Some STRATEGIES

(Part 1 of MANY, I'm sure!)

I wanted to record a few ideas I had that could help me in my future classroom, or at church, or with my niece, or wherever I might get to work with children with special needs.  Of course, there are as many different needs as there are children who have them, and there are just as many ways to meet those needs.  But I'd like to have something to start from.  So here are some pics of ideas I've seen used in our school's resource room that I want to remember:

There are LOTS of ways to organize your library, but when you're helping struggling readers it seems easiest and best to keep your instructional material organized by levels (numbers or letters or what have you).  The fun books can be kept by author or genre or theme, but this is easiest to pull for instructional reasons.

This light & learn is something I wanted to remember to buy...they are SO FUN for young ones.  One of our little boys with severe physical disabilities LOVES the sounds Mickey or the pencil makes.  

Another cool idea for kids with severe motor control issues--have a stamp with their name so they can still put their own name at the top of every paper!  I work with a little girl that is slowly losing her fine motor skills, so this would be awesome to have for her.

You can organize file folder games or shoebox activities according to skill/standard.  Easy to pull when you're doing your assessments and realizing a student needs extra practice.

 These next little posters were cute animal-themed ways to teach basic reading strategies.  I know most teachers teach these same things to early readers anyway, but the animals help make it more memorable.  You could even have a bookmark with each of these animals on the front and the strategies printed on the back for them to keep with them. :)

Note to self: MAKE ONE OF THESE!  I would make it in an even bigger plastic bottle (like a LONG water bottle or something) so the "rain" sound lasts longer.  But if you stuff it with toothpicks and then let some rice filter through the sticks, it's a super fun sound that the kids seem to like a lot.  In the background are a few other fun "toys" used for sensory stimulation and such--a water bottle filled with fun things, and a sensory balloon matching game that I MUST duplicate for Caida soon!  :)

 These are some calm-down techniques used for kids who have a shorter fuse:

If I ever have any autistic children in my classroom, or even if not, I MUST find one of these!  It's amazing how much our three autistic kiddos love this thing, I don't even really know why but it's great fun.  And I love how the "fish tank" is so tall and skinny it could easily fit in those weird spaces of the classroom that are usually wasted space. 

For kiddos who need to fidget a little to focus--an exercise band around the bottom of the chair for them to push against.  Saw this on Pinterest, but in this resource room I've seen it work first-hand and I can attest that it really does help!

That's it for round 1 of my strategies I'm learning.  I'm sure there will be MANY more posts like this in the next year as I learn and see more things happening.  :)