It's the Holiday Season

Happy Holidays to Everyone

        This morning we celebrated with home-cooked waffles, home made cookies, coffee, juice, strawberries and whip cream while sitting by our "virtual fireplace" sharing some holiday traditions that we enjoy with our families.  The children will be coming home with a "fragile gift"  that we made in class especially for you.  I sat with each of them individually and typed up your children's words.  I hope you enjoy them they came out looking wonderful.  They will also be coming home with, if they haven't already, their wrapped gifts that they bought.  Hide them under the tree and no peeking!  Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of the shopping experience due to all hands on deck! They are so EXCITED to show you what they picked.  Share pictures if you would like, of them giving gifts and I will share with the class. It is nice to see the process full circle.  

Candy Grams

 The Life skills classes have been busy putting up flyers, selling, preparing and delivery Candy Grams during their lunch period.  Students sold Candy Grams for $1 during their lunch period.  They practiced the skills we are mastering in class using money and social skills.  We delivered the candy canes with notes to peers and teachers around the school.  The Life Skills classroom raised over $250 for the Friendship club to put towards a special event for our students towards the end of the school year!  

                       

Ugly Sweater Day!

Friendship Club

Physical Education

It's amazing what the students are doing in physical education with Mr. Betancourt and Mr. Miller. Sometimes it looks like so much fun and they let me try to join when dropping them off.  I'm not as limber on the rock wall as they are!  

Matt Sirota goes all the way up!

WOW!!!!

Math

    Each week we work on money skills, time and reading charts.  We focus on one area within those units. The first few months we worked on addition.  We are currently working on subtraction.  With subtraction we are all at different levels.  Most of the students are counting backwards using the number lines.  They are all at different levels of learning and mastering the steps of regrouping.  When they work they should always reference their math notebook which has the number line glued in on top of the pages.  

Reading

This unit we currently studied all the different holidays people celebrate.  The students read and answered comprehension questions based on a History Unit titled "It's a Tradition" .  The students studied the traditions of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the history of the gingerbread cookie.  

Writing

The students have been working on writing complete sentences and paragraphs.  We have incorporated the sentences daily into our spelling instruction. Each time we ask "Do you have a capital, punctuation and does your sentence make sense?"  The students have been making nice progress with this.  When they add the appropriate punctuation and capitals they are given an extra point on their spelling tests. 

Family Pictures

I love when the children are able to share with the class what they are doing at home with their families and friends.  Please send any pictures you are willing to share with the gang!  Here are some things our students are doing at home!

Kiersten visited NYC for the holidays!

Noah went to NYC to see the band King's X

Thanks for sharing!!

Have a happy, healthy and peaceful holiday and New Year.  

Love, 

Mrs. Johnson

Mrs. Johnson's Class Room 203

I hope this new blog finds you well.  This is just a different format that I will be using.  It will allow you to go back and look at the older posts without having to save the emails, it will allow everyone to write a comment and hopefully no more email and spam issues!  It took some time to get up and running but it's worth it!  I hope you enjoy.  

Our All-Star Student 

Stephen was chosen as the All-Star student.

Look Who Celebrated a Birthday!

ELA

The students have been working hard on going back into the text, passage, graph or schedule to find the information they need to answer questions.  

Math

They SHOULD be proud!!! They work so hard in group.  Great job girls!

Important Information

Recently I sent home a Parent Questionnaire that was sent home for the 8th Graders Level 1 Vocational Assessment. This information will be used to determine of a student's vocational skills, aptitudes, and interests and will be considered at the review of an Individualized Education Program .

Field Trip to Stop n Shop

The students all shopped for the ingredients in the Thanksgiving feast we prepared.  We visited Stop and Shop in Smithtown.  They had a wonderful time navigating the store and shopping the sales!

Buying ingredients and price checking to make sure we get the best deal!

Checking to see if they eggs are good! Mrs. Johnson and Matthew

Matthew S likes the good stuff!  Ghirardelli chocolate!

Preparing for our Thanksgiving Feast

The students joined forces with Miss Lazio's class to make turkey sandwiches with bacon, mashed potatoes,  brownies, and cornbread.

Ryan was in charge of the cooking the bacon

Kiersten is one of the students in charge of making the gluten free brownies

Matthew adding butter to the cornbread

Enoying the Feast!

  

It's the Simple Things in Life

Some of us have worked ourselves off the token board and are now receiving tickets throughout the day for hard work. The tickets earn different activities throughout the day.  Each student was individually interviewed on things that they would be interested in working for and would love to earn. Some of the things they chose....

*  Helping Mrs. Johnson teach a lesson 

*  Making a phone call to another classroom

*  Sitting at the teacher's desk for one lesson

*  Teacher's helper

*  Listening to music

*  Smelling fruit flavors (This is from a lab we did and they loved it)

*  Super sticker

*  Dominoes

*  3 minute walk

*  Visit the library

*  Writing an email to mom or dad to say hello

*  Positive phone call or email home

*  Bubbles

 The boys really loved such a simple thing...was great to see them laugh at them popping...especially when on my head!

Unique Learning System

Dear Parents and Family,

Your child’s classroom is using Unique Learning System® as the classroom curriculum. The curriculum program has been designed specifically for children with special learning needs. While the foundation of Unique is the academic content standards (reading, writing, math, science and social studies), the lessons are modified to make sure that all children have a way to participate and learn. There is a strong emphasis on life skills that are embedded in each lesson. Unique Learning System provides monthly units that teachers are able to download from the Unique website. Each month there is a new topic built around a science or social studies theme. There are six grade bands; Preschool, Elementary, Intermediate, Middle School, High School and Transition, so learning is new as children progress through the years. Your child’s teacher has selected the grade level band that matches the ages and grades of the children in his/her classroom. There is also a three-year cycle of new units for each grade band. In that way, your child will have new learning materials even if he or she is in the same classroom setting next year. Teachers who have worked with special learners have created all of Unique’s lessons and materials. Lessons include stories, chapter books, comprehension activities, writing activities, math lessons for time, money, counting and problem solving, as well as recipes, craft projects and science experiments. Many of the materials are designed in three levels so children of various abilities can actively participate. Materials have been created with SymbolStix™, which is a graphic library of symbols to help children who learn best with picture supports. These pictures can also be seen in books available on our online library called the n2y Library. These books can be used to help support the theme of the monthly unit, to help build your child’s reading skill or for enjoyment. Unique Learning System has several tools that will help the classroom teacher monitor your child’s progress within classroom learning.

The primary goal of Unique is to give each child a way to participate, learn and succeed in the classroom.

Bell Schedule

MAIN START
Period 1
7:50 AM - 8:31 AM
Period 2
8:35 AM - 9:16 AM
Period 3
9:20 AM - 10:01 AM
Period 4
10:05 AM - 10:46 AM
Period 5
10:50 AM - 11:31 AM
Period 6
11:35 AM - 12:16 PM
Period 7
12:20 PM - 1:01 PM
Period 8
1:05 PM - 1:46 PM
Period 9
1:50 PM - 2:31 PM