Special Education with Care
MVA Special Education Department Update
February 2021
The month of February is upon us and that means we are comfortably into the second semester and are moving right along with teaching and learning. We appreciate all your feedback and support and encourage you to write to us if you have a particular topic you wish us to cover.
In This Issue
- Did You Know: Valentines Day Edition;
- Feature Teachers: Meet your Education Specialists/Case Managers;
- Academic Resources: Make Math Fun with Dry Erase Boards;
- Behavior Bits: Using the Zones of Regulation with Visuals;
- Sensory Corner: Valentines Day Sensory Bottle;
- Caught On The Net: Helpful Websites and Apps;
- Transition Services Corner: Transition Newsletter.
DID YOU KNOW
~Valentines Day Edition~
Saint Valentine’s Day, also known as Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is a holiday celebrated on February 14 each year in many countries around the world. It is not a public holiday in most countries and over history it evolved into a holiday in which people express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as “valentines”). You can incorporate this fun and educational activity into your Valentines Day family celebration.
Building Structures with Candy Hearts
Materials
- Toothpicks
- Gummy Hearts
- Timer {optional}
- Measuring tape {optional}
Setting up the Experiment
Set-up is super simple. Simply place one container of gummy hearts out on the table with a cup of toothpicks and let your students explore on their own.
Building 3D Shapes
One simple activity you can have your child try is making 3-dimensional shapes such as cubes, rectangular prisms, pyramids and much more.
Counting Hearts
It is easy to incorporate math into this activity by counting the hearts they use, counting corners, counting sides and even faces of the 3D object.
Measuring Shapes
Using a measuring tape or ruler, have your child measure the height, width and even the sides of the shapes they create.
FEATURE TEACHERS
My name is Sandra Gonzales, and I teach specialized academic instruction in the area of writing for TK - 2nd grade students. We are enjoying using the Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum (HWOT). During our Specialized Academic Instruction classes, we go through lessons to work on everything, from how to hold a pencil to learning how to write complete sentences and paragraphs. The HWOT curriculum utilizes a multisensory approach to learning, and the students enjoy using the interactive digital resources provided. I have outstanding students who work very hard during our writing time, and it is gratifying to watch them grow and meet their goals and objectives.
My name is Brittany De Alba and I teach Specialized Academic Instruction in the area of math for 3rd-5th graders. During our Math lessons, we've been incorporating the McGraw Hill Math program. We work on basic foundational math skills, as well as multiple step problems while exposing students to different strategies/charts. My students help make learning fun by encouraging and helping others. It's been great seeing their math skills and confidence grow!
My name is Catherine McDonald and I teach specialized academic instruction in the area of decoding for sixth through tenth grade. We are currently grinding through the Wilson Reading Program and my phonemic awareness is better than ever as a result :) Though our work together can be a bit dry at times, I love listening to my students read more fluently and I can tell it makes all the difference to them. When we are not sounding out words, we share stories about our daily happenings and how we are finding joy in this unique season. Seeing many of these wonderful students multiple times a week has allowed me to get to know them very well and we always have a blast!
ACADEMIC RESOURCES
Make Math Fun with Dry Erase Boards
Want to make Math more fun and engaging for your child? Create your own dry erase board to make worksheets exciting and scrap paper more interactive. Creating the dry erase boards is easy and inexpensive. You can use this dry erase board in helping your student play math games, complete worksheets, and practice math facts. You can make this dry erase board together with your child to increase their engagement. Create a math binder full of different activities so your child can choose which activity she/he wants to complete. You will certainly find that children of any age love to use dry erase boards and markers!
You will Need:
- Plastic sheet protectors (The heavy-duty ones work best, but any kind will work)
- Dry erase markers
- An eraser (or paper towels)
Once you have the plastic sheet protectors, you can put anything inside them to create a flexible, interactive dry erase board: math printables, blank paper, etc. Here are 3 options of how to use your dry erase board:
Option 1
Use a blank piece of paper to have a clean, whiteboard to solve problems or use as scrap paper.
Option 2
Insert lined or graph paper into the sheet protector to help your child line up numbers or practice writing answers neatly.
Option 3
Make worksheets reusable. Since your child can complete a worksheet without writing on the paper, she can use the worksheet to practice again and again! A great option for working on math facts and multiplication tables.
BEHAVIOR BITS
Using the Zones of Regulation with Visuals
In many of our Virtual Specialized Academic Instruction (SAI) classes, Special Education teachers are using the Zones of Regulation to help students gain tangible skills for self-regulation. Let’s take a deeper dive into what the Zones are and how you can also use them in your home learning environment.
What is the “Zones of Regulation” approach?
This approach is a systematic, cognitive behavioral approach used to teach self-regulation by categorizing all the different ways we feel and states of alertness we experience into four concrete colored zones.
What is the goal of this approach?
The Zones framework provides strategies to teach students to become more aware of and independent in controlling their emotions and impulses, manage their sensory needs, and improve their ability to problem solve conflicts. The Zones of Regulation incorporates numerous visuals to teach students to identify their feelings/level of alertness, understand how their behavior impacts those around them, and learn what coping strategies they can use to manage their feelings and states.
The Zone Colors
The Zones of Regulation uses four colors to help children self-identify how they’re feeling and categorize it based on color.
- The Green Zone is used to describe when you’re in a calm state of alertness. Being in the green zone means you are calm, focused, happy, or ready to learn. This is predominantly the state you want your child to be in.
- The Yellow Zone describes when you have a heightened sense of alertness. This isn’t always a bad thing, and you still have some control of your actions when you’re in the yellow zone. Being in the yellow means you may feel frustrated, anxious or nervous. But, it could also mean you’re feeling excited, silly, or hyper – which is okay in the right situations.
- The Red Zone describes an extremely heightened state of intense emotions. When a person reaches the red zone, they’re no longer able to control their emotions or reactions. Being in the red zone means you’re feeling anger, rage, terror, or complete devastation and feel out of control.
- The Blue Zone, on the other hand, is used when a person is feeling low states of alertness or arousal. When you’re in the blue zone you may be feeling down – sad, sick, tired, or bored. You’re still in control, as you are in the yellow zone, but with low energy emotions.
As students are learning the Zones, it is very helpful for them to see a visual of each Zone, such as the chart shown above. As a starting point, you can teach your student how to identify the “color” of the Zone they are in. Next, provide coping strategies to help them regulate their bodies and get back to the green zone. Below is a visual of some strategies you can use. These strategies are meant to take no more than 5-10 minutes.
SENSORY CORNER
Valentines Day Sensory Bottle
Have you tried making a sensory bottle yet? Sensory bottles are a visual and physical tool for calming and relaxing the body. A child (or adult!) can use a sensory bottle when they feel anxious, overwhelmed, "wound-up", or overstimulated and use the sense of proprioception as they shake the sensory bottle and watch the contents shift. This visual cue is a great calming strategy for many children.
When appropriate kids love making them and enjoy the fun of discovering items in the bottle. When you add a learning component like math or literacy it's even better!
To make a liquid sensory bottle add: water, baby oil, cooking oil or other liquid non-toxic substance.
Add pieces to the liquid base: small toys, natural items (acorns/flowers/sticks/rocks, etc.), beads, glitter, paper clips, crafting pom poms, etc.
Or make a dry sensory bottle by pouring in: rice, dry pasta, colored sand, quinoa, beans, split peas, beads, etc.
Adding a learning (find and seek) component by dropping in: foam or cardboard letters and/or numbers, sight words, etc.
(Please be mindful of safety when exposing your child to any small swallowable items),
Be creative!
Try this great idea just in time for Valentine's Day: A beautiful heart waterbead sensory bottle!
Step 1
Select some pink and rose-colored waterbeads (a dollar store typically has some available). Pour them into a big bin and have your kids help with filling the bottle. Manipulating the waterbeads and dropping them into the bottle is a nice way to encourage in-hand manipulation and tripod grasp. Depending on the age or abilities of your child, you may want to prepare the sensory bottle yourself and just present the finished tool to your child.
Step 2
You can use a regular peanut butter plastic jar that had been cleaned out. Once the bottle is 3/4 full with waterbeads, add a handful of foam hearts. Kids can slide these into the sensory bottle.
You can add superglue to the lid of the plastic bottle if you are worried about little ones opening the bottle and dumping the contents or for safety reasons.
Step 3
Now play!
- Shake the jar and count the hearts.
- Ask your child to find all red hearts or all pink hearts.
- Use this sensory bottle as a calming tool when kids need to focus or attend.
CAUGHT ON THE NET
Helpful Websites and APPs
Mercury Reader
This is a free extension for Google Chrome and is compatible with most devices. It clears away clutter, distracting fonts and adds from web articles instantly leaving only text and images for a clean and consistent reading view. It is great for students with attention challenges who can be easily distracted by all the clutter and visual noise on web pages. It also allows text to speech apps to read more accurately.
Science Bob
“Science Bob” Pflugfelder is an award-winning teacher, presenter, and television personality known for bringing science to life for both young and old. From mixing up some home-made slime to creating huge foaming chemical reactions, Science Bob creates science experiences that are unforgettable. Explore the site and try some of the featured experiments!
Duolingo ABC - Learn to Read
Duolingo ABC is the fun, hands-on app designed by literacy and early-education experts to develop children’s skills in phonics, sight words, reading comprehension, and more. Some of the amazing features of the app:
- Activities like letter tracing and interactive stories are fun for even the youngest learners.
- There are no ads or in-app purchases to worry about.
- Duolingo ABC works offline so kids can learn wherever you go.
- There’s always something new for your child to discover, so they’ll want to return to the app and keep learning!