All posts by Dr. Shelley Moore

Emergent, K-12, Reading, Wordwork

SuperHeroes!!

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Explicit Instruction: Literacy

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Peter is in Grade 10 and his team wanted to work on developing his literacy skills. Being a BIG FAN of Superheroes, we made a theme incorporating this interest. We started with a book of his favourite characters and then built on from there. Because peter is an emergent reader, we included super hero toys as a support to help Peter interact with and engage with the pictures and word in the text.

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As an extension word work activity, Peter used letter stamps and match letters to spell out each super hero name. Individual stamping boxes were used to support his reference matching, but we hope that we will eventually not need them. In the template attached, I have included both the letter and the word boxes. We used stamps, but yo could use markers or glue and sparkles!

Goal Area: Literacy- motivation and engagement, joint attention, matching, print referencing

Literacy Level: Emergent

Text: Superheroes book

Extension Activity: SUPERHEROES word work

8-10, Conventional, Social Studies

Canadian Heroes

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Strategic Instruction: Social Studies 9

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In this Social Studies 9 class, the essential question for all the students was, “What is a Hero?” The students worked through multiple examples of people in the world culminating to their summative assessment of determining if Napoleon was a hero. There were 2 students who were modified in this class. Leslie and Jamie were both readers at an early conventional level and so parallel texts to the class were written about the Canadian heroes: David Suzuki, Rick Hansen and Jordin TooToo. Using these texts, an extension activity of character trait sorting helped the students transform and personalize their learning while connecting what they had learned to the real world.

This unit is a beautiful example of how the high school curriculum can be accessible to students with developmental disabilities, but in addition, all the students in this class had access to and benefited from the resources, even though they were specifically developed for Jamie and Leslie.

Goal Area: Literacy-inferences, Strategic- critical thinking, having and supporting opinions

Literacy Level: Early Conventional

Example(s):

David Suzuki

Jorrdin Tootoo

Rick Hansen

Extension Activity: character sort

 

3-5, Emergent, Language Arts, Writing

It’s Okay to be Different

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Strategic Instruction: Language Arts 3

Screen Shot 2014-02-02 at 8.09.44 PMAndy, with his class, worked with a text set focused around the author Todd Parr.  An Adapted text was created to match Andy’s literacy level, and his goal was to match the words to the pictures in the text. Accompanying Board Maker symbols attached with velcro supported Andy’s comprehension and interaction with the text. An augmentative communication device assisted Andy to read the predicted text, “it’s okay” on each page.

Goal Area: Literacy-Sight words, matching picture to word

Literacy Level: Later Emergent

Text:It’s Okay to be different

Visual Supports: It’s Okay to be Different

8-10, English, Social Studies, Transitional

The Martian Chronicles

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Strategic Instruction: English 10

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Amy, in her grade 10 English class, got to read her own version of the Martian Chronicles. Amy’s goal during this unit was to identify settings and characters. A special English Individual Education Plan (IEP) was written to assess her when report card came!

Goals: Literacy and Strategic: setting, characters

Assessment: Individual Education Plan

Literacy Level: Transitional

Example: the martian chronicles

8-10, Social Studies, Transitional

The Book of Ships

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Strategic Instruction: Social Studies 9

The book of shipsIn this Social Studies 9 class, Derek, a student with Down Syndrome, learned all about Ships during the “Early Exploration” unit. With a goal of identifying main idea and details, Derek’s task was to discriminate the details of the different types ships that the vikings and other early explorers used to travel.

Goal Area(s): Literacy: main idea/details, Social studies: early exploration

Literacy Level: Transitional

Example: The Book of Ships