Mrs. Drzayich's Class: Week 25

This week was a big wrap up! Here is what we did:

Expressing wants and needs. In Superhero Social Skills this week we built on our body basics skills and practiced expressing wants and needs. This means that students must first give a signal that they have something to say, i.e. hand raise or tap on the shoulder. Then--and this is the hardest part--they must WAIT until the person responds to them. It is so so tempting to just blurt out as the hand goes up or to say the person's name if he or she doesn't acknowledge you fast enough. We did a lot of practicing with this skill--you may find that it is one you want to practice at home too. Check out two of our role plays:

Fossils and erosion. This week we finished up our unit on rocks by focusing on erosion and fossils. We watched an interesting Bill Nye movie, where we learned that erosion is when wind, water or chemicals wear away at rocks to make them smoother and smaller. On Friday we had the chance to make fossils of our own. Students chose something from our classroom to imprint in to salt dough. Then they had to write about what scientists could learn about us from their fossils, just like scientists learn important information about people and animals of the past from fossils today.

Keep it real. We finished up our fiction unit on realistic fiction versus fantasy. Next month we will focus on other subcategories of fiction, such as science fiction and historical fiction.

Coming up: Next week progress reports will be coming home. If you have met with me for an IEP within the last month, I will not be sending home a new progress report because you received one with the draft IEP just before our meeting.

Just a note: we are still running low on snacks and would love any donations you might send with your child to school to share with the class. Students are allowed to "buy" these snacks with tokens they earn for following the rules throughout the day, so they serve as a great incentive for many students in the class.

Homework Heroes: