There are 36 days until the first day of school. This is bittersweet for so many. I know in my house several are ready to go back to school and just as many are ready to stay home!
This is just a quick note to say that now would be a good time to start on school routines. I'm not saying that you need to get up at 5 or 6 in the morning, but you should get up at the same time every morning and go to bed with the same routine every night. Try to eat meals at the same time every day so that students are used to eating on a schedule. It can take several weeks for a new routine to become a habit and if we start now establishing habits and routines for school, the beginning of the school year will be smooth and will result in children who are happier with the beginning of the year.
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We are going into to the summer. I am finishing up IEPs. Tomorrow is the end of the year party! Woohoo. . . maybe. This time of year always gets me to think about what kids can do over the summer to prevent summer slide. You know what summer slide is right? It's the thing that happens to pretty much anyone if they stop doing anything for an extended period of time. You regress a little bit. It's not a problem IF you can get it back fairly quickly and keep it. If you can't that's a problem . . . Many students regress and do not get it back in a reasonable amount of time. The question is what is something we can do about it? Well! Let me tell you. You can let your kids play video games! Not just any video games though. You should look into games that help challenge your children's minds. Look for games that have a clear storyline with a good beginning and end. Look for games where the students have to think about the storyline and plan what they are going to do. Do not look for games where they are just racing around a track or just shooting at people and aliens. Your kids should be playing something that stretches their brain power and forces them to think creatively and quickly. Students with learning disabilities need to learn how they learn best and what they need to do to learn best. Sometimes the best way to do that is to learn through the struggle. If they can enjoy the struggle a little bit then let them. Also, let them tell you about the game. Let them tell you how they are planning and what they are doing to get around in the game. these games will also give them chances to figure out how to do shortcuts. It also doesn't hurt if these games require them to do a little reading to follow a story. It's the beginning of the school year. I am sooo excited. Getting started is always the hardest part. I am always ready to jump in and get going. I think this is the hardest part for my students as well, because we start the school year off with assessments for the first few days. Ah well, we will get to the good stuff fast enough. :)
Assessments are never a lot of fun. The students have plowed through so well! They earned some prizes. We have some more to do and I am proud of them! And after all of the assessments, they still wanted to finish up some of their writing!!! How awesome are they!
This is going to be the last push for the end of the school year. It has been hard for the children to stay focused. We have some fun activities planned for the next couple weeks.
We continue to study fractions. I think we will stay on this for quite a while. It is a big part of what they will learn in future grades, so we have to get it right.
Today we studied verbs and their tenses. It was a difficult lesson for us but we did well in the end.
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