I was recently able to attend the Council for Exceptional Children’s National Conference in Indiana. I love being able to hear about current research, connect with educators, and learn new strategies and techniques. This year I was thrilled to see a session titled “Instructional Decision Making: Students Who Use AAC: What Do the Experts Say?” Perfect! I thought. I’ll learn what the research says and come away with some specific, concrete ideas to apply to my work with Joey. [Read more…]
It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny
In trying to find a book that Joey may find engaging, I grabbed It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny by Marilyn Sadler. This is one of those books I’d never classify as quality children’s literature, but it has all the right elements to be an engaging read aloud for the four through six year old crowd.
- It has a relatable storyline – someone who doesn’t quite fit into his family, or someone who just wants to see what life is like being someone else
- It has repetitive, predictable text, where the reader lists all the animals P.J. Funny Bunny does not want to be. This makes it easy for children to join into the read aloud experience, either verbally or non-verbally
- It is four and five year old sense of humor funny. A bunny trying to be a possum? Too silly. But the humor does not involve needing to make inferences or understand that characters have two different ideas.
- It involves bad body odor (from a skunk, or course)
- Its characters are common storybook animals
- It has simple, bright pictures without too much detail
Making Books More Engaging
Without his device, Joey has been choosing to read books that give him more opportunities to interact during the read aloud. He wants to hold an animal, wave a magic wand, or move a velcroed piece around on his work tray. Last week I wondered just what was so appealing about Room on the Broom that we couldn’t break away from reading it. Through looking at what the Room on the Broom read aloud structure looks like for Joey, and considering that without his device read alouds can be more of a listening experience than an interactive one, I realized I needed to increase the opportunities for Joey to engage during a book. [Read more…]
What Makes a Good Book for Joey?
I’m not sure what I’ll do if I have to read Room on the Broom one more time with Joey (OK, truthfully we all know that I’ll read it and be as excited about reading it as I was the first time…) but I honestly am not sure I can. I’ve stretched the book as far as I can. We’ve counted characters forwards and backwards, identified rhyming words, acted it out, spent time on the prepositions of the book, talked about weather, emotions, and even friendship. Yet still, Joey latches onto it. [Read more…]
Giggles
“What comes next?” I asked Joey, holding up the 5 and the 14 number cards. We’d just put down four and were building a long number line. Joey looked me in the eyes, then promptly looked at the number 14. And then burst into a fit of giggles.
Right. The kid knew exactly what he was doing.
“14? 3, 4, 14? Is that how we count?” I acted huffy. “NO… it’s five!”
Joey looked solemn as I handed him the five and together we added it to the number line we were building. He remained calm as we counted the numbers we already had, touching each one to make sure we had one to one correspondence. [Read more…]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- …
- 38
- Next Page »
