch period. Often times lunch is chaotic with lots of choices to be made. This story narrows the choices and gives specific directions...
Middle school with 2 teachers in one room can be tough for a special education classroom....this schedule shows how we did it.
I wanted to share a foldable that I made this past week that I am IN LOVE with :). Students will fill out the foldable for their notes and then after wards, they will sort the cards into the pockets. I am hoping that this lesson goes well, since students struggle with similar triangles. You can download this foldable and activity when you Click Here If you use, please give credit back to this blog and let me know how it goes in the classroom.
sped curriculum, sped scope and sequence, special education scope, special education curriculum map,
A blog about free resources for the secondary math classroom.
Resources, tips, and materials to help you, help children with autism
Increasing and Decreasing Functions Activity
Want your students to have rich, complex conversations about the texts they read? This method leads to the kinds of classroom discussions you thought only happened in college.
Strategies and supports for executive functioning challenges can make all the difference, especially for students who struggle with task initiation. This is such an important skill, since it's like the motor in allowing us to get started on all tasks and assignments. When someone is struggling to in
A blog about free resources for the secondary math classroom.
Listen to this Special Ed Podcast with 15 great ideas for Functional Centers for students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism in High School. Read more and subscribe today!
This year I don’t have to deal with too many aggressive behaviors. This is a relief, although I realize that aggression is often part of the job when you teach students with classic autism. This ye…
Reading aloud age appropriate novels to students, even those who struggle with paying attention, can have a lot of benefits.
Below are pictures of my Parallel and Perpendicular Lines interactive notebook page. I made this flip-book a month ago and I think these pages are going to be extremely helpful for my special education and ELL students.. I know that students are supposed to know this before they get to Geometry but, my students need the extra review. I received inspiration for the steps of identifying whether two lines are parallel, perpendicular, or neither from Mrs. Atwoods blog post (Click Here). She has amazing interactive notebook pages and resources! This flip-book fits perfectly in notebook without having to shrink it (if you lay it sideways). I am planning to complete this whole flip-book on a block days (100 minutes). I'm going to break this flip-book up into two parts. Part 1: We're going to review slope (first flap) and then we are going to practice with the following slope card sort. I already uploaded my Slopes Card Sort in a previous post (click here). Part 2: After the slope card sort, we are going to jump into parallel and perpendicular lines. Once our flip-book is complete, we are going to do another card sort. I will be uploading the other set later on this week to this post. If you can't tell, I have an extreme love for card sorts. :) I feel like something is off with the flip-book though.... Thoughts? I haven't done this lesson before since I assumed that students remember how to do this, but every year I have to improvise and come up with last minute problems to review slope. Here are the following files: Parallel and Perpendicular Lines Flip-Book Parallel and Perpendicular Flow Chart
Poem of Mulan Podcast on TpT
Explore three common decoding skill errors in middle school: solving long words, scanning L to R, and stressing the correct syllables.
As the new school year fast approaches, I’ve been thinking about how to introduce new colleagues to the MYP and get them feeling confident enough to run with it from the start of term. Some …
A useful primer from Compound Interest, a useful site run by UK chemistry teacher Andy Brunning.
Join n2y experts and partners for the latest trends, ideas, and research in special education.
Did you know that your amygdala stores every emotional response you choose to make? Or are you aware that the same responses – both good and bad – will become your reactions to any simi…
Did you know that a lack of understanding of the hidden curriculum can land our students in jail? Read on to learn more to avoid a negative outcome.
Today was just one of those "GREAT" teaching days. I had so much planned for my students and I really wanted them to conquer the properties of parallelograms. I used two different types of colored paper (purple and lime green) to make my flipbook because I want students to see the relationship between parallelograms, rectangles, rhombi, and squares. This worked out great because I didn't even tell the students that they all had properties in common, they asked me if they were related because they were in the "same color." :) I started with the vocabulary page first because many of my students accommodations include "front-load vocabulary". Frontloading vocabulary is powerful for my special education & ELL students because I can help them learn the meaning of new words and strengthen their independent skills for constructing meaning from text. After the vocabulary section, I started with the five properties of parallelograms. I pulled out my whiteboards and had students make 3 columns (Property, Picture, and how to solve). This turned out better than expected because all of my students referenced their whiteboards throughout the entire class. After we made this chart, we started on the three parallelogram example problems. I told them they have 3 minutes to discuss with their group which property we are going to use to solve each example. There were some great discussions going on and I overheard students using the vocabulary we just went over. In the previous years, I had students just say "it's property 4 because the angles are not across from each other." Today, I heard "we are going to use property 4 because consecutive angles are always supplementary". (insert proud teacher face here). After three minutes were up, I called on each group to tell me what property we are going to use to solve the problem and that they had to walk me through how to set the equation up. I did this for every example and it made the lesson "student-centered" since the students had total control of the classroom! My co-teacher likes to color code the angles to help students solve for missing angles. For example, he likes to color a pair of opposite angles in blue and the other pair in pink. This helps many students to determine whether they are equal because "same colors are equal" and "different colors are supplementary." After the notes, I had students work on the following Parallelograms Maze (which they LOVED). Directions: Every student will start at problem A and solve the problem. When they solve the problem, they will take the solution and plug it into B's empty box. They will repeat this process until they are finished with all of the problems. I walk around and check students work because if they mess up on a problem, it will make their whole worksheet incorrect. By creating this worksheet, students definitely asked more questions than usual just to make sure that they are not doing a lot of work to get the whole paper wrong. I did have students write down which property they used for every problem. Overall it was a great day! I love it when students have questions and when they use important geometry vocabulary in their conversations :) Tomorrow we have a Parallelograms Quiz and I'm very excited to see how they do. UPDATE TO POST: I have started making YouTube Videos with Google Form Assessments in the description if you would like to use! Here are the resources I used today: 1) Flipbook: CLICK HERE 2) Parallelograms Maze: CLICK HERE 3) YouTube Video - Given Two Sides
Introducing Quadratic Factoring with Conspiracy Theory in Special Ed Algebra 2
Please read the Terms of Use before downloading each document on my blog: TERMS OF USE. If there are any typos or mistakes, please let me know and I will fix them. STATIONS: COLOR-BY-NUMBERS: TASK CARDS: SCAVENGER HUNTS: LEAST TO GREATEST: PARTNER ACTIVITIES: MISCELLANEOUS: PROJECTS: