Wordle and REM

The holidays are truly over . I've had 4 weeks off this summer . In my college we have to book our holiday and spread the 37 days wisely through the year...So now its back to work on Tuesday and time to get on with some serious preparation for the start of the new academic year. I'll start with a resolution that I will have a life outside college and to show I mean business the whole family are off to see REM on Wednesday. I have the possible set list with orders from the children to have a good listen first! In preparation for this I've created a Wordle video using Movie maker. Have a watch !

I shall be using Wordle as one of my induction activities - everyone will add their name and we will display it on the whiteboard see an example below:

Have a good year, pace yourself, enjoy the company of your colleagues and most of all have fun with the students.

More from the makers of Shape up

If you liked Shape Up (mentioned in my blog on healthy eating) you might like to look at some other DVDs that Somerset Work Preparation Services has on offer:
Germ Academy,a film about Food Safety is 23 minutes long and can be previewed on
You Tube (not the full version ).


They also have a DVD called Listen to Us which consists of 4 short films
We all need friends
We all need a break
Listen to us
I want to complain .
The ones with a live link can be viewed on You Tube .
All the DVDs are £10.00 plus vat and p&p from Debbie Lee .Email: DXLee@somerset.gov.uk

Practical ways to develop money skills

The most effective way to develop money skills when working with students with learning difficulties is to make it practical.

Try to create as many opportunities as possible for handling money:
Collecting money from students
When you collect money in from students don't accept it in an envelope.Get them to open it up and give it to you.
Make one of the students responsible for collecting in the money. They can use a photo or symbol names list to help them.
Going for a drink
When you go for a drink in the college restaurant or in to town ensure everyone buys their drink themselves.
If you make a drink in the classroom start a coffee fund.Everyone can be involved in collecting and counting the fund.
Shopping
Go shopping for others. Use money bags and symbol/picture shopping lists. Limit the list to 1/2 items.Some students benefit from buying the same thing each week.After a few weeks the students can find and pay for their items independently with the staff watching from a safe distance.Estimate before you go shopping . Look at receipts .When you get back count the change.
Charity Events
Not only does it fit in with Every Student Matters but its a great opportunity for more money handling. Raise money for :
Children in Need (see a good example here )

BBC Children in Need The 2008 BBC Children in Need Appeal will take place on Friday 14 November 2008.

Shelterbox

Shelterbox click here for an example

of students raising money for this project.

Hearing Dogs for the Deaf click here for an example of students raising money for this project.

Comic Relief (Red Nose Day will be Friday 13 March 2009) click here to visit the site

Sports Relief(view the website) usually takes place in March.

Stop for Tea Have afternoon tea for the NSPCC.

Run regular Fayres:
Autumn, Christmas, Valentine,Easter,Spring and finally through to summer. They encourage inclusivity and help raise the profile of the department.

Enterprise projects

Shoe cleaning, bookstall,Christmas cards, sandwich making,run a cafe, organise a lending library (charge for the loan of DVDs )

Managing Money

For many students learning to find and use a £1.00 coin is the most important step to handling money independently .This does not require knowledge about all the other coins and their value but once students have this skill here are some ideas for developing money handling skills further:
Money skills at Milestone 7 and Milestone 8 are about recognising coins and notes. At Entry 1 students are asked to know the value of coins and notes.
Developing coin recognition is best done through lots of handling money but here are a few other things to help vary learning styles

Naming coins and recognition by the shape using the theme of a Vending machine from the Learning Portal.
Interactive Computer Activity needs sound .Student should be able to use a mouse. Self Checking .

Recognition of coins up to 50p using a fruit machine from Crickweb

Recognition of coins up to 2.00 using a fruit machine from Crickweb

Make Bingo cards using the small coins from the printable sheets at Senteacher.org
They also have large coins which can be printed in colour and laminated .Use these to help the Bingo game or use them in a Target Game where you have to throw a bean bag on to coins.This can be used to develop understanding of the value of coins as well as coin recognition.

In the Milestone 8 number

resource section at Skills workshop.

use the set of resources adapted from Entry 1 Skills for Life materials .It uses money to teach number skills such as more /less/the same. There is also a number recognition page based around vending machines which would tie in with the learning portal game mentioned above.

At Entry 1 you can use the Skills for Life materials

Entry 1 unit 2 .An excellent resource. Lots of colour pictures .

Keeping money safe and looking after your own money is another important area to explore with students with a learning disability.If you are following Edexcel Managing Money at Entry 1 and 2 these will be useful

Ben visiting a cafe and spending his

own money . View this on the excellent

MENCAP website

It also has links to Being in Control a booklet

from Enable which may be too advanced for

some (entry 2) to use as a whole but has great

illustrations and information on banks and budgeting.




When you are exploring banks
you could use the Interactive ATM











or order a DVD from Speak up on Opening a Bank account .

You can view a sample on the website before you buy.

Telling the Time

I have a project I like to do on time called The Human Clock.
I have been able to use this with mixed ability groups ( basic skills ranging from Milestone 8 - Entry 3 ). The website shows a photograph depicting the current time every minute of the day. Each minute there is a different picture, many sent in by the web site viewers.The pictures are taken all around the world, some are clear like the bike shop photo others more obscure, for example the beach scene at Rimini.

The students have fun spotting the time in the pictures.

The next step is to use the digital camera to create your own photos using the college environment.These can then be made into a PowerPoint presentation and viewed as a resource for teaching the time. Still photos make a good wall display either arranged in a time line or to look like a clock. Clock faces can be put along side the photos to further reinforce skills.
Some of the resources I use are :

Real clocks.

Clock faces to print out from Northern grid for Learning.

Print outs of clocks covering hours,half past ,quarter to and quarter past .Available from Senteacher printables section.

Interactive games
Stop the Clock 1 O'clock and half past matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 2 15 minute interval matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 3 5 minute interval matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 4 1 minute interval matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 5 1 minute interval matching digital and analogue 24 hour clock.
Only Fools and Horses BBC Skillswise interactive game teaching the 24 hour clock.
Interactive Whiteboard
Interactive clock on Oswego.org . Gives a clock to put on the whiteboard -allows you to demonstrate times showing the correct movement of the hands.
Digital timer. helps teach awareness of time. Click on the help section if you are not sure how it works.
Class Timer helps teach awareness of time.
Virtual stop watch helps teach awareness of time.

Teaching time starts with an awareness of key events and an understanding of morning afternoon and evening. ( Entry 1 skill ). To begin to tell the time the student must be able to read, recognise order and understand the value of numbers. They must also be able to tell the difference between the length of the two hands of the clock. With these skills they can begin to learn o'clock . The Core Curriculum puts this as an Entry 2 Skill. After that comes a whole load of higher level skills including:
Counting and ordering numbers to 60
counting in 5's and 10's
Counting on .
Matching the level of number skill to the appropriate level time skill helped me set realistic targets for the students.

A tip for using Animoto

In my blog Using your photos I mentioned that resizing photos for Animoto was time consuming. I have tried out the image resizing software recommended by Animoto. It takes about a minute to download and about 10 seconds to re size 20 photos,so well worth downloading and its free!

Are you going to wear your glasses?

At a review meeting I mentioned that the student wasn't wearing his glasses . His key worker wasn't sure how much difference they made,and so we left it... I have now found some really useful information about eye care which I can take to the next meeting.
The site is called Look Up and gives advice about eye care for adults with learning difficulties.
It has some good common sense advice and very useful information about working with students with visual impairments in the classroom The page on adapting environments to help adults with visual impairment is also useful.
There is also information on the different eye conditions and a section called Talking About Me with pictures and sound aimed at adults with learning difficulties.
One of the most interesting things I found out was that students with a visual impairment should come to college with an eye care plan here is an example:

I've got a lot of interviews coming up for September,so the eye care plan is something I shall be looking out for.

There is so much information on this website,using the site map is a good way to find your way around.

Another source for information about working with students with visual impairment can be found in Access for All .

Using your photos.

In my work with students with learning difficulties I take a lot of photos. Students have enjoyed seeing themselves on the interactive whiteboard . Its been good for developing language and talking about activities and skills learnt.
At the beginning of the year I used PowerPoint .
I then used Windows Movie maker to make videos. I taught myself quite quickly by watching a tutorial on You Tube .
I have recently finished my first full length video using Animoto . I recommend this as you can produce a different, high quality video in a relatively short time. Animoto are offering free full access passes if you work in education. Just email them. They are very quick to respond.The blog Free resources from the net gives you a good summary . My experience is

Work on it at home .Most college networks can't cope with the uploading.When its finished dowload it and use it at college (it uses Quick time)
You will need 40/50 photos to make a 3 minute video.
The photos have to be at the image size 1024 x 768 pixels (it takes a while to change the image size of each photo) You have to choose a piece of appropriate music .

I chose Bill Withers Lovely Day . You'll need the music in MP3 form .
You can use Zamzar ,an online file converter (for free) to convert a format if you need to.

Speaking and Listening

Improving the language skills of adults with learning difficulties is at the heart of my embedded basic skills work .The following activity works well for students with speaking and listening skills at Milestone 6 right up to those at Entry 3.

I got this idea from the TES. A modern language teacher had found it was a great way to develop language skills.

I play a CD track : Debbie Harry Hanging on the Telephone . When the music starts pass a chunky mobile phone around the group and just like pass the parcel when the music stops the person holding the phone has to answer it. I play a sound clip of a phone ringing (not essential but really adds effect) and when the phone stops ringing the conversation between you on one phone and the student on another begins. After a short conversation start the music again. Keep playing until everyone has had a go.

Resources:

A chunky old mobile to pass around the group.
An old phone for you.

Deborah Harry: Hanging on the telephone

available from the CD Best of Blondie or for other CD sources Click here

or

download from ITunes or via Windows Media Player.

Remember to choose the format that will play on your college network.

Sound clip of the phone ringing available

free to download click here

Computer to play CD and sound clip

or CD player

How can it be used?

Its a fun way to improve telephone skills -listening and giving key information, appropriate greetings,use of names.

Reinforce information given out in the lesson "hello I'm just phoning to see if you have remembered what you have to bring to college tomorrow?

A fun and different way to hear every one's news "Hello I'm just phoning to see what you did at the weekend?"

How to include a deaf student in an IT music session.

I like to show my students with learning difficulties (Milestone 8 - Entry 1) how to access music on the computer . They can take these skills and use them at home .This year I had to think about how I could do this as I had a deaf student in the group.

The class started by listening to a CD using the Windows Media Player.

They loaded the CD

Identified the Windows Media icon

Learnt how to plug in the headphones

Used the volume control

My deaf student joined in (the communicator had the headphones!) and used an enhanced audio CD.I chose

Nizlopi : The JCB Song Video animation.

While the others continued to listen to their CD she then viewed

Torn by Natalie Imbruglio

which I had saved on my memory stick.This is a signed performance by David Armand at an Amnesty International event. Its good fun and includes BSL and a few made up signs, not suitable for all students as some of them are a little crude. Judge for yourself by viewing it on You Tube or through handlinger.blogspot.com

If you like it you can buy the Amnesty International DVD - Secret Policeman's Ball Amnesty 2006 .I've seen it for sale new and used on on Amazon .

My students then went on to explore music on the Internet and we looked at You Tube but you might have your own favourites.My deaf student watched videos performed by Bengee143:

I will survive

NightFever

My heart will go on

Viewing music on the Internet has many pitfalls, so make sure you try out all your ideas in the classroom first and have some standby music from another source. Two problems to look out for are:

1.Buffering - the video freezes and will only play intermittently.

2. You Tube can appear in skeleton form only,the second time you use it. Apparently it does this to encourage you to sign up.

Good luck and don't forget to check if your computers have sound cards!