Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Being Unusually Good

When your teaching whether it's a regular education classroom or a special education classroom you need that little extra boost for the students to work for. I found this on teacherspayteachers and you can find it under the name of Being Unusually Good. It comes with bugs and frogs. The students have to earn bugs for points or if they not behaving a frog. We have it set up that the students have to earn 5 frogs before they get a prize. The other special education teacher and I put a prize box together. If they get a frog all the their bugs have to go back. If they end up with 5 frogs, then the student and I have to call the parents. Right now, the most frogs I have seen one of my students get 2 frogs, but if they get a bug even though they may have 2 frogs, all those frogs disappear. Hope you enjoy!!!

 

 

 

Happy Learning!!!

Shannon

 

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Spelling Scrabble

I'm always looking for ways to teach the student's their spelling words besides writing them over and over again or worksheets after worksheets. A kindergarten teacher and I were talking one day at lunch and the idea of using scrabble letters to make their spellings words. I ran with the idea from there. I found a free board online that you can print off and put the pages together. I would recommend laminating the papers, so that you can use it for a long time. I found it at Quirky Artist Loft: www.quirkyartistloft.blogspot.com/2012/11/diy-printable-scrabble-board.html

I looked at her blog to see if you could search for it and I was unable to find a spot that said search.

Once I printed that out and matched all the sides together, because you will have to cut off parts to match it up to the other side. You'll see when you print it out that the first sheet will say A1 and A1 and then the bottom sheet will say A1 and A3. You will just have to cut off one side of the A1 and line it up with the A1. It sound's tricky, but it actually isn't.

Then the fun begin with seraching for scrabble tiles besides having to buy a whole bunch of scrabble games. I went on ebay, Amazon and then I bought the Bananagram game and used those tiles. I then separated them out into each bag with all the same letters.

I wasn't for sure how to go about introducing this game, because I have younger students in here and some 2nd and 3rd grade students. I combinded the studenet's based on what spelling level they were. Here is how I started it:

1. Each group get's a game board and a list of their spelling words.

2. I took each spelling word and put the tiles that spelled that word into a pile and continued with each spelling word. Yes there was duplicate letters in the pile.

3. Did the same for the other group. I would highly recommend doing the separating of the words before the day you want to play the scrabble game.

4. If you plan on playing the game more then once, put all the tiles for one game board in a bag and then all the tiles for the other game board in another bag.

5. The next part was a little hard, because I knew once the older kids got the hang of how to play the game and understand that the tiles had to spell a spelling word and that you couldn't put a letter below another tile that wouldn't spell a word. With the younger kids, I let them for the first time on the board just see if they can spell a word, but I will know teach them how to actually play the game.

I hope this makes sense! If not, email me! Here are some pictures!

 

Happy Learning!!

Shannon