profile

Hi! I am Allison. I am an Intervention Specialist and Certified Autism Specialist with nearly 20 years of experience working with students with autism and low-incidence disabilities.

Have you read The Snowy Day with your class yet? ☃️

Published 8 months ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader!

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is one of my absolute favorite picture books. I love it so much that when I was pregnant I insisted my husband stop by Kohl's to grab a little stuffed Peter doll for our baby boy. It was his very first doll!

​
I love the pictures, the sequence of the story, the mystery of the missing snowball, and all of the great vocabulary I can teach my students as we read. This was actually the very first Communication and Comprehension set I made for my TPT store! This fabulous resource includes:

  • Communication Supports
    • Vocabulary Cards: to teach and assess targeted vocabulary (can also be used to create interactive games!)
    • Vocabulary Progress Monitoring Sheet: for receptive and expressive identification of story vocabulary and generalization
    • Communication Board: to generate sentences about the story verbally or through velcro manipulatives
    • GoTalk 9+ AAC Board: formatted for use with GoTalk 9+
    • Sentence Building Progress Monitoring Sheet: for assessing sentence generation
    • Communication IEP Goal Ideas: for vocabulary and sentence building goals
  • Comprehension Supports
    • Differentiated Wh-Question Assessments: 3 leveled assessments (multiple choice pictures, multiple choice words/phrases, fill-in) for answering who, what, where, when, and why questions about the story.
    • Fill-in-the-Blank Sentences Worksheet: Cut-and-paste cloze sentences with picture choice options
    • Sequencing Worksheet: Picture-based cut-and-paste sequencing of story events
    • Comprehension Goal Ideas: for wh-questions, writing, sequencing, and higher-order thinking
    • Higher-Order Thinking Progress Monitoring: for recalling story elements (characters, setting, and events) and answering inferential and evaluative questions about the story
    • Unit Report Card: Convenient data collection sheet for all unit activities to be used for grading and sharing with families

​

Looking for creative ways to implement the activities in this resource? Try making a game!

​

Feeling the winter blahs?! This stretch between New Years and Spring Break can be brutal! Especially if you don't get any snow days off. 🤞 Keep plugging along and show up every day for your students. It is ok for you to not be on your A game. And it is also ok if they need things slowed down a bit too. We are all just trying to get by! 😅

​

Until next time!

​

Hi! I am Allison. I am an Intervention Specialist and Certified Autism Specialist with nearly 20 years of experience working with students with autism and low-incidence disabilities.

I taught in an elementary special education classroom where I created countless individualized supports, organizational tools, and differentiated activities for my students before transitioning to my current position on an autism and low-incidence coaching team where I have had the pleasure of meeting and helping teachers in hundreds of classrooms in the Dayton, Ohio area. I am passionate about special education and helping teachers!

Read more from Hi! I am Allison. I am an Intervention Specialist and Certified Autism Specialist with nearly 20 years of experience working with students with autism and low-incidence disabilities.

Hi Reader! Data collection on IEP goals is one of the most important tasks a special education teacher takes on because it helps us plan for interventions and monitor student progress. But it is also one of the most tedious tasks we do! Over the years, I have created a system for organizing my IEP goal progress monitoring that has made it easier to set up, implement, and even delegate! Learn more about how I set up my IEP Progress Monitoring Binders in my blog post by clicking the button...

1 day ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader! I always found it easy to find opportunities for the daily practice of literacy skills in my classroom. Name sequencing, sight words, vocabulary, read-alouds... we regularly did it all! 📚 But math was a different story. I found that I often compartmentalized math instruction to single bands (money, time, numeration, etc.) and it was usually during IEP or intervention time. So students were primarily working on skills at their level or related to their goals and did not get the same...

8 days ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader! For several years, I gathered all of my students on the carpet and had them help dictate while I wrote out our morning message during morning meeting. But, I finally realized that this was a waste of time for my classroom of mostly non-readers. Once I was finished with each daily message none of my kids could re-read what I had written and it really was not meaningful at all! Plus, many of them lost focus because they did not understand what I was writing or even what I was asking....

15 days ago • 1 min read