In a previous post I talked about using a stop motion app on my phone to make a video with my students. Well, it looks like we’re going to do it after all (not King Kong vs. Pterodactyl, but something that goes along with our jungle theme). Summer school is on hold for the holiday week, so it’ll have to wait, but I thought I would take a look at a couple of videos I made with some of my fourth graders with Autism this past school year.
Their classes were doing a stop motion project all together, but both of them were going to be gone when they were filming the video because we take our students to gymnastics once a week. I didn’t want them to miss out on this awesome project, so I downloaded a free app called Stop Animator. I had each kid draw their own scenery and tape it on the wall, as well as arrange the dinosaurs how ever they wanted for each picture. It was difficult to explain to them what we were doing, and we could only take 20-30 pictures before they got impatient with the project, but the smiles on their faces were worth it.
Both of them watched their videos over and over and over and over and over again, and both of them showed their videos to their classes. It was a great project and I can’t wait to do it again with the kids I have now.
Welp, another day another craft. I am really not the crafty sort. I have plenty of ideas, but zero patience for actually executing them. But now that I’m teaching elementary school kids I really have no choice but to follow through with my ideas.
This means that my car’s a hot mess (and I mean this in the most literal sense. It’s been over 100 degrees everyday this week) full of rolls of tin foil and rainbow yarn left over from my Father’s Day prank (yes, I did actually have some left over), popsicle sticks, construction paper, glue, scissors, and finger paint. I could probably make a pretty decent profit selling craft supplies out of the back seat of my car to desperate stay-at-home moms that need to keep their kids busy.
Anywho, so far this week the kids have made two paper bag puppets – a monkey and a parrot. They seemed to really like both of the crafts, come to think of it, they like all crafts. It doesn’t matter what we do, they always love it. I could give them each one broken crayon and a dirty piece of paper and they would still have fun.
I don’t know if you can tell, but I used the same trick with some of the spots as I did with these flower/stars from the jungle collage. They’re just cut out circles from dried paper plates we used for painting a few days before. I noticed that today the kids were much more comfortable with the abstract-ness of the spots than they were before. With the exception of the little girl that made this red bird, they all were willing to use them on their birds. I’m all about helping these kids get outside of their teeny tiny comfort zones.
It wasn’t until after I sent them home with their dry monkeys that I realized I had missed a golden opportunity. How amazingly cool would it have been to have a monkey vs. parrot fight! King Kong vs. Pterodactyl right in my own classroom. I could have used the stop motion app on my phone and pulled out the creepy barbie doll in my school-issued laptop case. It would have been epic. But, as my grandma used to say, “If we would’ve had some ham we would’ve had some ham and eggs, if we would’ve had some eggs.” That’s just how it goes sometimes.
As you may know, I’m teaching kids with special needs this summer. The school day is only 3 hours long and we only go to school three days a week. That’s not a whole lot of time to get to know the kids, and with all the IEP stuff and data collection we have to do it can be hard to find time to have fun with them.
We do, however, have a twenty minute recess. Usually recess is a plan time for most teachers while a few are on duty. But in summer school everyone is on duty – all of the teachers and all of the aides. So a typical recess at summer school is ten or so adults standing off to the side chatting while about fifteen kids play on the playground.
It may be wrong, but I love the unhelpful high school teacher.
I have to admit that adult conversation is a nice break from the kid songs and nonsense that usually come out of my mouth when I’m teaching, but recently I’ve realized that retreating into the adult corner is somewhat of a missed opportunity. Recess is really the only time in our short day that requires no data collection or teaching. This is a sacred time specifically and exclusively reserved for having fun.
Every recess I’m torn between hanging out with the cool teachers and going down the slide with the little stinkers that keep my stock in Excedrine in the black. Some days I choose the cool, jaded teachers and other days I choose the stinkers, but I’ve noticed a definite change in my view towards the kids when I play with them. Student A isn’t IEP goal 3.1.4, she’s the brave little one that likes to go down the slide backwards (this is totally against the rules btw). Student B isn’t just working on extending patterns and finding rhymes, he’s building a strong friendship with a kid in another class by playing tag.
I’m not a mushy, sappy, lovey-dovey person with an unrealistic and rose-colored view of “being the change” or whatever, but it is my experience that spending a few minutes to enjoy my students does have a positive affect on their education. On the days I play with them, something kind of amazing happens – they’re more willing to follow directions and stay on task. I really don’t know why. I’m not more lenient and I’m not their friend. In fact, I’ve gotten more strict with them as the days go on. Maybe they feel more comfortable with me? I don’t know. But whatever the reason I guess I would just encourage anyone else who works kids with special needs to spend a few minutes to just relax and have fun with them.
I wanted to share something I started using in the classroom this week. It’s a website called classdojo.com. It gives each student an avatar (or you can upload their pictures) and lets you give and take away points for positive or negative behaviors.
Here’s a screen shot of the Demo class (and no, I did not play favorites when I awarded points. Ok, maybe just a little…).
The positive and negative behaviors are completely customizable. Here’s what some of the standard positive and negative behaviors are:
And here are some things I might add for my class:
It also gives you an overall performance breakdown. This one is from the Demo class:
What makes this site so awesome is I can award points with my phone. So if we’re on the play ground and little Angelina Jolie decides she wants to go down the slide backwards, stop half way, stand up, and yell at the people patiently waiting in line behind her, I can take away a point right then and there (not that any situation even remotely like this occurs on a daily basis…).
The kids have really gotten in to this. On Tuesday we took a class vote for what reward the kids with a certain number of points would get at the end of the week. I think they really like having a concrete list of behaviors that are positive and negative. So much of the behaviors that are “acceptable” in our culture and society are behaviors we learn through observation. But these kids don’t have the skills needed to pick up on the social queues that can make or break someone’s social life. Hopefully this will help them out a little bit.
Today was the first day of the second week of summer school, and other than one of the little girls affectionately trying to choke me with my scarf, it went well (she was just admiring it and thought it was pretty. she didn’t realize it was tied around my airway). I might have to rethink my choice of accessories.
After everyone finished their breakfast we went back to the classroom to start our morning meeting. One of the things I ask the kids to do is to sign in on the smart board. Today one of the kids thought it would be appropriate to to make Chewbacca noises as he signed in. He wrote his own name, but he sounded just like Chewy. It was great. I wonder if he takes requests.
We also did a jungle collage. I cut up pieces of construction paper and aluminum foil, but then I got really crazy. You know those paper plates you use to put paint on for kids when they’re painting a picture? DO NOT THROW THOSE AWAY! Set aside and let them dry because they can be an awesome addition to another craft later on (I learned this trick from the Firehouse Art Center).
Here are some examples:
I thought my flower/stars looked pretty awesome, but only a couple of kids used them. Maybe they were too abstract and unrealistic. All well, I’ll try again some other time.
I asked the kids to paint a jungle. This is what I got.
Those brownish/blackish spots on the top middle picture are monkeys and the red lines are snakes. The picture on the top left is of trees – there are no animals in his jungle. The one on the top right kind of looks like a rhino, but I don’t think that’s what he was going for, maybe an elephant? I don’t know. The middle right picture is also trees.
Watching the kids make these paintings was the highlight of my day so far. I honestly don’t see anything remotely resembling a jungle in any sense of the word, but they did have a lot of fun making them and that was the main purpose of the activity anyway.
I love getting drawings from my students, but it usually takes a little while before they decide they like me enough to draw me a picture.
But today one of my girls drew me a picture! I’ve always wanted a dog that walks on two feet and a rainbow without green, but having them on the same page is blowing my mind!
Today was the first day of summer school and I accomplished my goal! I ended with the same number of kids I started with! Granted only four showed up and there are three adults in the room, but I still did it!
I got to work before all the kids got there and was setting up the crafts while the computer guy worked on getting one of my two laptops to work, when this mom walks in. She said “Hi, I’m so and so’s mom. I just wanted to tell you that she just had eye surgery and so if she gets upset and starts to cry she’ll have blood in her tears.”
EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSEEE MEEEEEEE?!?!?!?!?! What did you just say???? YOUR DAUGHTER CRIES BLOOD??? I just tried to put on a smile and be like “Oh, okay. No problem.” Thus, my second goal for the day: DO NOT, under any circumstances, make her cry, because tears of blood are the stuff of nightmares.
That was really the only significant event in the day. Two of the kids that showed up are really calm and easy going and easy to have a conversation with, and the other two are …. not. But there weren’t any fights or tantrums or tears of blood today. A lot of that is probably due to the fact that I didn’t take any data on them or ask them to do any work. I just wanted to get to know them so we did crafts and games.
Here’s how the animal stick things turned out. I’ll have them put them in the jungle after I greet them. I still need to add more stuff to the jungle, but you get the idea. Notice how there’s only one gorilla. I was the only person to make one. Weird. I did get one kid to make an imaginary animal, except he really just copied what was in my imagination and added two extra eyes, and a banana. Still a victory in my book.
Oh, and I can’t get this song out of my head. Enjoy.
I graduated with distinction and a minor in history, and now I have half a Master’s and am certified to teach 6 subjects. What am I doing now that I’m all credentialed and what not? Exactly what I did when I was in kindergarten: playing with construction paper and googly eyes.
Summer school officially starts tomorrow and these are a couple of the crafts to go along with our jungle theme. The chain snake has absolutely no educational value or practical function, although I guess maybe I could change that with the alphabet or numbers or something.
I’m going to use the animal sticks for our opening meeting. A lot of kinds with special needs have trouble greeting people and engaging in simple conversations about how they’re doing that day or the weather, so I’ll just use the stick animals to show that they’re here for the day by putting them on a board and then practice greeting each kid and asking them a simple question or giving them a compliment.
Oh, and I don’t know if you noticed, but I added in an imaginary creature: a lion-ele-rilla? a gor-lio-phant? an ele-gor-ion? I’ll keep working on the name. I added this for two reasons. 1. When it comes to crafts, I don’t like following patterns and doing things exactly like the pattern. 2. Sometimes kids with Autism like to have things in a very particular way. If they are asked to draw a dog, they’ll probably either draw a dog they know or one they’ve seen on t.v. or in a movie. It can be really difficult to get them to come up with something in they’re imagination and convince them it’s okay (I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten a bruise or two from not letting a kid copy someone else’s work, but making him do something original). So I just wanted to show them that they can make an imaginary animal if they want to. In fact, I think I’m going to ask them to make one realistic animal and one imaginary animal. I’m not expecting anything as “crazy” as mine. They’ll probably just change the ears or the nose if they agree to do it at all. I think it’s worth a shot though.
On a previous post, I talked about how unorganized everything was. I went back to my class today hoping most of the kinks had been worked out. They weren’t. I still don’t have any materials for one of my kids. Don’t ask me how he’s going to meet his IEP goals without them, because I have no idea. Furthermore, I checked out a laptop from the library for my class so I can use the smartboard. It doesn’t work. It won’t even turn on. So I drove to my homeschool to check one out from them. It doesn’t work either. It’ll turn on, but it won’t let anyone log in. Don’t ask me how I’m going to have group time, play smartboard games, watch a book on bookflix without a functional laptop, because I have no idea.
Someone from the district computer center is supposed to be there in the morning before the kids arrive so they can help me out. I have two different laptops with two different problems. Surely, they’ll be able to fix one of them.
(I want to have the above conversation at least once in my life!)
My only hope for tomorrow is that I end the day with as many kids as I started out with.
Ordinary Days 