If you are ever lucky enough to be in my classroom on the first of the month, you probably will feel like you are attending a Jay-Z CD release party. Only there is capri sun instead of Cristal and highly anticipated field trip dates instead of fresh beats. I swear once one of my students literally pulled the calendar out of the printer as it was printing. You should see the looks of pure joy as they are getting their first glances at that epic piece of paper – the all-holy monthly calendar.
When I think about it behaviorally (indulge me while I put my ABA nerd hat on…), I think that the monthly events being physically written on the calendar signal that the event will actually take place. My students’ history of reinforcement is that the monthly calendar events actually do come true. Our students have a really hard time understanding the concept of time, waiting, and changes in routine. That combined with significant difficulties in expressive and receptive language makes the ‘talking about the future’ concept almost meaningless to some of my students. They need to see it. They need something concrete that they understand. Ahhh – the joy of visuals.
We use these monthly calendars at both home and school. Each child keeps a copy in their binder that we refer back to throughout the month. They also bring a copy home. Some of my amazing parents have caught on to how effective these calendars are for warning of impeding changes in routine and add any home events to these calendars such as family parties, shopping trips, etc.
As a forever freebie (ie: not just free today only!), I posted September – June monthly visual calendars for free on TpT. Sorry we are a little late in the year – but better late than never! These calendars are mostly blank with the exception of weekends which have a ‘no school visual’ since obviously every school calendar is super different. They are PDFs so you can add text boxes to include your own specific dates or just hand write them in! (I’d love some feedback if you download these 🙂 )
Then, it got crazy. I decided to up the ante on these bad boys. I have also uploaded on TpT a Monthly Visual Calendar – Customized Packet for $4.50. When you purchase this it will look identical to the free version. I know, how dumb. Do I think you’re a fool? But wait… If you email or message me with a list of dates (ie. Steven’s b-day October 25, no school on November 13, Christmas December 25, etc.) I will make you a customized set of calendars with visuals for each event. Let me do the work for you! This product is scary, I know. You need to trust me! Trust that I will actually send you the customized version and not let you suffer silently with a blank calendar that you paid for. No need to worry friends, I am such a people pleaser (almost to a fault) that I probably could not handle the thought of being such a sneaky, bad person (… and would HATE the negative feedback). So if this sounds like something you’d be interested, message me for any more questions/details 🙂
Happy Friday all! Has this been the longest week ever for anyone else?? Argh…
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7 Responses
Sasha-I follow your site every day, and have gained a lot of knowledge from it. I am trying to get more info on social scripting to use in play therapy (not social stories, which I know is an aspect of social scripting, but more the diaglogue to use when playing to help the student learn how to initiate/interact). Do you use this strategy with verbal students, espescially those who don’t initiate very often? If so, any words of wisdom?
thanks for the help! Meg
You’ve been Boo’d! Check out my post Boo! for the rules:)
I don’t have a freebie to share with you because I don’t have any products at the moment.
Have a great weekend!
Thanks Amy!! So sweet of you 🙂 Have a great weekend too!
Yes I do this all the time! I use both visual (pictures or written) and verbal prompts (an adult providing a verbal model of the correct answer). The downside of verbal prompts is that the adult needs to be more involved than they need to be (ie. they are standing there providing the correct response) and sometimes my kids struggle with echoing the correct script in an ‘authentic’ way. But the upside is you can jump in any time and use these – no preplanning involved. I tend to like visual or textual prompts better but the thing about social interactions is that they are spontaneous and there are endless combinations of things to say. So you can’t always be ready with the correct visual prompt. I like using text prompts for my students who read because I can be less involved. They can read off the prompt the correct question/greeting. It usually sounds awkward the first few times but this usually seems to even out pretty quickly. Hope this makes sense 🙂
Loving all the information I’m getting from you. Will you be creating new calendars for the 2013 school year?
Yep! They should be up no later than within 2 weeks! Sorry for the delay 🙂
No worries I had just read what you had on here and thought what a wonderful idea.