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Understanding Remote Learning Social Story Video

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Understanding Remote Learning Social Story Video

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Understanding Remote Learning Social Story

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Using Proloquo2Go to talk about the coronavirus

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Using Tasklists, Schedule for Homework 2015

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The special education resources on this page were authored by Watson Institute's special education consultants and faculty.

These behavior stories may benefit your students. They can be downloaded, saved and edited to suit your needs. The * notation indicates the story is formatted in a Power Point presentation and the ** notation indicates a Power Point with sound narration. Each Power Point has animation included on each slide. Some occur automatically - some occur on a "click". Feel free to send comments or questions to [email protected] .

Changes Changes!*
Moving to a New House Sometimes Things Change Did My Pet Get Lost?
Sleeping In My Own Bed (Special Interest Area: Daniel Tiger & PJ Masks; Needs personalization throughout)

Stopping What I'm Doing and Making It OK (Topic: Stopping What I'm Doing. Special Interest Area: Spongebob)

If you have questions or concerns about the Watson Institute's use of this information, please contact us.

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The special education resources on this page were authored by Watson Institute's special education consultants and faculty. These behavior stories may benefit your students. They can be downloaded, saved and edited to suit your needs. The * notation indicates the story is formatted in a Power Point presentation and the ** notation indicates a Power Point with sound narration.

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Video Tutorial of Behavior Contingency Maps

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Reinforcement System Tutorial for Children with Autism

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Does this sound familiar? You are trying to get your child out the door to school or for an appointment and they can't seem to accomplish the smallest tasks. They are easily distracted and moving as slow as molasses. You give reminder after reminder, but they seem to go in one ear and out the other. It's the same scene every morning. You are becoming more and more agitated until finally, you explode. You feel guilty as your child leaves for school once again feeling deflated.

Your child can't move from one activity to another or one location to another without having a meltdown. You try to remember to give them a "five minute warning", but sometimes there just isn't time. Sometimes, even with the warning, they still don't seem to be able to make the transition.

You find yourself once again dealing with a meltdown.

The teacher calls again. Your child came out of the bathroom at school with their pants down around their ankles. Again. At home, they always forget to flush the toilet or leave the water running after they wash their hands...when they remember to wash their hands at all. You know that your child is doing their best.

You wish you could help them gain more independence.

Why use visual schedules?

Visual schedules carry many benefits, particularly for children who have special needs. Visual schedules:

break down tasks into easy-to-complete steps

simplify

provide structure

create predictability

teach independence

improve focus and attention

help with time management

instill consistency

form healthy habits

reduce cognitive load

maintain daily routines

establish a schedule that works

ease transitions

prevent meltdowns

promote positive choices

decrease problem behaviours

provide helpful reminders

Visual schedules are especially beneficial for children on the autism spectrum, children with FASD, ADHD, sensory issues or SPD, RAD, or other special needs. They can be an invaluable tool. Many parents report that they have been a "game changer" in their household.

I created the Printable Visual Schedule for Special Needs because I couldn't find a visual schedule that included what I was looking for to use with my own kids. I wanted something that parents could use with visual and written prompts that kids could easily understand. It is in both colour and black and white. The black and white cards are great for having kids colour themselves. This gives them another reenforcement and reminder.

How to use visual schedules:

The best way to use visual schedules to benefit your child depends on your child and on what you are hoping to accomplish.

If your child is experiencing a lot of meltdowns during transition times, you will want to start with cards that help them predict upcoming changes throughout their day to help them predict what's coming next.

If your child is struggling to get out the door in the morning, you'll want to start with cementing a morning routine that works for them.

Or if your child is struggling most with breaking things down into smaller tasks, that will be where you want to start.

Create a morning routine chart.

You can do this in many ways. Choose which of the methods below you feel would work best for your child. You can always try multiple methods to find the best fit.

1. Place velcro dots on a poster board and hang the poster in their bedroom. Attach an open envelope to the bottom of the poster. Place velcro dots on the back of the visual schedule cards and place them on the poster in the order your child should complete their morning routine. As they complete the tasks, they can add the card into the envelope.

2. Hole punch the cards that your child needs to complete each morning. Place them on a binder ring and give it to your child as a visual reminder they can carry with them as they complete each step.

3. Affix magnets to the back of the cards. This works best if the cards are laminated. Set up an area on the side of the fridge or on a magnetic white board in the kitchen where your child can see their cues and move them down as they complete each one.

4. Give your child a folder or binder that contains the cards needed for their morning routine. These can be glued down on a page in the binder with the heading "Morning" or you can add velcro dots to the page and to the backs of the cards and glue an envelope to the inside of the binder for easy storage of the cards.

5. Hang a ribbon or string in your child's room. Use clothespins to attach their visual prompts in the order they need to be completed. Provide a small bucket or envelope that your child can put the cards into once they've finished each one.

Create a daily schedule.

1. Make a poster for your child that displays their daily schedule. See the method for making the poster above.

2. Create a visual representation of your child's day on the side of the fridge using magnets on the back of the cards.

3. Make your child a binder separated into Morning, Afternoon and Evening to further simplify things.

4. Another way of creating a daily schedule is by using a pocket chart. You can add the cards needed for that day at the top of the chart in the order they will happen and store the rest of the cards either at the bottom or in a separate envelope that you can staple near the bottom of the pocket chart.

For some children, the chart can be very general, including only the highlights of the day, whereas for others, you will need to break down each thing into smaller tasks.

I don't recommend using binder rings for an entire daily schedule as it can be too overwhelming for a child.

Break down tasks.

Some of the cards break tasks down for kids to enable them to complete them step by step. These cards work well in these ways:

1. Hole punch the cards and attach them to a binder ring. This way, the child can carry it with them. This is particularly good for the bathroom prompts. They can flip through the cards as they complete each step.

2. Use poster putty or teacher's tape to attach cards to the bathroom wall or mirror for the bathroom cards and the step by step instructions for hand washing.

3. Attach the cards to the back of your child's bedroom door or the wall in the entryway for reminders such as putting on their shoes and coat or taking their lunch.

For school and appointments:

1. When I created this visual schedule, I purposely left some of the cards such as those for Speech, Occupational Therapist, Therapist, etc. without an image. This was so that the child or parents could add a picture of the building or actual therapist to the card. For some children, especially those with autism, it helps to have things as concrete and specific as possible. Seeing the actual building or person they have an appointment with helps create security and aids in the transition.

2. Children can use the pocket chart, binder, or binder ring method to use their visual schedule as their prompts while at school.

For a short time only, the Visual Schedule for Special Needs is included in the Sensory Essentials Collection which included many other resources for helping kids thrive.

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How to Use Visual Schedules with Your Special Needs Child

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Learn how to use visual schedules to ease transitions, reduce meltdowns, create independence in daily life, and make mornings more peaceful.

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contingency map example for earning stars 2019

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Virtual Learning Resources for Families - FDLRS

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Virtual Learning Resources for Families - FDLRS

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Video Conferencing With Google Hangouts Meet

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How to Use Zoom - Free Video Conferencing & Virtual Meetings

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How to Create an Interactive Worksheet on Google Slides

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Interactive notebooks for google classroom

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Interactive notebooks for google classroom

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How to Make a Digital Interactive Notebook (Google Classroom)

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Enable closed captioning in google meet, skype, etc.

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Enable closed captioning in google meet, skype, etc.

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Chrome extensions for struggling learners

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Chrome extensions for struggling learners

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Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs

Technology can be a powerful tool to assist students when learning, as it provides accessibility and accommodations to support everyone. In particular the Chrome web browser allows users to install a wide variety of web extensions that provide tools that can help all learners.

In this blog post we will take a look at dozens of Chrome web extensions and apps and other tools and features that can assist students in seven main categories:

🗣️ Text to Speech

☑️ Behavior, Focus, and Organization

Some of the tools fit into more than one topic, but each is only listed once. Certainly this list does not cover all of the useful web extensions and tools available for learners, but it is a great place to begin.

In addition to the list of extensions and tools, I have also linked in the video from a webinar I did on " Google Tools to Support All Learners" along with my ever-growing resource document and slideshow from the session.

▶️ Training Video (54 minutes)

🗣️ Text to Speech Tools

Read&Write for Google Chrome
Chrome web extension link
The "Swiss Army Knife" of extensions with tools including word prediction, dictionary, picture dictionary, text to speech, screenshot reader, speech maker, screen mask, translator, highlighters, voice note, and more. Works on webpages, PDFs, Google Docs, and Google Slides.
Note: There is a paid version with all the tools and a free version with a subset of the tools. Educators can get the paid version for a year at no cost by filling out the form at: https://www.texthelp.com/products/free-for-teachers/

The Immersive Reader extension can read aloud any text you have selected, as well as providing additional reading supports. These include Text Preferences to change the text size, increase or decrease spacing, change fonts, and colors, Grammar Options to break words into syllables, as well as color code and label the parts of speech, and Reading Preferences to turn on or off the picture dictionary option, and to select the language for translation.

Read Aloud
Chrome web extension link
This text-to-speech extension will read either the entire page or just the text that you have selected. In addition to the normal options to adjust the speed, pitch, and volume of the voice, the best feature is the wide collection of high-quality voices to choose from.

Announcify
Chrome web extension link
This is another text to speech tool that not only reads a webpage, but also removes distracting elements from the site. The only drawback is the inability to select specific text to read, as the entire page is read aloud.

ChromeOS Select-to-Speak

If you have a Chromebook, there is a built in tool for text-to-speak called " Select-to-speak". Nothing needs to be installed. It just needs to be turned on.

First click in the bottom right corner of your Chromebook screen to open the system menu.

Here click on the "Accessibility" icon.

Note: If you do not see the "Accessibility" icon you can click on the gear to go into the advanced settings to turn it on.

Now from the "Accessibility" menu click on the "Select-to-speak" option.

This will put a little speaker icon down in the bottom right corner.

Anytime you need to have something read aloud, just click the icon and drag your mouse to select the text you want to hear.

Using the toolbar you can also pause, change speeds, and jump forwards and backwards through the text.

Docs Voice Typing is not an extension that needs to be installed, but instead is actually built right into Google Docs and Google Slides. With voice typing you can simply speak and anything you say will automatically be typed for you.

When we are in a Google Doc we click the "Tools" menu and then choose "Voice Typing" from the drop down menu.

This will open up a floating microphone.

To start dictating to the document, we simply click the microphone icon.

Now anything you say will automatically be typed into the document.

In addition to words, you are also able to say punctuation. For a full list of all the commands you can speak, click the question mark icon below the microphone, and this will open up a help menu with all of the details.

When done, we just click the microphone again to stop the speech to text.

VoiceIn Voice Typing
Chrome web extension link
This speech-to-text extension allows the user to dictate text for any text box or text entry portion of a web page. You can either click the extension or right-click and choose "Start recording" to use it. Be sure to click the extension again to turn off the speech-to-text function when done.

Chromebook Dictation Tool

First click in the bottom right corner of your Chromebook screen to open the system menu.

Here click on the "Accessibility" icon.

Note: If you do not see the "Accessibility" icon you can click on the gear to go into the advanced settings to turn it on.

Now from the "Accessibility" menu click on the "Dictation" option to enable speech to text.

This will put a little microphone icon down in the bottom right corner.

Anytime you need to do speech to text just click on the "Dictation" icon and start speaking.

Anything you say will automatically be typed into the computer wherever you are.

This works in websites, documents, forms, and more.

If you are using a Chromebook there is actually a speech to text tool built right in. Nothing needs to be installed. It just needs to be turned on.

Present your slideshow as normal.

Click the "3-dots" button on the navigation bar.

Choose "Captions preference" and then toggle on the captions.

As you speak your words will be live captioned and will display on the screen.

Using the same menu you can adjust the size and position of the captions.

Live captions are available in several Google products including Slides and Meet. In Google Slides you can display live captions as follows:

👓 Readability Tools

Lexend fonts are intended to reduce visual stress and so improve reading performance. Initially they were designed with dyslexia and struggling readers in mind, but Bonnie Shaver-Troup, creator of the Lexend project, soon found out that these fonts are also great for everyone else.

Mercury Reader
Chrome web extension link
Make any website easier to read by removing ads, comments, and all other distractions, so just the core content remains. Users can also adjust the font size and color scheme of the new text.

Chrome web extension link
Override all fonts on a webpage with the OpenDyslexic font, making the text more easily readable.

Dyslexia Friendly
Chrome web extension link
This extension replaces the fonts on a web page with either OpenDyslexic or Comic Sans, and provides a horizontal shaded bar to help the user stay on the correct line when reading. The only drawback is there is no easy way to toggle it on and off, so you will want to use an extension management tool to let you turn it off when not in use.

WaspLine Reader
Chrome web extension link
This tool creates a more readable version of a web page by applying color gradients that make it easier for the eyes to chain together the ending of a line with the beginning of the next.

Color Overlay is a filter which puts a tint on your browser viewport to make text more readable. This could be used by people suffering by visual distortions reading the content on the normal background (Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome). The colored overlay can improve reading abilities of such users by reducing or eliminate perceptual processing errors.

ATbar
Chrome web extension link
Similar to the Color Overlay extension, this toolbar can generate color overlays for webpages, but also has features for a dictionary, text to speech, word prediction, and more.

MagicScroll Web Reader
Chrome web extension link
Turn web pages into a flippable e-book with easy clickable or keyboard control, as well as control over font size and page color as well.

Chrome web extension link
This screen overlay tool darkens out the page except for a horizontal band you can move up and down as you read, helping the student focus.

High Contrast
Chrome web extension link
This tool can make webpages easier to read by changing the colors to increase contrast, invert the colors, or switch to gray-scale.

Color Enhancer
Chrome web extension link
For people who are partially color-blind, this tool can help adjust and improve webpage colors.

Additional ChromeOS Features

📗 Reading Comprehension Tools

Google Dictionary
Chrome web extension link
Don't get stuck on an unknown word. Double-click on any word to get a pop-up definition, as well as spoken pronunciation for many words.

SMMRY
Chrome bookmark link
While not technically an extension, this tool functions very much like one and is launched from your Chrome bookmarks bar. Summarize any online article with a simple click of the SMMRY bookmark link. This will generate a simplified version with fewer sentences (7 by default) and just the most important information. Settings can be adjusted for longer or shorter summaries, as well as emphasis on certain desired words..

The QuillBot Chrome extension will summarize text as a new paragraph or by key sentences, in multiple levels of length. Sign in with your Google account for free to be able to summarize texts up to 5,000 characters at a time.

Auto Highlight
Chrome web extension link
This extension takes a different approach to summarizing. Instead of removing the non-essential portions of the text, it highlights what is most important. This allows the reader to still look at the rest of the article if needed. Three levels of highlighting can be chosen.

Behaviour, Focus, and Organization Tools

Simple Blocker
Chrome web extension link
This tool helps students to stay focused on their work by blocking distracting websites. The user can choose the sites to block, how long to block them, and optional password protection.

uBlock Origin
Chrome web extension link
A simple but powerful ad-blocking extension to help remove distracting ads from websites, making pages less cluttered and easier to read.

Move It
Chrome web extension link
For students who need a break, this extension can be set to periodically have them stop working and do something physical for a moment.

Google Keep
Chrome web extension link
Keep allows users to save and retrieve any information they come across including text, links, pictures, speech, handwriting, doodles, and more. The tool works as an extension, web site, Android app, and iOS app, and integrates into Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings.

Ambient audio sites and tools can let students create their own custom mix of background sounds to help them concentrate and drown out potentially distracting noises.

Pear Deck lets you add interactive elements to your slides including multiple choice, text entry, numeric entry, drawing, and draggable activities.

You can insert pre-made template slides provided in the Add-on.

Or you can add interactive elements to slides you have already created.

When you present the slideshow through the Pear Deck Add-on, students join the presentation and can interact with it.

You can show students responses by clicking the "Show Responses" button in the bottom right corner of the screen. Responses can be shown individually or aggregated together to look for patterns.

Pear Deck Webinar (1 hour) - Blog post

Pear Deck Add-on for Slides

This extension can make it easier for students to locate their mouse cursor by allowing them to customize the size and look of the mouse cursor.

Click-free Browsing
Chrome web extension link
For users who have a difficulty clicking a mouse, this extension adds on-screen navigation buttons the user can simply hover over to use.

Vimium
Chrome web extension link
Provides keyboard shortcuts for navigation and control for someone with difficulty using a mouse.

CrxMouse
Chrome web extension link
Use mouse gestures to navigate including forward, backward, scrolling, refreshing, switching tabs, and more. The user can even program their own custom mouse gestures to open programs and perform other tasks.

Caret Browsing
Chrome web extension link
This extension gives you a movable cursor in any web page, allowing you to move through the text with your arrows keys and select text with the keyboard.

Additional ChromeOS Features

Tools to support learners are constantly being created and improved, so be sure to check back often as I continue to update my resource documents " Google Tools to Support all Learners". And be sure to let me know of any tools you would recommend for the list. I look forward to learning from you!

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Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs

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Technology can be a powerful tool to assist students when learning, as it provides accessibility and accommodations to support everyone. In...

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Explicitly teaching Tier 2 vocabulary - words that students see frequently across subjects - is essential for students to engage fully with grade level texts and concepts. Once students have completed this graphic organizer for various words, research suggests giving them opportunities to use them with peers, in writing activities, or in games. Suggested scaffolds for ELLs: -Make sure vocabulary words are appropriate for each student's proficiency level -Help the student connect the English word with the word in their home language -Give the definition in the student's home language -Offer a visual definition in addition to a verbal definition -Provide sentence starters CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.L.6 Acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level.

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Own Your Vocab - Seesaw Activity by Seesaw

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Using new words in multiple ways helps you remember them better and helps you grow your vocabulary! 1. :add: Tap the add button. 2. :drawing: :label: Use the learning tools to complete the graphic organizer. 3. :mic: Tap the mic to record yourself reading the word three times. 4.

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System of Least Prompts  (SLP) with a Token Board

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Remote Learning support for parents using Boom Cards at home