Wall Work Series 7 =The End for Now

Don't be too sad as the Wall Work Series comes to a close because I am going to throw in a new series!  Woo Woo!  You will see what it is soon enough.  In the meantime here is the last poster from my original wall work series.  Another one of my favorites if I do say so myself. 

 I just love categorizing!  I think its so fun and such a great yet difficult skill for some students to learn.  Making it that much more important.  And lets be honest- whats better than categorizing food and drinks!

Oh I love all these little boardmaker icons.  This was just a very fun and fabulous wall work poster! 

What do your children/students need help categorizing?

Wall Work Series 6

 Here is another friend of mine in the Wall Work Series.  This is a very fun shape sorting poster.  I put four basic shapes on the paper and found pictures of random objects of those four shapes.  

 This of course is another poster that helps with generalization.  Its important for a student to be able to identify shapes when they are very basic, all one color and clearly defined.  It is even more important for them to be able to recognize them in the environment.  What shape is a kite?  What shape is a ball? etc. 

On your own: This poster could be easily recreated with photographs or magazine pictures.  It could also be done just by walking around with pictures of the shapes in hand and identifying objects in the environment that are the same shape. 

My students enjoyed the colorful pictures attached to this poster and also enjoyed making the connection between easily identified shapes and things in their environment that have the same attribute. 

Enjoy....The Wall Work Series is quickly coming to a close....but maybe it will only be temporary.  I love them so much I just might have to create some more!!

Wall Work Series 5

 Another poster in the wall work series.  This is pretty much the same one that is found here except I used the first four letters of the alphabet. 

 The students sorted the pictures by beginning sound.  Some would match by looking at the word, others would work with an adult who would cover the word and they would have to figure it out on their own and then check it with the word on the picture.

Oh I love boardmaker pictures.  They are so cute!  I can wait until the next time I can pull out these wall work posters and put them to good use! 

Wall Work Series 4

 Here is another poster in the Wall Work Series.  This one helped students develop and practice pre-reading skills.  Once students can match objects that they are familiar with or are larger images, they should practice matching items that require a little more discrimination-Such as letters or lines that are similar.  My students had fun with this one!  It was very easily created using a basic word processing program.

 This poster uses velcro as well. (gotta love that stuff)  At first it was difficult for some of my students and they would need to be guided to look at specific parts of each picture.  Then they were able to identify the similarities and differences on their own. 

I got this idea while using a reading program called Edmark. This program was appropriate for some of my students at the time and the pre-test included similar matching items.  Some of my students did not pass the pre-test and so I set this up in this large format to help them learn the expectation.  Another in between step that is sometimes easily forgotten.  Gotta have some stepping stone between matching pictures and reading words and this is one of them! 
Other Ways and Simpler Formats:  This could also be eaily done on a piece of paper or white board.  You could have lines or words on one side and their matches scrambled on the other and you could have the child draw a line between the two matches.  (Best accomplished for children who have some fine motor skills.)  But never allow a lack of fine motor or verbal communication skills to come inbetween a child and reading if they are cognitively ready.  Edmark was a nice program for students who were non-verbal to learn to read and have it documented without them even needing to utter a sound.  I am glad there is stuff like that!!  People are so on the ball.

Wall Work Series 3

 Another part of my wall work collection is this Alphabet Generalization Poster. No I didn't tell my students thats what it was called but thats exactly what it is.

 By the time I implemented these posters my students knew and could recognize the letters of the alphabet but some seemed to have trouble generalizing their knowledge to other fonts and sizes.  I created this poster to help them with this skill.  They enjoyed sorting through all the letters and finding the ones that matched even though they looked a little different.

It has a lot of pieces but it proved very helpful when it came to the difficulties they could face when reading different books or having to identify the letters of the alphabet on different puzzles, toys, posters etc. 

For Moms and Teachers:  Sometimes when we teach our children something we forget that there is more to just being able to do it with Mom or Dad and more to it than just being able to do something with one medium.  Just like we all want our kids to be well rounded, it kindof correlates to the things we teach as well.  Its  is important to look at the whole picture.  So when teaching your children something make sure to throw in a bunch of different places where they are required to show those skills.  This poster was also a fun game for a student and I to play together, since there were so many peices we had plenty of turns for each of us!  In fact sometimes it was a 2 or 3 day project, they enjoyed carrying it over to other days and were very proud with their finished product.

This poster could be created with numbers, upper and lowercase letters, shapes, words, pictures of the same item but in different colors or animated vs photo.  It could be used to generalize anything.  As a teacher, especially a special education teacher who encounters a lot of students with difficulty generalizing I have come to realize and appreciate the importance of this step.

Wall Work Series 2

This is one of my favorite wall work posters.  I had so much fun making it and my students (and staff) had so much fun using it.  I love all the different shaped people and animals.

My husband always teases me about having a picture of a robber under people.  I always tell him, "Hey thieves are people to ya know!"

This is a hard concept for some students to grasp.  Generalizing is very difficult for individuals with Autism especially.  Sometimes they don't see how a giraffe and a caterpillar could ever be in the same category.  Sorting and Categorizing are great skills for any individual to master.

 

What does your child or student need help categorizing?

Just seeing this again makes me think I might want to create one for myself called Healthy and Un-healthy foods...maybe I'm not the only one? 

The Wall Work Series

Before you all think I am one of these:

I just thought I would add a general blog disclaimer.  There is a rule (don't worry I checked) that you can bring items you create for your classroom with you wherever you go.  They do this because they know that every teacher has their own style and will most likely want to do his or her own thing.  So they figure since you will use it you should bring it.  And so I did.  The only exception is if you create something for a specific child.  In this case you have to leave it or create a second one to bring with you.  I did that as well, as you saw in the last post.  Good, Glad we cleared that up!

So I thought I would post a little series spotlighting something I created during my first year of teaching.  I had a lot of fun making these items and my students loved using them.  They also were able to work on some great skills and learn some independence and generalization. It was called wall work.  I had 6-7 posters hanging on the walls, each one had a different activity to complete.  Every week (for a couple months) we would have  an official wall work time.  During this time the students would be able to choose 1 poster from the wall and work on it.  My staff and I would help, occasionally I would use this time to pull the students 1:1 to work on assessments or lessons,  but I really enjoyed watching my students enjoy them and become more independent over time. Boardmaker was again used to create these projects.

For Teachers: Heres how I displayed and worked the whole system.  I made sure to create items that were goals for my students but that they could eventually learned to complete with minimal assistance, maybe 2/3 students per adult. 

So I had these poster hanging with velcro on the walls.  Underneath each one was a little tab of laminated squares with colors that corresponded to the color of the poster.

Each student had one of these little strips and as soon as they finished a poster they would grab the corresponding sqaure and put it on their strip as they put the poster back on the wall.

I will post all of my individual posters on subsequent posts, starting today but feel free to use what works best for you and your children or students.

This is a beginning sounds poster.  I have a bunch of pictures that start with E-H and have the corresponding words on the pictures.  The students start with all the pictures at the bottom and then sort them by beginning sound/letter.

The nice thing about having both the picture and the word was that if a student wasn't quite ready to figure out on their own what the sound was they could match the letter itself which took some detective skills and problem solving.  If the student did know how to do it without looking at the word they would usually work with an adult who would cover up the word and then they would check them all after they were placed where they went! 

We had tons of fun!

For Moms:  I plan on creating smaller versions of these to put in an activity book for my little guy when he gets older.  They would be fun for car trips or quiet books-although velcro isn't always so quiet.  These and more to follow are great skills that all little ones need eventually!

I consider most of these skills Level 2 skills meaning there is information that has to be mastered before these can be completed independently but you can create these for anything, simple color sorting, shapes, letters etc.!!

There are 6 more parts of my wall work series to come!

So stick around!

Enjoy!

As always I love to hear if you have done something similar or made this after seeing this post!