As I mentioned in my week 3 blog post, I had spring break last week. I was happy to be able to breathe for a second and catch up on some IEPs and grad school work. Luckily, I was very productive and by the time break was over I was ready to get back to seeing my students every day (virtually). 

Like I have say in every blog post about distance learning, I am NO expert at this. Everything I am doing is trial and error. The technology tricks I have figured out, I found on google or YouTube. I encourage you to do this as well. If you aren’t sure if it’s possible with what you have, just ask the internet. Also, don’t think that you need all of the technology or resources in the world in order to effectively teach your students. Our students need US first and foremost. 

Our Weekly Schedule

This week, although I think I say this in every post, I found a routine with my students that I think will work long term. Now that we know what the expectations from our district are moving forward, I really wanted to come up with a schedule that we would be able to use week after week. It would be too overwhelming for myself, my students and especially their parents to change the schedule every week. Below is a screenshot of our weekly schedule. The only thing on the schedule that will change week to week is the special activity on Wednesdays (this week was a directed drawing). 

When I send the invites out for all of the events listed on that schedule, I always invite my principal, supervisor, speech therapists, OTs and our teaching assistants. Everyone loves to stay involved with our students, and joining in on the google meets, even just to watch, is a great way to do so. 

Teletherapy

Speaking of speech therapists and OTs, our district is starting teletherapy on Monday. Since my students are 3-5 years old, I have NO idea how this is going to go. My speech therapist and OT have also expressed their concerns, although they are very excited to see the students one on one again. I will keep you all updated on how that goes for them!

Large Groups

In my week 3 blog post I go into a lot of detail about our large group sessions (read aloud on Tuesdays, Wednesday special activity and yoga on Thursdays).  The only thing that was different this week is that we decided to try a directed drawing. I figured out, thanks to YouTube, how to screenshare what I am doing on my iPad to my students on google meet. (that information is in my ‘Distance Learning Week 4’ story highlight on Instagram). I used the app logic pro for Windows to draw on my iPad. My students were told to come to the google meet with a paper and a writing utensil. The large group was very successful, and our students made adorable bunnies. 

Small Groups

In my week 3 blog post I explained that my first week of small groups was just an introduction to being in a google meet and having to participate. This week, we started doing activities in small group where my students were expected to sit nicely, listen and participate. To my surprise, the small groups went VERY well. I actually shouldn’t be surprised because my students always impress me, even when I think something is going to be a complete FLOP. 

This week in groups I started by going through google slides on my iPad, while screen sharing. The slides had our 3 rules, greetings, weather, spring break weekend news and a question of the day. These things are similar to what we do at school, so my students had no problem following along. 

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I shared these slides in my free google drive folder of distance learning resources. TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE FOLDER, SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN ON THIS PAGE!

After the google slides we did Made for Me Literacy digital activities. I am SO happy I purchased the large bundle of these because they are PERFECT for my littles. 

Watch this video I posted, a clip from small group this week, if you need some cuteness in your life… https://www.instagram.com/p/B_D6gMhBa2Y/

As you can see in the picture below, I am using my iPad to complete the activities, while screen-sharing with my students. I was able to use the accessibility tool as a mouse so that my students could see what I am pointing to. Without that tool, my iPad screensharing idea really would not have worked.

I like the idea of sharing with my iPad, so that I can use my entire computer screen to see my student’s faces. I had my students take turns, each doing one slide of the activity. While it was their turn, they were able to unmute themselves and talk. If it was not their turn, I asked that parents pressed mute so that the one student who’s turn it was could participate. I wish I didn’t have to do this, but with all of the background noise at my student’s houses, it was necessary. At the end of groups, I do allow all of my students to come off of mute and chat with each other if they want.

**Update**

During week 5 I recorded my iPad during small groups to give you guys a look into how my groups run! That video is below:

View this post on Instagram

I have been receiving a lot of questions about how I have been running small groups, how I use my iPad and how I use the accessibility tool as a mouse! I filmed my group today, cut out my students’ names and a few extra things, so it’s a bit choppy..and bad quality! In this video you will see me using google slides and then moving into the boom card activities from @madeformeliteracy ! You even get to see one of my students stealing the show and taking over the group for me🤣😂 • I can see my students on my computer screen. Because I am screen sharing with the iPad and doing the activities from the iPad, my students take up my whole computer screen 🥰 Keep in mind my group was about 20 minutes in real time, I teach preschool special education students, I had 3 students and 2 TAs in the group, I am not required to do small groups, and I plan on using this format for the duration of distance learning!! • Please ask me any questions you have below, so that everyone can see the Qs and As. **For a step by step video for using your iPad to screen share or how to use the accessibility tool as a mouse check out my stories!! • #prek #distancelearning #teaching #smallgroups #specialeducation #preschool #madeformeliteracy #boomcards

A post shared by Rachel Glassman (@engagingearlylearners) on Apr 22, 2020 at 5:08pm PDT

Class Lesson

Something new I started this week, and will be continuing moving forward, is having a large group class lesson. Our district decided that we have to start teaching new material this week and that we have to have at least one live lesson. Every Wednesday I will invite all of my students to listen in, and participate in, our class lesson. We started the Insects Study from the Creative Curriculum this week. Basically, I took all of my Insects Study Focus 1 materials (that are posted in my TPT store) and made them into a google slides presentation.

During the lesson I went through the slides and had my students do, or say, things to the adult present in order to participate. I would not have been able to have all of my students off of mute, it was too loud. All of my students stayed on mute and would answer my questions to the adult they were with. Our district decided that we should spend double the amount of time we typically would on each topic because we are using this digital format. Typically, in school we would spend 1 week on each focus question from our unit of study from the Creative Curriculum. Now, we will spend 2 weeks on each focus question. 

I am a very structured and routine person, and that is how I typically run my classroom. Since starting distance learning I have missed that, and I think my students and their families have as well. Moving into next week, I am excited to have a set schedule for myself and my student’s families. This way, I know what is coming each day/week, and they know what to expect each day/week.

Hi everyone! Welcome back to my blog!! I just completed week 3 of distance learning. It was another packed week full of google meets and scrambling to figure out this whole thing…STILL! In this blog I am going to share what I have been doing for large and small groups via google meet. I hope to give some of you ideas or inspiration as you move forward in this adventure. 

Just like the past 2 weeks, I want to preface this post by saying I am not an expert. Not even close. Every class, teacher, and group of students in different, so everyone has to find what fits for them. 

My Students

I should probably start by explaining the group of students I have… I teach a preschool self-contained class in a public school. All of my students have IEPs (Individualized Education Plans). My students range from ages 3-5 and they all have different ability levels. Typically, in school I teach them in small groups. This is how they learn best. 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. 

I wanted to explain the other classes because I do all of the large group google meets during distance learning with Jessie, from Special Resources by Jessie. She is the teacher of the preschool self-contained classroom that utilizes ABA. 

**As of now, we are not required to google meet with our students at all. Jessie and I are choosing to do so in order to stay connected with our students and their families**

Large Groups

For large groups Jessie and I invite all of our students, our teaching assistants, the speech therapists, the occupational therapist, our principal and our supervisor into one large google meet. We gave everyone directions for how to download the google meet grid view extension so that they can see everyone at one time. This way, it feels like they are at school with their friends. We also asked that everyone enters the google meet, says ‘Hello” and then mutes themselves. We found that giving these directions beforehand were key, or else we would have to manually mute everyone, and we didn’t want to have to do that. 

Jessie and I started the large groups pretty early on. There was not much planning that had to be done for these. We are in a pretty solid routine now, that we are going to continue moving forward, of read alouds on Tuesdays, something special on Wednesdays and yoga on Thursdays. Yoga was something we always did on Thursdays at school.

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(We sent these images to parents, our teaching assistants, speech therapists, the OT, our principal and our supervisor ahead of time to give them the info for the google meet sessions)

Tuesdays

For the read alouds on Tuesdays, Jessie and I each choose a book that we brought home from school and simply read it aloud to our students. Last week we actually planned ahead, and each read a counting/numbers book! We do not let the students talk to the group while we read. They stay muted. Sometimes though we stop as we are reading and ask them to turn to their family member and answer a question or tell them something related to the book (Ex: “Tell an adult how many monkeys are on this page.”) We have gotten great feedback from parents about our read alouds, and we look forward to doing more. 

Wednesdays

On Wednesdays, our plan moving forward is to do something special and different each week. We started this tradition last week when we did “Share Your Pet”. This was SO cute, and I highly recommend you all do it with your students, no matter what age they are. Students brought their pet OR a stuffed animal to the google meet.

Like always, they said hello and then muted themselves. Jessie and I had prepared a list of 5 questions that we were going to ask each child. We sent the list to parents beforehand so that they can prepare (Ex: what does your pet eat?, what do you like to do with your pet?). Jessie and I went first and introduced our pets and answered all of the questions. Then, our students went one by one. They pretty much all needed help from a family member, but it was SO cute. The parents had great feedback afterwards as well. After spring break we plan on doing a directed drawing and/or some sort of show and tell. 

Thursdays

On Thursdays we do yoga. When school is in session, we typically do yoga every Thursday, so we were not going to let distance learning stop us from that. Jessie is a certified yoga instructor, so she leads our large group in a 15-20 minute yoga session. Again, all students are muted and listening to Miss Jessie. We have even gotten our teaching assistants, principal and supervisor to participate! The parents say that they are very thankful that we are continuing our yoga routine, even from home. 

Small Groups

This week I attempted small groups. This was not mandatory for me to do, I just felt that I should get my students familiar with this format, in case I have to teach them this way moving forward. I was also excited to see them back in small groups, because I am so familiar with this format from being at school. 

I planned the groups based on student’s availability. As I shared in last week’s blog post, I had parents fill out a google form stating their availability, and a bunch of other information. I used that information to group students. Typically, in school, I group them based on skill ability, but this format does not allow for that right now. 

I had no expectations for these groups this week. My plan going in was just to get them to say hi to each other and to allow them to get familiar with having to talk through the computer to me, and each other. If time allowed, I planned on reading a short book. 

10 minutes before my first small group on Tuesday I quickly printed my circle time from home FREEBIE. I got nervous that I was going to need something to do with them, since my students are not yet able to hold conversations with each other yet. I am SO happy I printed it. We actually went through circle time with my students over the google meet. The parents, and my students, loved it. After circle time I had them answer our question of the day and then I read a little bit of the story I had. I was so happy I had circle time printed out and a book on hand. I now know moving forward that I need to have a few options prepared because it turned out that every group was so different. 

In one group I ended up using a whiteboard to draw shapes and write letters. The students told me what shape or letter was on the board. They loved this. 
In some groups we did a color scavenger hunt in their house. I would tell them to “go find something that is red”. They would walk away, go find something that is red, and then come back and share it with the group. This is how my Find Something That… Scavenger Hunt product was born. 

In one of the groups I used my iPad to search pictures of objects. I would hold the iPad up and the students would label the object. Like I said before, my students are all of different levels, so I had to think of something different for each group.  

Moving forward after spring break, I plan on having a more solid plan going into small groups. This week I felt like I was coming up with stuff in the moment, because I truly didn’t know how small groups were going to work out. I will probably use a mix of the circle time from home, insects questions of the day, find something that… scavenger hunts, label and ID basics, directed drawings and read alouds. 

Desk Area

For the third week in a row I have revamped my work area!! I realized that I will need some space for a whiteboard moving forward. I wanted a place to display our learning target and to be able to write or draw stuff on. My mom gave me this whiteboard to use so I had to reorganize a bit. Now I am excited to start teaching again after spring break!

Spring Break

Next week we have spring break. We do not teach again until April 14. During break I will be planning for when we get back and completing a lot of grad schoolwork (I graduate in a month WOOHOO). I encouraged parents to take a bit of a break this upcoming week, but to still keep somewhat of a routine.

I’ve been telling parents through this whole process how important routines are in general, but especially during this time. I told them that I would not be putting new material in google classroom, but they are more than welcome to continue using what is in there during break. I explained that I will not be available for google meets over break, but I encouraged them to reach out to other families and maybe have FaceTime playdates. My students’ email accounts are not able to start google meet sessions, but I still gave the parents a list of all of the student’s emails. I figured they can email via their children’s email and figure out a way to stay connected. 

After spring break, we are finding out from our supervisor what is expected of us moving forward. Our district is moving from maintaining skills to now teaching new skills. I’m interested to see what is expected from the preschool team. I will keep you all updated as I find out. 

I hope that some of you found this helpful! Feel free to comment below with any large and/or small group ideas you have for preschoolers during distance learning. We can all learn from each other! 

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