Last Hurrah!

While last week was a bit hit or miss with groups due to Wolf Ridge, class plays, and field trips, this week groups are a "sure thing" as we will be celebrating our last week of being together.  How fast did that go?!?

To honor the occasion we're doing our third annual "camp-in", complete with tent, campfire stories, and s'mores, all from the comfort of the Learning Center!  The kids get such a kick out of the novelty of "camping" and it's a great way to reflect on what we did and learned throughout the school year while we transition into thinking about summer.  I look forward to this week all year long!

 On a personal note, this has also been a great opportunity for me to put some closure not just to the school year, but also to my time in the Westonka district.  I won't be returning for the 2011-2012 school year as I have decided to pursue other opportunities that combine my love for travel with my passion for working with kids and families.  I'm a firm believer in taking risks and living life without regrets, so fingers crossed I've made the right decision!

I will be teaching Summer Enrichment in Mound through Westonka Community Education until September, as well as helping out with Adventure Club.  Hopefully I have an opportunity to work a little longer with your children, or at least say good-bye, before heading off.  Thank you for all of your support over the last three years! 

Here's to a great summer and a bright future!
Shannon

More Social Communication!

This week we are continuing with our social communication unit.  While last week we focused on what wasn’t spoken, but still communicated, this week we’re working on what is being said, but with words that have multiple meanings: idioms.

For students who are more “literal” it isn’t easy to understand slang expressions or words with multiple meanings.  Younger children especially have a hard time with this concept as they are still building their language skills.  Books like “Amelia Bedelia” do a great job of demonstrating these miscommunications.  When students aren’t able to understand what someone is saying, they miss out on the conversation or direction or might stand out among their peers socially.  By building better understanding of some of these common misunderstandings, we’re preparing students for successful social interactions.

Here’s a list of a few of the words and sayings we’ll be learning about:

Ball, hot, fly, chill, cool, feet, pop….

Pick up your room, get up and go, lose it, through the roof, couch potato….

There are lots of online resources, games, and tools for working on idioms.  We’ll be using a game on the website www.funbrain.com to build these skills.  As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.  Have a great week!

Social Communication

It’s another wild and unpredictable week at Hilltop, so going with the flow most groups this week were able to move on to our social communication unit.  This week we focused on non-verbal communication---eye contact, facial expressions, body language, “looks” we get from other people.  For some students these are really difficult to "get" because it requires paying close attention to other people and being able to accurately guess what other people are thinking or feeling.

Several groups got to do a “No Talking Day” which consisted of using simple sign language to “check in” for the day and share how they were feeling, participating in a team-building tower-building activity, and finally choosing a prize to take home using more sign language (colors, please, thank you).  Not only were students forced to use a different way of communicating instead of speaking, they had to be especially attentive to the group and one another so they didn’t miss what was going on in group, which is also a very difficult task for some students.

Based on group needs there were a couple groups that played the “Understanding Faces” game (imagine Apples to Apples, but with faces instead of words), and yet a couple others finished up some activities that they had started the week before, waiting to start a more formal communication lesson until next week.

Looking forward, the school year is coming to an end in a month and so I’ve been preparing students for our last few meetings.  Next week we’ll do another lesson on social communication (literal and figurative language).  The week after I’ll be at Wolf Ridge with Shirley Hills so there will be no groups.  The last week of May we’ll do a lesson on transitions and the final full week of school we’ll have our end-of-the-year celebrations (yes, this probably means the tent will be back for an in-office camp out!).  Time will fly, that’s for sure.  As always, let me know if you have any questions and I’m more than happy to help!