I'm having a hard time deciding what exactly to do in regards to lessons. I know that most everything is dependent on their IEPs, but I also want to have some sort of theme to work off of. Most of my experience is in a Lifeskills class for 2-5th or a PPCD classroom, so I am trying to remember what those classes did. My kids are Kindergarten and 1st graders. Several are MR, one has Cerebal Palsy and one is autistic. That's all I know at the moment. I haven't been able to look at their IEPs yet, but plan to ask my principal about that soon. I really don't want to wait until two weeks before school starts to plan my lessons, but I might have to. So....what I'm looking for are ideas and websites that might be useful. I know that I want to do a cooking lab on Fridays as I've seen done in the classes I subbed in. I have a good idea about Calendar/Circle time and work jobs, but what else needs to be considered? I am a first year teacher with lots of ideas and no idea where to start. My mom is throwing me a teacher shower to celebrate my getting a job and to help me in obtaining supplies. She read about it in a newspaper article and told me she wanted to have one for me. Everyone brings their favorite childhood book and some sort of teaching supply. She asked me for a list of what I thought I might need so that everyone would have some ideas to go off of. My friends are all excited about going as are my mom's teacher friends. Roxanne
You need to take into account therapies your students will be receiving. I got my therapists to take my students the same time on different days - I did small group or independent IEP specific activities at this time. For example, my SLP took my students in 2 groups; one group went Wednesdays at 1 pm and one group went Tuesdays at 1 pm. I tried my best to catch the therapists first so that they can see my students around my schedule rather than them see my students around their schedule (I also gave them my prettiest smile and my puppy dog eyes with my pretty pleases. Have you thought about how you were going to pay for the ingredients for your cooking activities. I had to quit getting my students to bring in supplies because when a parent forgets to bring something in when you have such a small number of students you can't make anything. My class went to community skills twice a month, so i was able to have my parents send in money and my students bought the ingredients during a community skills outing. I tried themes my first year but is was really hard as compared to doing themes in a regular ed. class. With students on so many different levels, I spent too much time trying to get everything based on a theme. I decided to focus on lesson planning. But then again I am not very creative, so the theme thing was too much thinking for me . You will also need to plan for social skills classes - maybe 20 minutes every day. Take a look around your classroom and let us know what you have and we could provide you with further assistance in determining what you need.
I do like themes b/c I use them as a vehicle for the more repetitive, necessary but not necessarily interesting skills that the kid NEED work on--especially ADLs, motor, communication. I choose themes based on the grade level curriculum ,and use alot of picture books. I've also adapted grade level novels (although K-1 you won't need to do that). Another thing to schedule in is integration--will you have any? Specialists such as art/music/PE/library? Gross motor is something to think about--a student with motoric impairments may need to be stretched daily, practice walking with a walker, etc--I do stairs training with my kids, which while the PT starts it, if we don't do stairs daily, they lag behind.
I don't know what therapists will be coming in, but I will definitely keep that in mind. In the PPCD class I was an aide for last year, they had a set schedule of therapy visits that they worked their day around. As for the cooking activities, I'm not sure how I want to do it. I'm thinking that I might just do it once a month and just buy them myself. I'll work that out once I get to know the kids and see if any of them have major food issues. I hadn't thought of actually having a social skills class, but that is a really good idea. I had thought to just incorporate it when it comes up, but it makes more sense to just set aside time for it. bcblue -- I want to work in some activities where they get to interact with their grade level, but not sure how that will go yet. As of right now there isn't anything in place, but they were receptive to the idea when I mentioned it during the job interview. I feel so unprepared as I don't know a lot of things about the kids yet.
Also remember--you don't have to have everything set up on the first day. Integration with grade level is often something you can set up after a few weeks, once you know the kids more, and also get to know the other teachers in the building--some are more receptive to it than others.
