Check Out Our Sensory Break Space!

I'm doing my happy special ed teacher dance! You know....the one that goes like this?

Yes, I'm a Seinfeld fan. I mean, seriously, how many moments in our lives are identified with Seinfeld references?! Low talkers, close talkers, fat free yogurt, "No soup for you!", Mulva, puffy shirt, Festivus for the rest of us, Junior Mints. In fact, when I searched for this image I started laughing so hard my TA thought I had lost my mind! I know, I know...Topic Twister invaded my brain for a minute. Sorry about that! Back to the topic ~ Our New Sensory Break Room!

This year our school had a classroom that was being used for other purposes. My brilliant and fantastic principal gave us permission to expand our sensory break space into this room since our space was so limited in our tiny little classroom. I'm counting my lucky stars to have it for as long as I get it. I know it is HIGHLY unlikely we will have it next year. So, we are enjoying it while we do!

Check out our Gross Motor Center (complete with racetrack!)....

Our Fine Motor Center....

And our Calm Body Center...

I change out the activity offerings in each center (except the gross motor center which remains the same) on a weekly basis so it can stay interesting to the kids.

The kids check in at the Learning Zone poster when they enter the room.

They then choose a center that will help get their bodies into the green learning zone.

We are also working with Leah Kuyper's Zones of Regulation curriculum to help us identify "tools" for our ready to learn toolbox.

This week, we will be working to identify the effect various "tools" have on our emotions. Each child will have his own "toolbox" available.  Click here to download a copy of the toolbox.

This space has been such a blessing! We are able to start our days feeling good, conduct periodic sensory breaks as needed (or as scheduled!) during the day, and end our day in the room while we wait out the noisy chaos of dismissal. This has helped us start and end our days feeling calm!

I know that it is unlikely that we will have this space every year, but even if we don't I can use the same centers model with smaller and easier to store activities.

Thanks for checking our our Sensory Break Space!
~Kelley

End of Year Transition Issues for Kids on the Autism Spectrum

We are all counting down the days until summer break begins. Even though time off sounds exciting to both students and teachers, it can be a minefield of challenges for our kids on the Autism Spectrum. All too often those "fun" activities can create extra stress and anxiety in our students with ASD. I have a simple suggestion that makes a world of difference!

Start NOW while things are relatively sane and help your student create their own calendar for the last 3-4 weeks of school. Note all the days where there will be unusual events such as assemblies, track & field day, class parties, field trips, etc. You can also make note of all the days that are "regular" schedule days. Consider color coding the regular days. Your student will then be able to preview and plan ahead for the changes that will occur.

I usually use this calendar because it is simple and non-distracting:

 Click here to download

The week before school gets out, I send the following calendar home with students and ask their parents to help them fill it out. I know that the kids seem really excited to get out of school, but going from structured to unstructured days can create significant anxiety. I explain to parents that it is helpful to help their child structure their first week of summer and that they will likely experience a more peaceful start to their vacation.

Click here to download

I hope you find these tools quick and easy to use with your students with ASD.  ~Kelley

Hands-on Lesson on Using Your Filter by Kelley

Here's a quick hands-on lesson to illustrate the concept of using your verbal filter to keep the group feeling calm.

We define what a thought is...

We use thought bubbles and various pictures to identify main topics group members like to think about.

We then discuss the idea of "smooth" vs "prickly" thoughts and comments. Smooth thoughts and comments are those that keep the group feeling calm and keep the interaction moving forward. Prickly thoughts and comments are those that make others feel uncomfortable and stop the interaction. Here's the visual that we use for prickly and smooth interactions. You can download it here.

We pass around a smooth ball and a prickly ball to further reinforce the concept of which was more comfortable.

After reviewing the smooth vs prickly concept, we define what a filter is and why we use filters in our communities (coffee, cleaning water, etc). We then introduce the idea of a brain filter that keeps prickly thoughts in our heads and allows smooth thoughts to be verbalized.

You'll need a container, a pitcher of water, a strainer, food coloring, a bag of small sticks/rocks/mulch, and small strips of laminated paper with a sharpie marker.

We ask the group to decide on a color that will represent smooth thoughts. This was a minefield of negotiation and group decision making in itself! Finally, they came to the decision that they would use blue food coloring to represent smooth thoughts.

We mix up the blue water in the pitcher and then identify various prickly comments that could disrupt an interaction and cause prickly thoughts in others. We write them down with a sharpie on laminated strips of paper and added them along with the sticks (which represented other prickly comments or behaviors such as turning away when a peer is talking or interrupting) to the water pitcher.

We then pour the contents through the strainer (representing our brain filter) to model keeping the prickly comments in our heads and letting the smooth comments be expressed.

I hope that you'll find this activity to be helpful in your social and speech groups!

Collaboration in Speech Therapy and Special Education--A Success Story

In honor of Better Speech and Hearing Month, we thought we would kick of May with a success story from our collaboration through speech therapy and special education services.

The story begins with a kindergarten boy . . . This young boy melted our hearts the moment we laid eyes on him, an adorable and huggable little guy. He came to us as a kindergartener after his previous educational team had deemed it necessary for him to have a second round of kindergarten. During his previous year in school, he was evaluated and found to have a speech and language impairment and had begun receiving speech therapy earlier that spring.

It didn't take long for us to realize that this child's challenges far exceeded that which could be provided by traditional speech therapy services alone. In addition to his deficits in articulation and language, he struggled with listening/attending skills, social/behavioral skills, and academic skills. As his SLP and case manager at the time, I had to work closely and diligently with his teacher and the campus staff to collect sufficient data needed in order to provide additional services. Thanks to an amazing campus and administration, we were able to begin providing him with additional inclusion and resource supports through our Social Communication Resources and Services Program while he was being evaluated for an additional disability.

As we began developing a program for this student, Kelley and I worked collaboratively to develop social stories in order to teach him school rules and routines. Kelley also worked diligently with the classroom teacher to develop positive behavior supports and teach behavior expectations through the use of discrete trial techniques. These same techniques were also used during his small group pull-out sessions in speech therapy and in the areas of reading and writing. Kelley and I also included this student in a co-taught Social Thinking group and started directly teaching social thinking skills such as Whole Body Listening and Expected and Unexpected Behaviors. We, along with his teacher and administrators, worked diligently through months of tantrums and tears with this child. As he came to the end of his kindergarten year, we saw significant changes in his behavior and attention.

Also in the midst of chipping away at this students behavioral challenges, we used collaborative efforts and techniques to make changes to his speech, language, and academic skills.  In speech therapy, I focused primarily on his motor speech deficit in a small group with 1-2 other students. It wasn't long before Kelley inquired about how this was being accomplished and she quickly was on board with trying out a new program to work on his reading skills. Together, we used various aspects of the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech or LiPS Program.

This program, developed by Lindamood Bell, has a great series of visuals and techniques for developing all skills related to speech, reading and spelling. From a motor-speech aspect, I have used the Mouth Pictures and corresponding Phoneme cues to teach articulation skills. The cues are very descriptive and easy for students of all ages to understand.

Using these cues in speech therapy and then transitioning the same cues into this child's resource classroom really seemed to bridge the gap for him as he learned to identify and name letters and sounds and then sequence these sounds with appropriate coordination for speaking and reading. Using a multi-sensory and collaborative approach for this child significantly contributed to his progress in speech, language, reading, and writing. This type of program is inherently designed to help coordinate the development of all three of these skills. I highly encourage SLPs and teachers to coordinate their efforts and combine their expertise regarding motor-speech and oral language development with developing reading and writing skills.

Thanks to a great TEAM approach, this child is now at the end of his first grade year speaking with much greater intelligibility of speech, reading independently on grade level, and writing on grade level with minimal accommodations and daily supports. He remains in speech therapy to support continued increases in intelligibility of speech, particularly in the area of sequencing complex co-articulation as well as improving expressive syntax to age appropriate levels. But overall, this student's success is clearly the result of a collaborative approach.

~Orlanda

Climbing Steps Toward Independence

At this point in the semester, much of my time is being spent working on transition-related issues for my 5th grade students. They are definitely feeling that 5th grade itch and are ready to fly out of this elementary school nest!

One issue that has been coming up a lot lately is the kids wanting adults to back off and give them more independence. I love it when the drive toward independence kicks in, but this can be tricky for some students because of the intensity of their executive functioning deficits. They want adults to stop prompting them (which is fantastic!), but often when the teachers or paraprofessionals try to back off they end up stuck in distractable-land like Doug the Dog. I love Doug the Dog - just not in math class.

I had a conversation recently with a student who was complaining that adults give him too many reminders. As a result of that conversation, I created this visual to show him that in order for adults to back off he has to complete more tasks on his own. I have been using this visual to drive home the point that if he uses the tools in place (sticky notes, checklists, his homework agenda, etc.) he can do more tasks with fewer adult reminders. As adults see that he is taking steps toward independence, then they will back off and give him more freedom.

 

Using this visual model, we identified the things he does completely on his own at this point and wrote them on a sticky note and placed them on the lower 1/3 of the staircase. We then identified all the things an adult does on their own, listed those on another sticky and put it on the very top of the staircase. Finally, we identified 1 or 2 things that he thinks he can work on doing more on his own now and placed it a step or so above his current position. This allows us to reflect upon what independence level he is showing from day to day.  As he can complete more tasks we can add those "up the stairs" giving him a visual measuring stick of the payoff for persisting through tasks that he used to need help to complete.

Using this visual has helped my older students set small goals for themselves and increase their ability to self-monitor whether they are gaining independence.

Feel free to use this visual with your students as well! ~ Kelley

The Learning Zone

I used to regularly have my students identify their feelings at the beginning of social groups. What I found was that many of my kids on the Autism Spectrum had immense difficulty identifying anything other than feeling happy...

 

or mad...

When I delved deeper I realized the problem was that they didn't know what feelings felt like in their bodies. It became more important to me that they identify how their bodies felt and how that related to being ready to learn. After developing the skill of analyzing their own bodies, we could move into explicit instruction in labeling the feelings that are frequently attached to those physical feelings.

I came up with a tool that we use daily called the Learning Zone. I ask the students to check how their bodies feel on a spectrum that ranges from low energy states to high energy states. The visual tool helps teach the students that there is a range of states that can still encompass being in the "Learning Zone". Too many times I had students who felt like they couldn't pay attention in a group because they weren't "happy". This tool shows that you don't have to be in a perfect place in order to attend to the group. If your physical state is outside the Learning Zone, then you must take steps to bring yourself back into the Learning Zone. This encourages the students to actively use strategies to help regulate their bodies.

I had the poster professionally printed pretty inexpensively through our school district's media center. I added a strip of velcro down the side of the spectrum, printed out small laminated cardstock name tags and put adhesive velcro on those. The kids know that when the come into the classroom they are to "check in" at the Learning Zone visual, choose an appropriate activity that will help them either stay in the Learning Zone or choose an activity that will help them get into the Learning Zone (gross motor to increase energy or something calming if they are overly excited). After their Sensory Break, they re-check in at the poster to see if they regulated their bodies.

When I introduce the concept of the Learning Zone, we spend a session or two exploring the different tools available in the Sensory Break Center (pics to come soon!). The kids are given a survey sheet where they try various tools and mark whether it helps them have more energy, less energy, or no change. These become their sensory "menus" when they need to choose a tool. I will post pictures soon of the Sensory Break Center and will hunt down a copy of that survey!


I have a list a mile long of all the books I intend to write and the Learning Zone is on that list, but school and children and cats and dogs and church and Boy Scouts and writing the great American novel and Mr. Hively came first! In the meantime, a great book has come out called The Zones of Regulation by Leah Kuypers. We have since combined the use of my Learning Zone tool to be used in conjunction with the Zones of Regulation. It is a perfect fit! One of these days I'll get my book put together, but until then I encourage you to think about ways you can use this tool in your practice and to check out The Zones of Regulation.

Cheers! ~ Kelley

My Favorite Data Documentation Tool

I want to share with you a *free* system that helps me track data with some of my higher needs kiddos. Please forgive the lengthy post, but I really want this to be able to help you as well!

About a year ago, I discovered a fantastic tool to use to document daily progress on goals. The tool is called the Electronic Daily Behavior Report Card (e-DBRC). It allows me to communicate easily with parents and helps encourage student accountability. It is a free, web-based tool that was created in a joint partnership between the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and Texas A&M University.

Currently, I've only used the system for behavior monitoring, but I suspect it could be used for many other purposes (speech goals, social goals, academic goals, etc.). If your student is a visual learner and is mature enough to be involved in tracking his or her own progress, then this may be a great tool to help them take ownership of their goals. Even if your students are too young or unable to be quite so involved in the process, this is an easy way to keep parents informed about progress more often than progress notes every 9 weeks.

 This tool allows teachers to monitor an unlimited amount of behaviors through a rubric format. After setting up the behaviors and defining the criteria for 5 levels (grades A-F), you can assign specific behaviors to specific students. You are able to set up the tracking schedule in whatever way works best for you and your students. You can do a once a day track, am/pm, or by class period. Here's an example of the schedule I am using for one particular student this year.

Finally, you are able to add parent email addresses so the daily report can either be printed and sent home or emailed home for an electronic signature.

I love that I can analyze the data by the day or across a time period of my choosing. For example, I have a 5th grade student with Asperger's who currently enters his own data for two different goals. Of course, these are not his only IEP goals, but they are the two that he is actively working on improving from day to day and has the ability to self-report.

The two goals that he is currently tracking are: time on task and what "track" he is on during each class period (referring to the Friendship Track - check it out here). He previously tracked his transition times from class to class as well. We keep a post-it note on his desk in each classroom that he attends that either my paraprofessional or the classroom teachers mark tallies for each prompt they have to give to attend to the lesson or follow directions. We gather the post-it notes from the desks and keep them in my classroom until the end of the day. Toward the end of the day, the student comes in and meets with either my paraprofessional or myself to enter the data on the computer. This allows him to self-evaluate, discuss any bumps in the road that day, celebrate his successes, set mini-goals, and visually track his progress. The program graphs his behavior across the day and gives him a final grade. He then emails his graph home to his parents.

The program also has a place to list "Critical Incidents" in Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence format. This is a helpful way to communicate those incidents to parents as well as to keep me from having to document them again in another format for data collection purposes.

On Fridays, we print out a graph that shows the entire week for documentation purposes as well.

Recently, the program came in handy when I wanted to encourage this particular student to challenge himself to improve his time on task. When I first broached the subject, he stated that he didn't think that he could do any better. I was able to quickly run the data for the entire first semester at school and show him that over the last 8 weeks or so he was consistently scoring A's based on our current rubric. When he saw the graph, he decided he did want to challenge himself by decreasing the number of prompts he could receive and still earn an "A". I loved being able to cater to his strength in math by proving his progress in graph form!

Last year, I had the experience of one student's parents frequently excusing inappropriate behaviors because he was tired or his allergies were acting up or he was having digestive problems. Obviously, all of these factors can significantly influence our kids, but I decided to track various factors twice a day for a couple of months to see if I could see any correlation between reported physical complaints and behavior. I created a Likert scale for fatigue, allergies (including "shiners" under the eyes), irritability, distractability, and slow verbal response times (latency). I quickly rated each factor once in the morning and then again in the afternoon based on the student or parent reports and my own observation. Finally, I entered all the data into eDBRC and ran the graphs. The results were surprising. I was expecting to see a correlation between behavior and fatigue and it did not exist. The parent viewpoint of allergy days being correlated to distractability and irritability were not supported either. Now, that made for an interesting parent teacher conference! Without graphing the factors, we would have continued to assume that external factors were causing difficult behaviors.

Currently, I've only used the system for behavior monitoring, but I suspect it could be used for many other purposes (speech goals, social goals, math fluency, reading fluency, etc.). If your student is a visual learner and is mature enough to be involved in tracking his own progress, then this may be a great tool to help them take ownership of their goals. Even if your students are too young or unable to be quite so involved in the process, this is an easy way to keep parents informed about progress more often than progress notes every 9 weeks.

I hope you're able to make use of the Electronic Daily Behavior Report Card in your practice!
~ Kelley

"Keep Your Brain in the Group"

It's January 19 and it's technically Winter. . .but as I write this, I am sitting on my back deck in sunny 70 degree weather while my two young boys dig in the dirt. One of the benefits of being a South Texas girl!

So, anyway.  . .After reading Kelley's post about "Whole Body Listening", I immediately thought of the next concept that we are CONSTATNLY trying to teach our students in new and meaningful ways. . ."Keep Your BRAIN In the Group".  Getting the other body parts to help you listen is a fairly concrete task:  body is still, mouth is closed/quiet, ears are listening (that one is automatic in most cases, right?). . .but the concept of "brain" in the group is one of the trickiest ones that I can get my students to understand, it is just such an abstract concept.  This, too, is an extention of the WBL concepts described in Michelle Garcia Winner's work, and this particular piece is found in her book called Think Social.

This curriculum is defintely our GO TOs for concepts and ideas, I would call it a part of our backbone!

During the days I spent with my previous co-teach partner (and wonderful special education teacher), Angela Cardenas, this visual was developed (originally it was hand-drawn stick figures and thought bubble, I only recently found an image to match it). . . .

This concept is one that is used constantly in my co-taught groups AND most of my other language therapy groups.  The concept of "topic maintenance" is not one that is reserved for any particular group of students, rather it is just a small part of the whole pragmatic communication skillset.  Now, we have expanded topic maintenance to include not only "speaking" on topic but also "thinking" on topic.  Also, I quickly learned that many of my students with language disorders had other needs, and difficulty maintaining attention is one the most common so I needed a quick reference to keep those kids in check!  When teaching this concept, I talk to the students help them to "think about what the speaker is saying" (create a picture in their mind) and "think about their own ideas and/or experiences that are similar to what the speaker is saying" (make connections using schema). 

As we continued to teach this concept, we could not ignore the fact that many brains were often "out" of the group, that was when the "brain check" was born!


When it seems that the group is moving in various indivdual directions (rather than in one group direction) we can stop and say "Brain Check!" and fill in each person's thought bubble.  If we find that someone's thoughts are "off topic", then we can quickly help get them back in the group.  Sometimes, all it takes is a "brain check" moment, and we are all back to thinking and speaking on topic.

I have also created this nifty handout to describe some ways to use these visual tools (some of which are described here), print this and add it to your toolbox if you wish!



Of course, it is just as easy to create these visuals "on the fly" by scribbling it out on a white board or blank piece of paper. . .We still do this, too!  But I also like to keep these posted in my therapy room and start my sessions by getting everyone's brain "IN" the group.

     ~Orlanda