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! 

What to Teach in October in the Elementary Special Education Classroom

I love October!! It is my favorite month. Fall is here 🍂, decorations are up🎃, and it's my birthday month 🎂! 

Halloween Theme

October is also a fun time in the classroom. We focus on lots of fun Halloween activities each year including learning new vocabulary, playing Halloween games, and sorting and graphing Halloween candy. 

These along with 9 additional Halloween-themed activities are included in my Halloween Thematic Unit in my TPT store! 

Trick or Treat Practice

Throughout the month of October, my class practices trick or treating in our weekly social skills group:

• Week 1: We start with introducing AAC for saying "trick or treat" and "thank you" within the classroom
• Week 2: Then, each staff member (myself, my paras, and our SLP) each set up a station for students to rotate through and practice while we pass out candy.
• Week 3: Next, we practice trick or treating within the office with all the office staff
• Week 4: We are ready to trick or treat with our families! 

And we connect it to this fill-in the blank writing activity.

Pumpkin Carving

One of my favorite annual traditions is hands down carving pumpkins with my class! We have made some super cute jack-o-lanterns over the years!

We also use pumpkin carving as a great opportunity to do some sensory exploration and discuss the texture and feel of the insides (affectionately referred to as the "pumpkin guts"!).

And it is also a great opportunity to work on sequencing!

Check out my previous post for my Top 5 Tips for Carving a Pumpkin in the Special Education Classroom for more details on what this looks like in my classroom. 

Halloween Picture Books

My favorite books for Halloween are Big Pumpkin and The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. 

One year on our hayride at the farm they did a "spooky storytime" and did the Little Old Lady with props. It was SO MUCH FUN! And was a great way to get the kids engaged. After that year, we always acted out the story with spare clothes in the classroom. It was so fun!

Find the activities above in my Picture Book Communication and Comprehension Supports in my TPT store. Click the images below to get them! 

Halloween Crafts

Some fun Halloween crafts we have done was a group pumpkin pinata project for our Halloween Party and some footprint ghosts! Having classmates paint each others feet led to LOTS of giggles!

What a busy month! I love how my little class can mix in so much fun with our learning. 

Halloween Bundles in my TPT store 

The units above are available individually or in a variety of bundles! Click the images to find them in my TPT store!