Welcome back to my blog! This is a super quick one talking about my beloved iPad. I LOVE my iPad. I think it’s one of the best pieces of technology I own.

I mostly love it because of the app Procreate. On Procreate I am able to doodle, practice lettering, and now, make coloring pages.

I use an Apple Pencil, my iPad Air (3rd generation) and the app, Procreate.

Thanks to Callie Danielle, and her amazing tutorial on her website, I am able to make my very own coloring pages in Procreate.

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Since I am obsessed with making them, I figured I would share them with you!!

In the google drive folder I have all of my creations in PDF and PNG files. Please download the files to your device. Use the PDF files if you want to print them out and color them. Use the PNG files if you want to import them into the Procreate app on your iPad and color them in.

**If using Procreate and coloring them in…remember to add a layer BEHIND the coloring page and color there.**

CLICK HERE TO GET MY FREE COLORING PAGES

Hello everyone, 

Thanks for coming back to hear about week 2. I definitely felt better about everything this week. Don’t get me wrong, each day I get more and more sad that I am not seeing my students anytime soon, but I did feel like I had more of a routine this week. Routine is something I am really missing during this whole situation. Going into school every day is a sense of comfort for me. School is my second home, with so many of my favorite people in it. Not being able to go there has been very tough. 

Here are some of my random, jumbled thoughts and ideas from week 2…

Most importantly for me, I was able to get into a better routine this week. I used digital notebook FREEBIES from https://www.jessicamassey.com to keep myself organized and on a schedule. I even scheduled time for walks and exercise. If it wasn’t in the planner, I wasn’t doing it. In my digital notebook every day had its own page, so I was able to focus and be present in that day, rather than be overwhelmed by what the days ahead were going to look like. 

I also changed my work area twice this week! This week we were told two different times that distance learning would be extended. As of right now we are not going back until April 20. Since we are out for another 3 weeks, I wanted to make sure that the space I’m working in is going to help me stay positive, productive and work for everyone in my house. Finally I found that space and decorated it with help from https://www.instagram.com/thecreativeclassroom/

This week I went to my classroom for the first time in over a week. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot of time, we don’t go in for longer over the summer, but this is different. It feels very different. As I said before, my classroom is my second home. My students and my coworkers are my second family, and not being able to be there and see them, when I know we should be there and seeing each other, has been devastating. I am glad I am still able to connect with my students and coworkers through google meet and google classroom and all of that good stuff, but it just does not do the trick. Being in my classroom this week made me very emotional because we truly don’t know when this will end. There does not seem to be an end in sight. Every time we hear a new end date, and come to terms with it, it changes again. I want more than anything to be back with my people in my second home. 

Anyway, I went there to grab a few books and ended up filling up my whole Cricut carrier with things (pictured below).

Since my students have IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) I spent some time last weekend brainstorming how I was going to address their goals while they are home. Some of my students have academic goals, which I was easily able to address with a packet of materials (talked about last week and have a copy in my google drive folder for that), but most of their goals are social/emotional and speaking/listening goals. TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE FOLDER, SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN ON THIS PAGE! I ended up making a list for each student of the goals that I thought families can address at home. For example; I did not include goals like, “student will be able to answer questions given to the group” or “student will be able to follow whole-group directions” simply because there is no group at home. I was able to include requesting goals for all students because they can practice requesting with their families and play goals for students that I know have multiple siblings at home. For each child I made a google doc with the list of goals. Under each goal I suggested ways for the parent to address the goal at home. I have an example of one of these in my google drive folder. Please make a copy of the doc so that you do not edit mine. To make a copy you can right click on the doc and click ‘make a copy’. Then, move the copy to your drive. You can also save it to your computer by double clicking on the doc, clicking file, download, choose an option. TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE FOLDER, SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN ON THIS PAGE!

This week Jessie (@specialresources_byjessie) and I did two group google meets with our classes. On Tuesday we did a read aloud where we each read a story to them, and on Thursday we did yoga. We LOVED getting to see all of our kids at the same time. Normally at school we do so many things with our two classes, so this gave us a nice sense of being back at school. We did learn very quickly that it gets a little hectic having fifteen 3-5 year old’s in a google meet at one time. After Tuesday we realized that moving forward, we should tell the families to come into the meet, have their child say hi to everyone, and then mute yourself. Once we said that, Thursday went much smoother. We even invited our principal, supervisor and teaching assistants to yoga on Thursday. Our supervisor did the yoga session with her son, which was awesome, and our teaching assistants got to see the kids for the first time in two weeks. It was so much fun! Starting next week, Jessie and I are going to try to do some small group meets as well, so that each child has a chance to talk and share. 

The last thing I want to talk about is the google form that I created towards the end of the week. I give full credit to @ieps_and_capabilities for the amazing idea. Since we found out that distance learning will be extended for a few more weeks, I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to check in with families, see how they were doing and find out if they needed anything from me. I have a copy of the google form in my google drive folder BUT make sure you make a copy for yourself. If you edit the form I have in the folder others won’t be able to use it. To make a copy you can right click on the doc and click ‘make a copy’. Then, move the copy to your drive. TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE FOLDER, SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN ON THIS PAGE!

I have been loving getting responses from families. They have been so honest and helpful in their feedback. On Friday I met with a few families that expressed they wanted visuals for their children. I was able to discuss what they needed the visuals for and how they were going to implement them. By the end of the day I had created the visuals and met with some families again. My plan is to check back in mid-week next week and see if the visuals are working or if we have to make some adjustments. I highly recommend doing some sort of feedback form for the families of your students, it has been very informative. 

Random thoughts to end with…

• I have a week 2 story highlight as well with all of this good stuff in it
• This week in my Instagram stories I did a Q&A about distance learning! You guys asked great questions, so I saved it all in a story highlight called Distance Learning Q&A.
• Blue light glasses have saved my life during distance learning. You can grab the ones I have in my amazon store.
• Callie Danielle’s procreate coloring pages tutorial has been my life savor. Doodling on my iPad is such a stress reliever for me! Thinking about making a freebie google drive folder of my creations…

I hope that you all had a great week. Please never hesitate to email me – engagingearlylearners@gmail.com – or message me on Instagram. Have a great weekend 🙂

WOW has it been a week! I went from having no warning or training about distance learning to teaching my kids virtually for 5 straight days, doing live read alouds and meeting with my colleagues via google meet. I am more exhausted than ever!!

I am sure we are all in the same boat since none of us were trained for this. We did not go to school to end up teaching through a computer. But I am so impressed with us. If Instagram is any indicator, we are all KILLING IT! Although everyone is expressing the same thoughts of stress and feeling overwhelmed, we are all doing everything we possibly can for our students and their families. 

I want to share how I set up my Google Classroom for my preschool special education classes. I hope by sharing this, I can help some of you set up your own Google Classrooms. Throughout the post I will be mentioning the google drive folder that has everything I have made so far for distance learning in it! The link to the folder is all the way at the bottom.

Disclaimer: I am by no means a Google Classroom expert. I just started using it a week ago, and I am probably using it minimally compared to other teachers, especially in higher grade levels.

Setting up Google Classroom

I was shocked at how easy it was to set up Google Classrooms. As a PreK teacher, I never had one before. I was pleasantly surprised to see how seamless the process was. If you need help setting one up here is a good resource: https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6020273?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

I decided to set up one for my AM and one for my PM. My students are extremely different in the two classes so I thought it would be helpful. Looking back, I probably could have just done one. I end up posting mostly the same stuff for both, so I almost created more work for myself. I also learned that you can assign certain students to certain material, so I could have easily put them all together. But this is a learning experience, right? 

Our Schedule

Coming up with a schedule was my first step in this journey. I wanted to come up with a schedule that was reasonable for my students and their parents, but also provided them with enough activities so that they can pick and choose. I created the schedule so that my students can recognize what time of day it was (with the pictures), but it also provided short instructions for the parents. I posted the schedule in the ‘stream’ part of classroom at first with all of the correlating work in the ‘classwork’ tab. I later realized how packed the ‘stream’ gets so I posted the schedule in ‘classwork’ as well.

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Classwork Tab

I organized the classwork tab so that it was easy for the parents to find exactly what they needed. I put the classwork in order of the schedule, from bottom to top, and I created “topics” so that everything was sorted under big, bold headings.  By creating topics, Google Classroom also created a menu on the left side so that parents can easily navigate this page. Anything that you see listed here that I created myself will be in the google drive folder. Parents have been telling me that the classwork tab is very easy to figure out and the schedule being posted in there as well makes it easy for them to access quickly. 

All of these documents in the classwork tab are posted as ‘material’. I did not post them as ‘assignments’ because I am not checking them, and they are not being graded. Posting everything as ‘material’ was the easiest for me. 

To create material:

• Under the classwork tab
• Click create
• Click material
• Type a title for the material, a description, and don’t forget to include the document/link/video/etc.
• You can also choose what topic you want the material to go under and if you want it to be assigned to ALL students or just a selected amount

A wonderful thing about Google Classroom is that it allows you to go back and edit posts or classwork. That has been very helpful so far. 

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IEP Work

Since my students all have special needs, they all have IEP (Individualized Education Plan) documents. Along with the typical classwork, I also have to still work on their IEP goals with them. Since my students are in preschool with mild-moderate disabilities, most of their goals are social and speech goals. To be honest, most of them are impossible for them to work on while at home. But some of my students, especially the older ones, have academic goals. I created an IEP work packet for these students to use with their parents at home so that they can make progress towards their academic goals. An outline of this is also in the google drive folder. Before making the packet for a student I confirmed with the parent that they had a printer at home. If the child did not have a printer at home, I would have created something different. The parents that I emailed did have a printer, so I was able to create these packets for them. The packet touches on every academic goal the child has. After creating the packet and sending it to the parent, I would set up a google meet with the family to go over everything that was in the packet. They had their printout, and I printed one out for myself so that I could walk them through everything in it and answer any questions that they had. The parents are loving these packets because they are able to help their children make progress for their goals. 

Google Meet

I told families that I can google meet with them and their child whenever they want. It can be to ask a question, show me their work, or simply just say “Hi!”. So far I have met with a handful of families to say hi, chat, and do a read aloud. I love being able to connect with my students during this time. Honestly, it’s the only thing getting me through. 

Google Voice

I made a google voice account so that I can easily communicate with families during this time. Google voice provides you with a phone number that allows you to text and call through the google voice app. Parents are able to treat the phone number as if it is a typical phone number and send texts, pictures and make phone calls with it. On my end, I just use the google voice app to respond and make calls. This way, I am never using my real phone number to communicate with families. This app has been helpful because I do not have to be in front of my computer to receive the notifications. They come to my phone and apple watch. 

A few things to note: 

• We were told we will be distance learning from March 16-27 so far.
• We were told to maintain skills for now. We are not required to be teaching new material at this time. If distance learning goes past the two weeks, that might change. 
• IEP meetings are still taking place via google meet. Some have had to be rescheduled because we have not assessed the students enough to write an IEP and meet about the child. Especially students moving to Kindergarten have to be re-evaluated, so we are not able to meet on them at this time.
• Speech, OT and PT are not happening during this time. Our district told us that technically students are NOT allowed to receive services via google meet. The therapists are just required to send each child at least one resource, once a week. 
• A lot of you have been inquiring about students and their access to technology. Students in our school district were given laptops if they did not already have at home. Families were also able to borrow hotspots if they do not have internet in their house. Our district is very fortunate to be able to do this. So far, they have given out over 1,000 laptops to families.

Overall, I am feeling better now than I was at the beginning of the week. A week ago, there were so many unknows and questions that I had. By now, I feel that I am in the swing of things. I do still feel that my whole day is starring at a computer though. Now, I have to start focusing on ME and making a schedule where there is designated time to step away from the computer and do something for ME. I hope that you are all doing the same. We can’t forget about ourselves and OUR needs during this weird time. 

I hope that this was helpful to come of you, and maybe I will be back at the end of next week with some more thoughts and ideas. Until then, happy teaching. 

Welcome back to my blog! In this post I am going to share how I modify the Creative Curriculum to fit the needs of my students. I want to preface this post by saying that my administration is extremely flexible with their expectations of the preschool teachers using the curriculum to its fullest. The curriculum they have provided us with, The Creative Curriculum, is written for a full day general education class. My class is a half day special education class, so the expectations provided by the curriculum do not align with the expectations we have in place for my students . They have full trust in the preschool team that we know what is best for our students and we know what they need. 
I will have another blog post about how I organize all of my Creative Curriculum materials. 

General Info About My Class

I teach a preschool self-contained class in a public school. I have 2 half day classes that can go up to 12 students in each, and two teaching assistants. All of my students have IEPs (Individualized Education Plans). In my school there are also two other preschool classes. One class utilizes ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) where students work in 1:1 and 1:2 ratios with teachers. The other class is an integrated class, where half of the students are typically developing, and the other half of the students have special needs. Having the different classes allows us to move students to the class that best fits their needs at any time during the school year. Also, if we find it appropriate, we have the ability to have a student split their day between two classes.

Creative Curriculum

Our supervisor provided us with 10 Creative Curriculum Studies when the district switched to the Creative Curriculum. We have the following alternative studies; Beginning of the Year, Boxes, Clothes, Buildings, Trees, Bread, Pets, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Roads and Balls (we only use during ESY if needed). For some of the studies we only have the guide and for some we have the books and the other provided materials (you will find out below why this isn’t really a problem in my classroom). The Pre-K team decided a few years ago to make an ‘A’ and ‘B’ year with the studies. We did this because there are too many studies to fit into 1 year and we have so many students that are with us for 2 years, so they are able to get different materials each year. 

A year: Beginning of the Year, Boxes, Clothes, Buildings, Trees
B year: Beginning of the Year, Trees, Bread, Pets, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Roads

Modifying the Curriculum 

Since my classroom is self-contained, all of my students have some type of delay and are not able to learn in a general education setting. This is why I modify the curriculum and expectations for my students. To be honest, I look at the focus questions in each study and plan on my own from there. For the most part, I make each focus question last a whole week. I find that my students need a full week of one topic to fully grasp the material. Below is an example of how I planned the PETS study. When there is a holiday or something special like Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Hanukkah/Christmas, Fire Safety Week, etc. I do try to plan a whole week to talk about it.

I make a plan like this before the school year starts for the Fall and right before winter break for the Spring. This gives me an idea of how long we will spend on each study and when I have to prep certain things. 

Planning

I am going to share with you how I plan for each study and each week. I think this will give you a better understanding of how I use the curriculum in my classroom.
I use this Unit Planning sheet that I made to plan for each study. This gives be a broad outline of how each week will look. At the end of this post there is a download button for you to download my planning freebie. This unit planning sheet is part of the freebie.

Since I have already planned what week I am going to teach each focus question, filling out the first three columns is easy. 

1. First, I start to figure out what lesson materials I will need for each week. When I discovered that @twopeasinaprimarypod made anchor chart materials for the Creative Curriculum my life was made so much easier! I use these anchor charts to teach my students about each focus question. These anchor charts are simplified versions of what needs to be covered from the curriculum, and they are a PERFECT fit for my students! Now that I have them all prepped and ready for each study, I just pull them out when it is time. So, in the ‘lesson materials’ column I write what anchor chart I am going to use and then if there are any other materials that will help teach my students for that focus question I also write them there. 
   I have started to make retention data sheets for each CC study to see if my students are gaining the information from the focus question after a week of talking about it. You can find those in my TPT store.
   
2. Next, I start finding books for the study. Again, I do not have the books for all of the studies, probably just for 6 of the studies. But even the books I do have from the curriculum are too advanced for my students. Most of the time I get books from our school library related to the focus questions, or I find books online. I plan one/two books per week depending on how many I find and depending on the focus question. 
   
3. Then, I plan cooking activities in advance. There are cooking activities in the curriculum, but I do not use those. The PreK ABA teacher and I do cooking together on Fridays. We find cute cooking activities together online or we make them up ourselves. We like to plan this in advance so that, if possible, we can shop for what we need all at once. Parents give us $5 a month for cooking and we “cook” every Friday. Here are some examples of cooking activities we will be doing during the PETS study:

This is an example of what the planning sheet looks like when it is done. I do not give this to admin, this is not part of my lesson plans, this is just to help ME!

The last thing to start thinking about/planning is small and large groups!

We do small group 3 times a week. Small group is when my students work in a group of 3-4 with one teacher for about 8 minutes and then rotate to another teacher. I use these small group rotation boards during this time. I do not use the small group suggestions from the curriculum simply because they are too advanced for my students. Also, I have so many other topics I need to make sure I cover with my students since they all have IEP goals. 
We either focus on a skill related to their IEP goals during small group, or something related to the focus question/study that we are working on that week. This is when we do Made For Me Math work, Especially Education task boxes, seasonal activities or other activities I find on Pinterest or TPT related to our study. If there are any crafts we might do during the study I try to plan them out ahead of time. We don’t do crafts every day, or even every week, but if there are crafts I want to do during the study, I like to print an example of it or pull it from my files and put it aside to make sure we prep it in time.

Large group only occurs in my afternoon class, because my students are older (mostly 4 turning 5). In large group we work as a class to complete an activity. This is mostly Made For Me Math activities/books, butcher paper activities, or other fun stuff I find that is higher level for them! 

Here is an example of my planning sheet for small/large groups.  At the end of this post there is a download button for you to download my planning freebie. This group planning sheet is part of the freebie.

I usually plan large and small groups 2 weeks in advance just for peace of mind. This year I am really trying to pull from what I have since I have so much stuff that I have purchased or made over the past 2 ½ years. 

My lesson plans in the end look like this. Again, very simple and my admin is okay with that! They know that I am focusing on what my children need while also incorporating the general education curriculum. This template is from The Creative Classroom. Having my lessons laid out like this helps ME. I print the ‘groups’ page just like it is here and put it on display for myself and my TA’s. This keeps us organized for the week. 

Questions I have gotten about this topic on Instagram:

Q: How can I modify the CC for a 2 year old level?
A: I would recommend doing something similar to what I do. If they are general education 2 year olds it should work well. TwoPeasInAPrimaryPod has great resources for adapting and modifying the CC.

Q: What areas of the CC do you think are most important?
A: I really think the focus questions are the most important. If you can get your students to have an understanding of each FQ, then you are doing a good job. That will look different for all of our students, but I think that is the most important. I do this by having the anchor charts for each focus question out for a week and going over it every day.

Q: What do I do if I was not given materials for the curriculum, just the framework?
A: Honestly, since I don’t use a lot of the materials that I was given, and I only use the focus questions, I might not be the right person to answer this. I take the focus questions and do my own thing (as you can see above). Hopefully reading this post will help you do the same!

Q: Do you have a planner or a pacing guide?
A: As you can see above, I make my own! I take the focus questions from each study and come up with my own schedule. I also use my own unit planning sheet for each study. This just helps me stay organized.

I hope this was helpful to some of you! I would love to add more to this if anyone is looking for more information. If you have any questions or want to know more you can message me on Instagram or email me at engagingearlylearners@gmail.com