What to Teach in November in the Elementary Special Education Classroom

Can you believe it is already November?! What an exciting month to begin diving in to the holiday season in the special education classroom. 

Thanksgiving

At the end of the month, I love to throw a Thanksgiving Feast with my students. We always invite our related service providers and district administrators to join in the festivities. This is one of my favorite hands-on projects we do each year! 

We practice reading skills by following a shopping list...

Grocery Shopping Functional Sight Word File Folder

math skills by following a budget and reading recipes...

Thanksgiving Dinner Shopping Activity from Thanksgiving Unit

Visual Recipes from Thanksgiving Unit

and social skills by practicing our table manners!

Thanksgiving Feast Script from Thanksgiving Unit

Past and Present

Thanksgiving is also a perfect opportunity to introduce the concepts of past and present and to teach a little about American History!

Past and Present Sort from Thanksgiving Unit

My students love listening to stories about the first Thanksgiving and we even created our own pilgrim ink to practice writing using a "quill".

Pilgrim Ink Recipe Found in Thanksgiving Unit

Find these activities and more in my Thanksgiving Thematic Unit on TPT! 

And for a closer look at what my Thanksgiving Unit looks like in action check out my Thanksgiving in the Special Education post! 

Gingerbread

After Thanksgiving is over, we move full steam ahead into the winter holidays! I love starting off with a unit on Gingerbread and the Gingerbread Man. 

Gingerbread Vocabulary from Gingerbread Unit

Positional Word Activity from Gingerbread Unit

Vocabulary from The Gingerbread Man

Cloze Sentences from The Gingerbread Man

For more information on how I incorporate these units in my classroom, check out my Gingerbread Activities in the Special Education Classroom post!

Literacy Instruction

My gingerbread units have some excellent activities for my Shared Reading and Shared Writing instructional times. 

The predictable text of The Gingerbread Man is always so much fun for my students. I love incorporating it into our sentence-building boards or using it as a script on a student's switch. 

Sentence-Building Board from The Gingerbread Man

Class Book from Gingerbread Unit

Now that routines are well established and classroom behavior is well managed, I am able to spend more time daily on literacy instruction so I have also introduced some phonics activities including phonological awareness activities and my letter of the day activities which I created through my research of the Science of Reading and how it applies to my students with the complex learning needs. 

Compound Word Task Cards from Phonological Awareness Visual Supports

Syllable Task Cards from Phonological Awareness Visual Supports

Onset File Folder from Phonological Awareness Visual Supports

Phoneme Task Cards from Phonological Awareness Visual Supports

Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge Worksheet from Letter of the Day Lessons

Differentiated Letter Matching File Folders from Letter of the Day Lessons

Cut and Paste Letter Matching from Letter of the Day Lessons

For a more in-depth look at literacy instruction in my classroom don't miss my The Science of Reading in the Special Education Classroom post!