So what do penguins, shapes and intervention plans have in common? Not much other than randomness in the life of a K-2 SPED teacher! Penguins were our focus theme this week and the kids had a lot of fun. Then I had a great intervention team meeting, and your perk for my little meeting is a little behavior intervention freebie. Then we started working on geometric shapes and did some fun centers. Check out our cute little penguins we made! I cut the shapes out of an old file folder and had the kids trace and cut out the pieces before gluing it all together. So I don't know about you, but I'm OBSESSED with Pinterest now! During the summer I had no idea what it even was, and now I don't know how I ever taught without it! There are so many great ideas out there, but they were all lost in the crazy world of cyber space until Pinterest put all those great things together in the world of pictures! I'm a very visual person/learner and Pinterest is just plain perfect for me! Prekinders is one of the many fabulous discoveries I've made. It's meant for preschool, but some things are great for kids a little older than that too! The pattern blocks printables are amazing! My students were entertained for an hour!!! They were begging me to print more! I used these dry-erase pockets I got on the dollar isle at Target during back to school time. It saved me time it would have taken to laminate all of these. I put two in each pocket and the kids just traded them around after they finished making the animal shapes on both sides of their clear pocket. Part of my intervention plan was to work with my student during some "special time" together so we could create a feelings sheet for him to complete when he makes a bad choice. It's amazing how calling anything "special time with the teacher" makes the kids instantly think it's fabulous to have them all to themselves! We actually talked about this during our meeting. A (great!) doctor for kids who are twice exceptional (gifted/autism, adhd/gifted, etc) came into my class to observe a kid I've been struggling with. This kid is beyond brilliant! Quite possibly the smartest kid I've ever met, but with that comes it's own challenges... So this Dr. comes in to observe to get a better idea of what's going on. One of the things that shocked me was when the doctor said "He clearly adores you! I never saw one thing that indicated otherwise!" To be clear, the kid was far from an angel that day, and he's tested my every nerve and teaching strategy this year. But Mr. Doctor Guy pointed out that it's like he loves me so much he doesn't want to share me. Which suddenly makes sense to me. Sorry, I got on a tangent there for a minute... So the doctor's suggestion was that I work with my little guy to create a form for identifying feelings, identifying the problem, and brainstorming solutions. The point was to make it feel like it was the kid's idea to make this thing, in the hopes that he'll buy into using it everyday. So my little guy and I used our special time to make this together! He came up with all the feeling words himself. Please note the complexity of these words and he's only 5! The very bottom box is the list of suggestions for things he could write in the "things I could have done" section. Animal images at the top of the page are from KPM Doodles. Time to do some serious lesson planning. I've been told there will be more construction and painting in my classroom this weekend, so I have no idea what disaster I'll be walking into when I walk in tomorrow morning! I'm making sure I have everything ready now, so I can fix/clean up my room when I get it there. Crossing my fingers that it's not too bad. Plus I'm looking forward to the new cabinet they promised to give me! I don't even have a clue what it looks like, but no teacher complains about more storage!!