It is easy to show your students how to track their own progress in iReady. Here are the steps on how to demonstrate this to your student:

Did you know that the California Department of Industrial Relations can connect your student to thousands of apprenticeship openings? It's an amazing opportunity for students who are looking into going into a particular trade. In order to find apprenticeship opportunities near you, simply log onto https://www.dir.ca.gov/databases/das/aigstart.asp.

Additionally, your student may qualify for a Workforce Development Board Grant to help pay for an apprenticeship program. The following requirements are:

• Student must be 16 and a client of the DOR (Department of Rehabilitation)

• Student can apply for the grant to assist with any cost of the apprenticeship (tuition, books, materials)

• Student may qualify for as much as $10,500 (must meet DOR specifications) The amount of money provided by the grant is on an individual basis.

If you need information on how to become a client of the DOR, please reach out to your transition teacher.

The fun of the holidays has come to an end! Children with unique needs will have to re-adjust to the learning environment after being on holiday break for a few weeks.

If you are like the many parents who decided to use the holiday break for just that, a break, here are several tips on to make the process of getting back into the groove for the last half of the school year a little smoother.

Ease Back In:

While it seems impossible, try to relax. Relax the rules, relax your plans, and relax your responses when things don't go back to "normal" as quickly or easily as you may have thought they would. Gradually work back to the routine you all previously had.

Use social stories and visuals:

Using a social story can help them to remember what’s what and what’s expected. Review of daily routines is very useful as well. Make sure to review your learning expectations on a daily basis until your child again feels more comfortable with the routines.

Allow Breaks and Timeouts:

If you try to jump right back into how things were before the break, you may be setting the family up for meltdowns and stress. Instead, if your child seems to become overwhelmed, offer a type of break that would fit the situation (physical activity, quiet time, sensory activity) or review their sensory strategy with them.

Decrease "Screen Time":

If your child spent much of the break watching movies, playing on iPads and any other technology devices they may have received for the holidays, it's time to cut back! Now that school is are back in session you need to go back to the same amount of "screen time" they had prior to the break. Again keep in mind that easing back in will be a smoother process. Don't completely cut out all technology full-stop, but lessen over the first week or two of school.

Get Organized:

Take inventory…of everything. Think of all the goals you have for the next 5 months, list them and the associated tasks out, and set up a reasonable timetable and order of importance for tackling them.

Some parents say that "January is another August/September" because it feels like you are starting back at square one. It may seem like you never even had a holiday break because the craziness of starting up again has taken over your attitude, but it will only be a matter of time- and probably a few meltdowns- before everyone is back on the same page and you are sailing through Spring!

Keeping a science notebook encourages students to record and reflect on inquiry-based observations, activities, investigations, and experiments. Student scientists record their observations, ideas, drawings, and other illustrations such as charts, tables, models, and graphs, along with their questions, ideas, and reflections in a running record of their thinking. A notebook may follow a general organization, but the contents can vary from student to student.

Model how to use a science notebook before, during, and after a science experiment or observation. Writing frames for science notebook entries modeled by the teacher and co-created with students provide excellent scaffolding for struggling students. The use of visual entries such as drawings, charts, graphs, diagrams, models, and so on also allow students to make entries even if they are struggling with writing.

Take dictation related to these drawings, and so forth, for students to model the writing down of their observations and ideas. A list of the science vocabulary needed for the notebooks can be posted in the room and each student provided with a copy, and materials used for the science notebooks can be labeled so that students can copy the words into their notebooks when needed.

Writing frames for science notebook entries can look as such:

• "I observed...."
• "I (saw, smelled, felt, heard)...."
• "My (experiment, investigation) was...."
• "I found that...."
• "I think this because...."

While each science notebook organization will vary according to the grade level, interests, abilities, and individual needs of the students, here are the parts of science notebooks to consider:

We understand that you have limited time when it comes to finding the free, high-quality reading resources for your students. So we’ve put together a list that we think will help keep your kids reading all year round - take a look:

There is an undeniable increase in stress, anxiety, and depression in high school students. In addition to various special needs, the causes range from intense pressure to perform to social media expectations and influence to home and environmental issues. The common thread, no matter the cause, is students’ inability to cope with the stressors they experience. These self-awareness and coping skills activities developed by M. Lew, a special education high school teacher in Corona-Norco Unified School District in California can help your upper-grade students identify feelings and stressors, while also providing them a way to discover positive, self-regulatory coping skills. This activity can be performed with other students, siblings or adopted for one on one implementation.