Writing Journals for Special Education!!

Did you grab this growing bundle when it was just $3.50? YES, just $3.50! If not, it's ONLY $7 right now because December was added yesterday. As each set is added, it will increase by $3.50. 

These monthly journal sets include 20 journal pages; one for each day of the month. They provide visual picture support and are perfect for beginning writers in mild to moderate self-contained classrooms and resource rooms. They follow the same predictable writing pattern each day which is perfect for our students. 

Students get practice with:

*Writing

*Writing Conventions

*Spacing

*Ordering Words

*Reading 

Each set is themed for the month. Currently, only November and December are in the bundle. The remaining sets will be added over the next couple of months. Once complete the bundle will be valued at $42, so get it now!! 

Lock in the low bundle price now HERE and have your writing DONE for the year!

January Classroom Goodies & Freebies

Hello January!!!

While teachers are busy away today and tomorrow planning for Monday, I'd thought I'd drop by and share some January themed goodies and freebies with you!

Grab my New Years resolution writing frames in two levels for free! These are from my All-time Best Seller in my store!

If you're working on more/less, place value, skip counting, number order, and counting on, my January Math includes 6 centers and 12 fun worksheet printables. Check out my January Math {here}.

My scrambled sentences are a huge hit with my kiddos and provide practice with 4, 5, and 6 words sentence building for easy differentiation! Color coded also for easy organization! Check out snowy scrambled sentences {here} or see the 9-month bundle {here}. 

I've got your month covered! 

Download my "January in a Click" PDF for clickables links to all of the activities shown.

Happy New Year!

Teaching Writing to Beginning Writers with Intellectual Disabilities!

Writing has always been one of my most favorite subjects to teach! While I loved teaching writing when I worked in Intermediate Resource, writing can be challenging to teach in a self-contained classroom with intellectually challenged students! 

Most of my intellectually challenged students love real life photos and always seemed especially interested in my Webber Photo Story Starter Cards. 

The last couple of years I have used these to teach expressive communication and "WH" questions to my students, but I did not use them for their intended purpose, "Story Starters," well because my students can't write a story! But most of them could tell me words about the picture and answer "what" and "where" questions about the pictures! 

Recently, I felt like a couple of my students were ready to be introduced to basic sentence structure and beginning writing skills. So I began brainstorming ways I could utilize these pictures to get them writing! These are the goals I came up with for a couple of my students. 

Xxxxx will write words related to a picture prompt from a word bank achieving a criteria of 60%.

Xxxxx will write words related to a picture prompt from a word bank achieving a criteria of 70%.

Xxxxx will write words related to a picture prompt from a word bank achieving a criteria of 80%.

Xxxxx will use words about a picture from a word bank to write a sentence about a picture using a sentence starter. 

Over the summer, I made writing sheets using the Webber Photo Cards to meet these goals. 

Each sheet has 7 words related to the picture and 5 words not related to the picture. After or while having the words read to them, my students working on this goal, write the 7 words related to the picture on the lines provided. 

Once my student has reached this goal at the criteria stated, I move them onto Level B....creating a sentence using a sentence starter. 

When they master this goal and can write a second sentence on their own, they can move onto Level 3....writing a sentence with no sentence starter. We haven't made it to this point just yet, but we are getting close! :)

My students love the real life colorful photos and I love that I don't have to spend time or money printing colored photos to go with my writing activities!!! And even more...I LOVE that my students working on this goal are making great progress!!!!! They are writing sentences!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The photo card set comes with a landscape set and a portrait set. If you think these would be good writing goals for one of your students or all of your students, I've created all 3 Levels for all 67 of the landscape photo cards! You can see them {here}.

Here are some other beginning writers resources I also use in my classroom with my beginning writers that I love and have been very successful. 

This is an oldie but goodie that I still use and it is editable so you can create your own 3 and 4 word sentences for your students to cut and paste! Grab it for free {here}.

I hope you have discovered some helpful writing tools and that these resources will guide you in teaching writing to your beginning writers!


As Always, thanks a BUNCH!! 

$1 E-BOOKS & CALCULATOR TASK CARDS

SCHOLASTIC IS HAVING THE BEST SALE EVER!

1,699 ebooks and classroom decor.............all for only $1. And use code "DASTE30" to save 30% more on top of that!!! I just bought 24 e-books for ONLY $16.00!!!! Unbelievable!! 

How cool is that??

Now for "Freebie Friday." Last week was awesome celebrating TBA's birthday! There must have been around 1,500 freebies, if not more! If you missed it, I believe you can still access the party!

Today I'm sharing with you my "Calculator Task Cards."  One of the life skills I have been teaching to my special needs students this week is how to use a calculator and these cards have been great! 

 

Answer key included & bonus labels. If you can use these, you can download them {here}. 

My "Writing Fair Share" Linky Party is also still brewing, so head {here} now & link up your writing post and see what other teachers are doing! 

There's also a couple of FREEbies there, plus every link up will be entered in a drawing to win...............

a $10 TpT gift certificate to spend in any store!!! So get to linking!

WRITING FAIR SHARE LINKY PARTY

I'm hosting a "Writing Fair Share" Linky Party and hope you'll join in and share some of your ideas, resources, or writing materials with us!

Here are a couple of things I can't live without.

Lori Rosenberg's "Topics To Write About."

This is a small preview of only 9 of the 72 topic cards that come with this set. Yes, 72 cards included! Never worry about kids finding a writing topic again!

This is how I display the topic cards, in a pocket chart. I have used this set all year. I love it AND the kids love it! It really gets them excited about writing.
You can get it at Lori's TpT store for only 4 bucks!

Another can't live without...........writing frames!

Here's a sample of one writing frame I use in my class.....

Writing frames are especially great for struggling writers. I use them for narratives, expository, how-to's, persuasive, and compare/contrast writing. These can be used as a rough draft and students can then copy the entire paragraph onto notebook paper for a perfect paragraph! I'm working on putting together my own writing frames set that you'll be able to soon purchase in my stores!

If you're like me....and find that writing can be a difficult activity to grade fairly and accurately, you might find these grading rubrics I made very helpful. 

Get it {here}.

Get it {here}. 

These have eliminated my stress over grading writing & provide a structured method that is fair as well as provides clear & accurate feedback to the student. 

This blog is AWESOME! 

If you haven't visited Karen's blog @ "KB Konnected," you're missing out! 

She has a livebinder with over 100 online writing sites for kids! 

You can access her livebinder {here}. 

And last, here are some other writing resources that I L-O-V-E & recommend! 

You can download this document {here}. 

Hope you found some writing tips & resources you can use in your classrooms! I'd love to see what you do for writing in your rooms. So go and link up your FAIR SHARE below!

FREEBIE FRIDAY WITH THREE

Today has been a very somber day. I arrived at school this morning to hear that one of my teacher colleagues was killed last night in a car accident. His wife is also a teacher at my school and was not in the car with him. It has been a very sad day and will have some difficult times ahead of us in the following weeks.

The computer is always my escape because it always seems to take my mind off of things. I've been excited all week to link up and share 3 freebies with you this week. I tell ya, I'm becoming obsessed with this design stuff!! It's ADDICTING! I can't stop. I just want to keep designing one project after another! Now that I'm finally accumulating some clipart and fonts to work with, I must say that these are my best two creations yet! 

Freebie #1: Click {here}

Freebie #2: Click {here}

Freebie #3: Click {here}
This is a great activity for beginning writers. I have attempted to upload this as an editable version, so that you can type in the words of your choice (e.g. Today is Monday). I hope it opens for you as an editable document, as this is my first time attempting to do this. If not, let me know and I can try again....or you can always white out "type word here" and write your words in. Be sure to scramble the words you put in, so students have to unscramble them to form the sentence at the top. 

I hope you enjoy these freebies and can use at least one if not all three for your classroom! I would love for you to comment with any feedback! It would make my night!! :) 

Now for some fabulous giveaway (((shoutouts)))!!! 
Another fabulous find tonight for more freebies is "the school blog addict." I found this blog tonight through Freebie Friday.....and I love this blog!!!! Plus, she is the creator of Ashley Hughes Clipart, which is lovely by the way! 

She is also giving away this huge alphabet bundle right now!!!!

Another you definitely don't want to miss out on.........
the giveaway from "Learning with Mrs. Leeby." 

Speaking of GIVEAWAY'S........I'm coming up on 100 followers very quickly........and was wondering if any of you out there are interested in supporting me in a giveaway!!! 

Oh, and one more thing........I just started "The Bender Bunch" facebook page lastnight! I'm still working on adding a link to my blog, but would love it if you checked out my page and "liked" it   {here}.