Wonder"ful" Book

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Happy March Break everyone.  I'm so excited for a few days off.  It always seems like March
Break is the turning point for the end of the year.  When we return, the rest of the year seems to fly by.

I love to take the March Break to relax and catch up on some reading.  I ordered an amazing book from last months Scholastic book order.

Wonder is the story about Auggie Pullman,  Auggie was born with facial deformities and has been home schooled up until now.  As Auggie enters 5th grade it's a coming of age story not only for him but for the whole school.

I absolutely loved this book.  As someone who works with the special needs population, it's important to understand the world from their point of view, and that of the family.

It's a quick read and would be perfect for a grade 5/6 class.  So if you are looking for someone wonder"ful" to read over your holiday, I would highly recommend Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

To start off the March Break, my Sped friends and I are having a $1 sale today.  Search #SpedDollarDeals on TpT to find all the great deals or click on the picture below.

Bear Sees Colors - Day One

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I've been doing some research lately about different types of communication systems.  I have always made communication boards up for the different activities we do in class.  The boards are all different from each other, contain different vocabulary and the vocabulary that is the same, may not be in the same place on the different boards.

Recently I've thinking a lot about core and fringe vocabulary.  Core vocabulary includes the main words that we use all the time.  I relate it to the Dolch and Fry sight word lists.  These are the ones we see most often in writing and use when we are speaking.  Fringe vocabulary is all the extra words that are specific to a certain text or environment.  For example, the kitchen.  You are more likely to use the words "bake", "cook", "oven" and "flour" when doing a cooking activity in the kitchen.

I decided to try something new when designing my next communication board for our next set of books.  I wanted to do a series on the Bear books by Karma Wilson.  I love her Bear books and the kids do too.

I decided to start with the book "Bear Sees Colors".  This book is great for my beginning communicators and is wonderful for working on colour recognition.  We would be reading the book every day for five days and working on different activities related to the book each day.

This is the communication board that I made.  The core vocabulary is in the middle and the fringe vocabulary is around the outside.

The pictures are ordered so that the children can create sentences.  The fringe vocabulary on the sides and top flip up to reveal more vocabulary.

On day one we concentrated on working on the sentence "Bear sees....".   I encouraged the children to point to each word to make a sentence as we went through the book.  If the children couldn't/wouldn't point to the pictures, I modeled the sentence for them.

For my students who were too overwhelmed by all the core vocabulary, I made a panel to cover most of the words and leave the target word visible.

Once we read through the book, we made our own bear book.

I had a few different sheets depending on the fine motor skills of the children.  Some have more ability to colour than others.  For those that could colour, I had them colour in Bear.

I then had them pick a colour and had them colour their page with that colour.

To finish their sentence, I had them cut out (or had it cut out for them if they couldn't do it) the colour that they picked and glue it in the sentence on their page.

They also added Bear to top of their page.

Some children were able to draw a picture, and if they could, I had them draw a picture of something that colour.

Once all the pictures were done, we made a book by stapling them all together.  If you want, you could laminate it and put it out for the children to read again and again.

Don't forget to grab a copy of the book.  You'll need it for this unit.

Thematic Thursday - Marshmallows and Smores

This week's theme has been marshmallows and S'mores.

I decided to put together a collection of books that will go with our theme.

We are going to be making s'mores later in the week and when I saw this book, I thought it would be cool to find out some different ways to make s'mores.

The Marshmallow Man is a fun twist on the Gingerbread Man story.

This alphabet book is beautiful.

If your theme involves camping in general, here is book of camping poems.

Another great read

I'm just pumping out the books this summer.  Well the past week has really been too hot to do anything else.  Especially when you don't have air conditioning.

Again, this was an easy read.  I like books that are easy to read.  If you have children you know that you often don't get long stretches of time when you can get into a book.  I can't count the number of times I couldn't remember all the characters in a book because there was so many and when you only get 5 or 10 minutes at a time to read (or have to hide in the bathroom), the story line is just hard to catch on to.

This wasn't one of those books.  This was another one in the bag of books that my friend had given me ages ago.  It's a wonderfully, heart warming romance.

This is Tracey Garvis Graves' first book called "On the Island"

It's about a 30 year old woman who needs a change and a chance to reflect on her life.  She decides to take a job as a tutor to a 16 year old boy who needs to catch up on school since being in remission from cancer. On the way to the summer resort where they will be staying, the plane crashes and they end up on an island.  This is the story of how they survive.  

What would you do if you were stranded on an island?

Summer read for fun

It's been a long time since I've read a book in a day.  But isn't that what summer is for?  My friend lent me this book during the school year but I never seemed to find the time to pick it up.  Yesterday, I decided that I needed something to read and picked this one up.

"Left Neglected" is about a women who has it all, and is trying to do it all.  She has a great job, a wonderful husband and three beautiful kids.  She is also trying to juggle all three.  Then one day, she is distracted while driving and it all comes to an end.  Waking up in the hospital with an acquired brain injury called "left neglect" she is forced to deal with not being aware of anything on her left side. Sarah is forced to re-examine her life and come to terms with the people and parts of her life that matter most.

It's a very easy read and the story grabbed me from the beginning. I couldn't put it down until it was finished. If you need something heart-warming and thought provoking that doesn't take a lot to get into, this is book for you.

What have you been reading this summer?

Summer Book Study

This summer I'm joining in with a few of my teacher bloggy friends to do a book study on the The Daily 5 and CAFE.  I'm just starting to read The Daily 5 and I'm really enjoying it.  While I read, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to do some of the components of the program with my students.  For example, how does a child that can't talk do "read to others".  I know I can program some augmentative communication devices with pages of a book, but will it be authentic? 

For all of you out there in special ed., have you tried Daily 5?  I would love to hear from anyone who has experience with this program.

Inside Out and Outside In

I was at Wal-mart the other day and saw a book called "Inside".  It looked interesting and I picked it up.  I didn't realize that it was actually two books.  The first called "Inside Out" and the second "Outside In" by Maria V. Snyder. 

      
Well,  I haven't been able to put them down.  Here is a discription from the back of the book.

Four Walls.
Four Levels.
Eighteen Thousand People
No Escape - Ever.

The world of Inside is simple. Do your job, stay out of the way and don't dream of anything better.  Because as every Scrub knows, there are no other options.

Until Trella - Queen of the Pipes, as some call her  - gets involved with a revolution that will rock her world.

Trella was just doin a favour for a friend - her only friend.  Hiding an injured man from the Pop Cops seemed easy enough - though dangerous.  But then she discovered that the myths of Outside might be real.......

This has to be one of the interesting and different books I've read in ages.  I started the second book yesterday and finished it eariler today.  I couldn't put it down.  I think I'm going try another one of her books.  Has anyone read her books?  Have you read either of these?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Good Read - Divergent

If you loved the "Hunger Games" then you will love "Divergent".  16 year old Beatrice must choose between her family and her heart.  I could not put this book down.  I am only disappointed in one thing.  I can't get the sequel until May 1.  Ugh.  I want to read it now.  Well it's only one month away.  Click on the book cover to go to Veronica Roth's website for a more detailed description.

A Good Read: Tomorrow Girls series

Last night I thought I would take a break from doing some work.  I hadn't really read a book in a while and the one I had going wasn't doing anything for me.  I had picked up the Tomorrow Girls series by Eva Gray at Christmas and decided to give it a try.  The story is set in the future when the world is at war.  The books are about 4 girls that are sent to a boarding school for their protection.  While there, the girls suspect that something is not right.  There are 4 books in the series and each book is from the point of view of a different one of the girls. I really enjoyed the first book.  I started and finished it last night.  It grabbed my attention and kept it.  I ended up staying up a little later than I normally do in order to finish it.  Luckily I picked up all 4 books.  I can't wait to started the second one tonight.