Greetings!

Thanks for stumbling in! I'm Emma and I'm getting ready to begin my second year teaching 6-8 graders with moderate/intensive disabilities in a self-contained class. I think teacher blogging and collaboration is changing the way we educate (in a good way!) but I noticed there was a shortage of teacher bloggers who teach children with intensive needs, and definitely a shortage of teacher bloggers working with children in middle & upper grades. I want to use this blog to share what is working for me, and what is definitely not.
Bear with me, I'm new to the teaching world and to the blogosphere ;).

Progress Continues!

Ahoy friends! So last year, I had a very high functioning group of kiddos. I started doing "Friday Folders" in the beginning of the year with a weekly reflection completed by me. It was basically a summary of what we learned that week, the student's behavior, and anything else I wanted to say. I had a section for comments from home and then a signature line so I knew they were getting it. After receiving one back over the course of a month, I decided to end the Friday Folders and wrote notes home when necessary. This year, I'm getting at least 4 new sixth graders whose parents really like daily communication. Since I could have as many as 8 friends, there's no way I can do a daily communication notebook for every student (ain't nobody got time for dat), so I decided they are going to do their own daily reflections. This way, parents will get a daily summary and students will work on writing skills and self-reflection skills! AND I will have another collection of work samples to monitor progress over the whole year! So, here they are! 3 different levels to meet the needs of everyone! :)

I'm super excited to see how these go over! I love being able to work on skills and save myself some time. Now I'm off to see if I can get into my building! 

Making (A Little) Progress for the New Year!

School starts on August 21st. Which feels pretty far away still. Except for the fact that I will be on the sunny beaches of Destin, Florida August 9-16. So I'm in go-mode trying to get things made and prepared for the new year before leaving for vacation. I made morning group activities differentiated on 4 levels to accommodate the many needs in my room. I'm pretty excited to see how these go! I'm going to create a SmartNotebook page that I will update daily with a journal topic, sentence to proofread, and daily math problem. Each student will have a "Morning Group Activities" binder and will be responsible for completing a variety of activities that tie functional skills and IEP goals together. I'm suuuuuuuper excited to have these pages for data collection and progress monitoring. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to have the students do upon completion each morning since I know my funky friends will all finish at different times. I'll update sometime in September about how these are working out and what I've changed/kept the same.