There's a SKUNK!

Hey there! Hope every one's Tuesday went well. My kiddos actually did pretty well today! Surprise, surprise! 

For Teacher Tip Tuesday, I thought I would share how us special ed teacher modify. Now we all know that special ed kiddies are not only in my classroom, but many are in regular old public schools surviving! That would be because they have teachers who know how to modify or accommodate to the learners needs. So, with this comes knowing how to group students and it also depends on what subject. I will get into grouping in a later post, but at this point I am digressing! 

So, here's one of the games that I made for my little ones to practice nouns, verbs, pronouns, and adjectives. It's called SKUNK! It is basically played similarly to HORSE (the basketball game) but instead you are trying to match all the same type of word as students pass one card at a time in a certain direction. The picture below shows the score card and an example of some of the cards. 

So, one way that this is modified is the color coding of all the words. Nouns are in black, verbs are in green (think plants GROW=GREEN), adjectives are orange and I forget what color I made the pronouns. Basically, I use the standard color coding that is used in GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design). If you don't know what Project GLAD is you can find out more about it here. I LOVE teaching with Project GLAD and thank my lucky stars that I got to be *officially* trained in GLAD strategies this last summer! Any who, all that to say that the words were all color coded the same as what is used in Project GLAD! 

With this game I made three groups. The highest group had all words (adjectives, nouns, verbs and pronouns). The middle group that tends to have lower reading skills had the same types of words but the words were a little easier to decode. Then my lower group (these little guys have very limited reading skills) had pictures and words and no pronouns. These cards can be seen below. 

Each group got a set of cards, instructions and a score sheet that i made based on the chart on the directions page. 

Now, I must admit the game was fun for the highest group, the middle group struggled but had fun anyway, and the younger group ended up reviewing what a verb and a noun was. This was a learning experience for their teacher!  Thank goodness for my aides who do a great job at modifying when needed! However this is an example of how a language arts game can be modified to work on the same standard for different leveled students.  It also really showed me where my kids were at with identifying adjectives verbs, nouns and pronouns. So with that, I'm ready to go back to the drawing board and find better leveled games for my younger kiddos! 

Hope your Tuesday finishes off GREAT!