Winter break vacation over, and I caught a special ed job. You know, in one of those classes. For three days.
Actually, things went pretty smoothly. Most of the class had one-to-one aides, and the teacher had clear routines in place.
Third period, Tuesday. The class had a standing lesson with the speech therapist. As it was the first day back after the break (they had a professional development day on Monday, so no students), the speech therapist did an activity about the break.
She asked them what they got for Christmas, but they couldn't just tell her. They had to give two hints, and the others were to guess what it was. As an example, the speech therapist said, "I got something that I wear on my feet and it has three white lines on it."
They easily identified the gift as Adidas sneakers.
She demonstrated with a couple other of her gifts. Then she left them to figure out how to hint about what they got for Christmas.
The activity went fairly well. Most of the students got right to work and were able to hint about their gifts. Mostly, I was asked how to spell things.
Calvin, who likes to smudge his work after he completes it, was having a time writing anything down. His one-to-one aide was trying to assist. He asked Calvin what he got for Christmas. Calvin said he got a violin.
A violin???
That seemed odd. But then the next day I learned he was in a strings music class, and suddenly a violin made more sense.
They finished up the lesson with the speech therapist having them read out what they wrote and having the class guess what they got.
You'd think a speech therapy class would be more about having them work on how they talk. At least, that's what I assumed when I first heard of it. But no. It's more of them discussing things. Whatever works, right?
And now I have an interesting activity I can apply if I ever have need of it. (I love watching others work. I steal liberally from them.)
That's a creative way to start discussion, very clever!
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