You know how I love me some efficiency and multi-tasking. With the ever growing struggle of fitting everything these kiddos need to work on – you have GOT Â to get some bang for your buck. I have been doing this activity with my students who are working on letter identification but also have some fine motor deficits. It’s like a lovely little elicit hook up between OT and academics. And it slows down my kiddo who just seems to FLY through all the work I give him. Seriously, slow down man. I can barely undo tasks as fast as this kids works.
Here is what we did:
It’s a little painfully slow and we didn’t do loads of trials. But I felt like it was meaningful and structured. The students I have been doing it with are sometimes especially picky on work tasks and they seem to approve. The container is an old almond container (I know – I am a hoarder…) and I like it because it is long enough to get a good grasp on the container and the twist and untwist (untwist is harder for my kids!) mimics a toothpaste container which one of my kiddos is working on!
We also have been doing it with ice cube trays. Same process but student puts the letter into the ice cube tray. This is great because it gives a clear and concrete visual of how many trials the student will need to do. This like this are freaken awesome for your kids who have a lot of inappropriate and aggressive behavior to escape from tasks. I had gotten pinched quite a few times last week from this student and this system really has reallybeen helping this!
freebie is on the way tonight! Be on the look out 😉
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Thanks for sharing the Bug Book and I love this idea! I will have to try this with my little ones.
Kate
Where did you get the letters from? I took over a classroom that has some but have no idea where the previous teacher got them! Love this idea!!
Thanks for the feebie! This is also simple enough to work taking turns, to make it a bit more challenging academically you could do letter sounds, beginning-ending sounds etc. while still incorporating the fine motor. Thanks again for sharing your ideas, the simplest things are always the best!
Thanks for reading!
Gosh – you know what – I have no idea? They might have been something I scavenged from a teacher who left, haha!
You are very welcome 🙂
Hello! I’m one of your blog “lurkers” – have been following your through pinterest for a while!
I am about to start my first year of teaching – I will have a class of 6-8 pupils (all 1:1 supported as they all have profound autism and challenging behaviour) and I am trying to get my head around data tracking, etc!
I was just wondering, for example, how you would track the data for this activity? I.e what layout you would use? I.e. – here you have the letters a-z.. so would you have all 26 letters on your sheet and use the +/- next to each letter you ask him to find? Or would you just have “letter recognition a-z” and then number of trials for example as 14 (14 slots in the ice cube tray) and then space for 14 +/- marks and a total “correct” box?
Sorry for the long winded question, I so wish I could just pop into your class and be a fly on the wall for the day, you seem to have it all perfectly organised and under control! Thanks for all the fab ideas and resources! 🙂
Hi Sabrina! Thank you so much for reading!
So – for a task like this – I would make data collection really simple. Ie. 10 trials (correct or incorrect). Those ten trials would include a random selection of letters. I would make sure to keep the field size roughly the same. Is the student selecting between 5 letters or 25. If it’s off by a few numbers (ie. 18 instead of 20) – I think that’s okay, because it is still the same level of difficulty.
I hope this helps! I don’t think I explained that super – great so let me know if you have other questions!