Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Wizard of Oz Theme Unit

As detailed below we are working on a six week long Wizard of Oz Unit during ESY this summer.  the first thrid of the unit included a week of introduction and then a week focusing on the first part of the story from the beginning until Dorothy's house lands.

Here are some photos of the activities we have been during during the first 1/3 of the unit:



About the circle stamp:  Circle Stamps, Checkmark Stamps, Yes and No Stamps are available at Giving Greetings/Say-it-with-Symbols.  We have all of them, plus Personalized Name Stamps for most of our class and we LOVE them!  We use them everyday!

Circle StampCircle Stamp








Monday, July 4, 2011

ESY and the Wizard of Oz


Tomorrow we are back to school for six weeks of extended school year.  (I know how blessed I am to live and work in a part of the country that typically does six weeks x 25 hours per week of Extended School Year or ESY.)  I am super excited!

After our success last year with the Princess Bride, we will be doing an integrated thematic unit on the Wizard of Oz! (The movie Wizard of Oz, not the book which has a more complex plot.)  Alicia Odom of SMD Teacher will kind enough to share with me her resources from when she did a Wizard of Oz Unit.  Here is a week-by-week outline of what we will be doing.  Monica from Eliminating the Box did a similar unit and shared resources as well.  Some of the resources we will be using are the Wizard of Oz Free Printable Pack, an old issue of News-2-You and Pete Well's Sensory Story.*

*As you can see below we will be basing much of the unit on Pete Well's Wizard of Oz Sensory Story, which sadly is no longer online; so I will link to a copy of each section in my Google Cloud for reference.  Unfortunately it is just for reference because the Power Points loose something in their move to the cloud.  

Week One
(This is a short week due to the 4th of July Holiday)

Week Two

Week Three


Week Four

Week Five
Week Six
    Paper House Cardstock Stickers - The Wizard of Oz
  • Sensory Story Part Five: Melting Witch through The End Power Point and Script
  • Art: Scrapbooks (of what we have done this summer)
  • Science: Will It Melt? Experiment
  • English/Language Arts:  Choosing quotes from the movie for our scrapbooks and "There's No Place Like Home" Adapted Writing (students complete sentences describing their home using symbols)
  • Math: Survey and graph of favorite characters
  • Cooking: Flying Monkey Ice Cream
  • Life Skills:  Planning a Party
  • Leisure: Wizard of Oz Party

Through out the entire unit we will have the Power Point and related activities on the computer for use with switches and the following apps on the iTouch and/or iPad:

Friday, July 1, 2011

Free Switch Activities for Learners with Severe or Profound Special Needs

For most current list please click here.

Special Bites, activities from NGFL and Pete Well's Sensory Stories and Applications are being added to the permanent list of free switch activities.

Cause and Effect (and Press to Play):

Single Switch Scanning (sites may include some cause and effect games as well):
Two Switches (unless otherwise noted you music click in the area of the game and then use tab and enter to play):
Subscription Sites with Free Trials
Also be sure to check out Game Base and One Switch for other (usually more advanced) switch games.

*Those sites with a star have multiple activities to try out!  Wednesday's With Sam lists these by activity instead of website if that is useful for you.

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