Sensory Play~ Fake Snow

With all of the winter weather around the US right now, this is a less cold option for kids to play with, and they can stay indoors!  Ironically, I am in north central ND, and we do not have any snow right now...

I made this with some of my students last week, and they really liked the scent of this (although the scent doesn't last long).  It is also really not "messy," in that is doesn't stick to your hands, so my kids who don't like to get their hands messy were okay with it.

You will need:

• baking soda
• water
• a packet of kool aid (the small packet, the one with no sugar added in it yet)

Add a minimal amount of water to the baking soda, just enough to make it stick together.  It should not feel sticky or wet.

Add the kool-aid packet to the mixture as well.  I used green and then I mixed up some blue.

The mixture actually feels cool to the touch, not sure why, but that adds to the "snow" theme.

This was one of the snowmen that we made~ the mixture is not real sticky, so it is not easy to build with, but you can have your students play in it, drive cars through it, pretend it's ice cream and scoop it or fill bowls with it, etc.

Priming the Background Knowledge

Building off of my last post, "Helping with Reading Comprehension," I decided to make an informative binder regarding how to help with improving reading comprehension for my student's paraprofessional to use when she worked on reading with him in a 1:1 situation.  In it, I numbered the steps to go through when addressing reading comprehension, and I added a narrative explaining:

• what each step means and why we might be doing this with the student
• what to do for each step
• provided some visual boards that I made to go along with the steps when applicable

I wanted to make the instructions easy to follow, and user friendly.  I laminated the visuals so that they could be written on with Vis a Vis marker and erased for re use.  Paras and teachers often do not have the time to continue to make visuals or repeated and multiple adaptations.  Also, I have found that if the intervention does not require a lot of extra work on the person carrying it out, it is more likely to be implemented.

I apologize for the glare- this is step 1 in the binder and is written as below:

**This is how I wrote up the steps for the binder:

Step 1-  Priming the Background Knowledge

What is this/what does this mean?
-helps students connect what they know to new information and skills
-the more readers know about the topic, the easier it is for them to connect the text with background knowledge
-if background knowledge is inaccurate, comprehension is more difficult
-if given accurate background knowledge that supports the text, comprehension is enhanced
-kids with autism have language deficits that result in a lack of general knowledge;  this causes difficulty with being able to integrate what they already know with the text

Do This:
-take relevant information from the text, and expand on teaching about those individual things/concepts.  The classroom teacher decides which concepts in the reading he/she wants the student to learn and have knowledge of relative to the regular curriculum.  This may be just a few key concepts, or several.

-bring in examples of items that are talked about in the text  *example:  if the story/text
is about oceans and what is found in an ocean, bring in several types of shells for the student to observe, show them an aquarium of salt water fish, etc.

-find books/videos/ebooks/podcasts or other media that provide general information about what is found in the text and read them to or along with the student, have the student view them, etc.  Some useful sites to locate such materials include:
*www.youtube.com
*www.tarheelreader.org
*Tumblebooks can be found on some public library websites (as in our hometown library)
*find books in the school library
*the classroom teacher or special education staff may have additional media sites available or accessible to them through the school

What are Tumblebooks?  Find out here:
http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/customer_login.asp?accessdenied=%2Flibrary%2Fasp%2Fhome_tumblebooks%2Easp

What is Tarheelreader?  Find out here:
http://tarheelreader.org/

Helping With Reading Comprehension

Several years back, I had a 5th grade boy on my caseload who had Autism.  I was primarily working with him on addressing his sensory processing needs, motor planning, etc.  I partly knew what was going on as far as curriculum in his 5th grade regular ed classroom because I had a son in that same grade at that time.  They were reading some wonderful 5th grade level books/fiction and then completing some really cool projects to go with each book.  But, not this student.  He could read fluently, and in fact could read as good or better than his same age peers in the classroom.  However, because of his difficulty with reading comprehension, the Reading Milestones curriculum was being used with him.  He would go to the resource room, accompanied by his paraprofessional, for individualized instruction with reading.  His paraprofessional also worked on reading with him outside of the resource room.  The content of the books in the Reading Milestones curriculum was way below this boy's cognitive level.  He was a 5th grader reading stories such as “The Three Little Pigs” and “Little Red Riding Hood.”  How exciting, right? No wonder he didn't like reading.  I asked his teacher about it, and she shared my concerns.  She felt that this student would be able to answer the comprehension questions associated with the 5th grade text and could learn the concepts being taught in the books if he could be given more choices and if the format was presented differently. However, the reading strategist felt that this student needed to continue reading books at his comprehension level (even if the content is inappropriate for his age) as a way to measure his comprehension level and keep track of progress.  The regular ed teacher felt that her hands were tied. And I was "just an OT," so my opinion on reading didn't really count in the great scheme of things! It just so happened that not long after that, as I was in one of my graduate classes en route to my master's in autism spectrum disorders, we learned about how to address reading comprehension by making things more visual and predictable for our students with ASD.  And so, I put together something for this student's paraprofessional to try with him to improve his comprehension and so that he could participate with his classmates in enjoying more age appropriate books.  (Of course, he still had to continue with his leveled readers per school requirements.)  Many of you educators will already know these techniques, but for those that aren't familiar, I will go over what I put together so that maybe you can try some of these techniques, too.  Maybe you are a parent and you want to read some quality books with your child at home, and you want to help with comprehension~

Here are the steps that I will go over in subsequent posts to address improving reading comprehension:

• Priming the background knowledge
• Doing a picture walk
• Making visual maps
• Think alouds and reciprocal teaching
• Understanding narrative text structure
• Goal structure mapping
• Emotional Thermometers
• Social stories