Tuesday, May 17, 2011

AGGGH! Snake!

I have to apologize as lately I have been posting articles rather than my day-to-day activities and ideas for working with our kids. The reason is that the paperwork is overwhelming and my caseload grew from seven schools and fifteen children to nine schools and twenty-two children. On top of that, I have admin who have felt that I should have school duty like a regular classroom teacher and just work my way around that. We have also had a busy semester with IEPs as many of them done by a certain date in the Fall had to be revisited this semester.
Why is this Child Playing with Snake in a Bucket?
Because he's a snake handler, that's why! Actually, it's a "Grow Snake" and of course it is a toy. I would not have been in the room to snap the photo if it had been real.

He's learning braille and there is a contraction for "OW" (dots 2, 4, 6).  As he spelled aloud some words that contained the letters O-W one of the words, as you can figure, was the word "grow." The snake is supposed to double in size if left in water over night, so I allowed him to fill the bucket with water, take the snake from the package, and put the snake in the bucket of water.

Then we wrote a sentence about what he thought would happen using the word "grow" using the new contraction.

In braille the sentence "The snake will grow" has some previous signs like the T-H-E sign and the W for the word "will." We can lengthen it using "T-M" for "tomorrow" or "T-N" for "tonight."

"The snake will grow tonight. Tomorrow it will be big."

When you get up, do and apply rather than just write the word over and over you're more likely to remember it and how to write it.

Another concept was reinforced with this simple exercise
was sequencing. His mom told me that he couldn't get off the bus before he started telling all that had happened and why he was coming home with a wet snake in his bookbag.

Message from Mom to his visual impairments specialist: "Well...thanks for the snake...I think."

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