Calendar/Morning Meeting: Starting off Strong!

One of the best parts of every day in our Lifeskills class is Calendar/Morning Meeting. We meet as a group (with our FABULOUS 8th grade peers) and practice some very critical functional skills. First we work on greeting each other and exchanging pleasantries. This may seem like a given skills, but, because our students have different communication needs, we have to learn and apply social skills like greetings, questions, etc. on a daily basis. 

Here is one of our peers working with two different students on social exchanges. She's using our new FAVORITE iPad app, TouchChat, to help augment our students' speech to increase intelligibility. I have to brag about this girl for a second- she's been a peer in my room in the past and does an incredible job modeling appropriate behaviors and helping students participate in an appropriate, meaningful way. These kiddos are both verbal, but the TouchChat app helps them pair their own speech with digital speech, making their message much more clear to other people (just because I can understand you, doesn't mean that the cashier at Target can!).

  

Next we move on to our calendar. I bought this nifty calendar board from Lakeshore (here is a pared down version- Lakeshore also has calendar kits for younger students too). Our kids take turns coming up to the board to set the date.

 

For my readers (and any adult in the class), we also have a weekly schedule board that lists our special activities and Unique Learning Lessons. This is super helpful when we have substitute teachers/aides or other visitors in our class!

 

Next, to reinforce the first calendar activity, each student comes up to the board to say the whole date. We're using the TouchChat app here too! There is a little sticker under each word to help students say each of the elements of the date (hello Language Arts standards!). 

 Another important part of Calendar/Morning Meeting is our schedule. My class does a great job using this main schedule as a guideline for each day's activities. Whenever I have a student who needs something a little different, he or she might have a personal schedule (either low or high tech- this really just means either using construction paper and pictures versus using an iPad app). When we're feeling like it, we might sing the Days of the Week or Months of the Year song. I'm pretty sure the only reason my kids sing loudly is so that they don't have to hear me sing it by myself in my terrible singing voice- 

hey, whatever works, right?!

We move from Calendar/Morning Meeting into a group Unique Learning lesson. While the overhead warms up, we talk about the day's weather. This year we've started picking all sorts of different adjectives (this is where having peers is especially helpful; they come up with some really great descriptors!). Today was an icky, sticky, hot, insane, damp, sunny day. Love hearing the great variety of words the kids choose (had a great time using TouchChat to come up with words too!).

Hope you enjoyed this little peek

 into our daily routine! 

Have a wonderful week :)