All students have special needs. With mine, each one needs one-on-one support to access lessons and practice skills. They also need time alone to relieve stress and engage in independent practice. We call this "Explore Time." For this time to be productive, we need academic center materials to engage them.
I work with students with diverse needs.
First and foremost they are fun-loving and eager-to-learn kids and then they are students who have learning difficulties or who have developmental delays or who are on the autism spectrum or who have speech issues (any of these students may also need help learning English). My students are smart and creative, so when they are on their own during center time, they need to be engaged with materials that challenge their creativity. Sometimes my students need quiet time to help them manage, as well as explore their thoughts and emotions, and with engaging centers, we can do this without losing academic instruction.
My Project
The materials will help them engage in independent practice in the areas of literacy, writing, and math. They will also encourage my students to explore and apply skills they learned in mini-lessons. The scheduling clocks and stress balls will help them manage their time and stress and curtail melt downs that occur during their school day's various transitions. The tactile writing boards will allow my students to write (and erase!) with ease. This will help them with something that is hard for them: communication. Moreover, the ease with which they can erase and the fun of different colors will encourage them to express their thoughts that otherwise would remain inside of them. The sequence tiles will also help them with commmunication by teaching them that we order our thoughts when we communicate. Magna-tiles will allow my students to explore during math time, intuiting how shapes go together, making it easier later on when I teach them about angles, points, corners, and lines.
"Explore Time" center materials will help my students keep academically engaged while they cool down and manage their emotions.
This will also allow me, the instructor, to have productive one-on-one conferences with my students in reading, math, and writing, knowing full well, that the other students will be continuing their learning as they work independently in centers.
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