choose to see the good!

The past couple of weeks I've been settling into my new role as PPCD teacher (morning) and case manager (afternoon) at our little elementary school. Though I was initially a little stressed about having to do this AND show the new teacher the ropes for the older students, I forced myself to remember that I could be back doing it all by myself (YIKES) and have really settled into a beautiful routine.

It is amazing what you can do with students when you are in relationship with them and their families. Spending all day with a group of kiddos (as opposed to bopping in and out of rooms for about 45 minutes at a time) has allowed me to really dig into each child's individual interests and preferences. While getting to know your students is definitely a best practice in all realms of education, anyone who teaches special education knows that this is absolutely KEY to seeing progress from our friends who may... um... simply refuse to do anything that they don't want to.

Last week in PPCD we introduced a few winter concepts, and but mainly focused on getting back into the swing of things. Students with autism really struggling with schedule disruptions, and coming back from break coupled with the fact that I restructured our classroom a little threw us for a loop the first couple days... Oops! This week, we have been learning more about winter. It hasn't really felt like winter (um, hello 60 degree South Texas afternoons), but we're improvising with cotton balls in the sensory bin, snowman themed file folder games, and winter vocabulary PECS and signs.

*these are obviously copyrighted by board maker- just an example of what we're talking about!

I am getting especially jazzed about February! We'll be learning about Valentine's Day and the post office and I got approved to take a field trip to our local post office so we can authentically learn how letters are mailed! Check out my TPT shop to see the beginning of some items I'm putting together for next month (never too early to be planning ahead!). The cards are free for the next few hours! (: