Print out inspirational/growth mindset quote coloring pages (you can find them online or Teachers Pay Teachers has bundled classroom sets of coloring pages). Have your students choose a quote that “speaks” to them and color it in. Have them present their creation to the class and explain why they chose that quote/why it speaks to…
Read MoreWHY DID YOU DO THAT?
“Why did you do that?” can be frustrating and hard for a child with ADD/ADHD/Autism to answer. Have you ever had a student or child do something and you ask “Why did you do that?!” and they stare at you or say “I don’t know”? This usually prompts a frustrated “you do know” or the…
Read MoreGrowth Mindset Lesson
Social Skills Lesson: When students get frustrated and want to quit, they often forget all the before steps it took for them to get where they are. For instance, Serena Williams did not just become a tennis player. She took tennis lessons and went to practice. She had to learn how to serve a ball…
Read MoreTales from the Classroom: Social Skills in Action
Once I was teaching a lesson on blurting out. The lesson went down hill fast. All of my students (most of which have high functioning autism) started blurting out, yelling over each other, pointing out that the others were blurting out and generally becoming frustrated. I did what any self respecting Social Skills teacher would…
Read MorePlay Time/Social Time: Free Download
This is a link to Social Time/Social Play a completely free and downloadable book on how to teach play and language to kids with disabilities. What is SO COOL about this book is that somewhere around page 92 it has FREE LESSON PLANS on how to run social skills activities. Bean tables, pretend play birthday…
Read MoreTeacher Questions: Recognizing Emotions
“I’ve been working on recognizing emotions in DT with my non-verbal kid. What’s a good intermediate step to see if they are able to generalize this without walking them around the building with visuals and asking them about people’s faces?” A great way to do this is to show your kiddo a short video clip….
Read MoreToy Story Social Skills
Start the lesson by showing your class a video of Andy playing with his Toys and have them create a list of Andy’s characteristics based on what they saw in the video. Then have them watch a video of Sid playing with the same toys and have them write a list of Sid’s characteristics based…
Read MorePairing (AKA – Creating a Relationship)
Pairing is when you spend time upfront building a relationship. The concept: if you’ve spent the time to build that relationship, then when you ask the student to do the hard things, they will do it. Today one of my last students logged in. My first thought, “they are so behind!”. My second? This cannot…
Read MoreQuotable and Notable: Favorite Student Quotes
This week our governor announced that schools would be out until the end of the year. Although, this announcement was expected, my heart broke into a million pieces. It hurt more than I can express to hear that we would not be returning this year. The tears have been real and flowing. As I teach…
Read MoreWithout Students: Rambling Thoughts of a Teacher During School Shutdown
Every email, every text message, every video chat is a salve to my broken heart. Being without the people I have dedicated my life to is hard. They were always an anchor for me, a constant, they kept me on schedule. And now I feel adrift. While being without my students is hard, it’s even…
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