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Making books come to life - Five easy steps for creating an interactive storybook
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 For young children, story time provides endless opportunities to teach language concepts, new vocabulary words, letter and word recognition, and letter-sound correspondences. Reading fiction, nonfiction, and poetry on a variety of topics helps to broaden children's interests, promotes engagement with family members, teachers and other children, and encourages a love of reading. Some children have difficulty accessing and manipulating books. Other children may not know how to "read" and interact with a book, therefore requiring some extra book adaptations to help books become more meaningful and interesting. To get started, pick a favorite children's book or one that your class has written and follow these five easy steps to create an interactive book that will support your children's learning and literacy development.
- Many preschool books contain rhythmic and rhyming text. This text is a quality that makes books fun and engaging! Read through your book and create your own rhythmic repeating line that fits the content of the book. Write this phrase on a sticky label, highlight the text with a marker, and add this new line to every other page of the book. Teach core words by adding a repeating line such as, "Go, Pete, go!" When reading to a group of children, pause before each of the repeating lines and encourage choral reading. Children learn to anticipate these lines and have fun reading together.
- Create puppets based on the characters in the book. Puppets created with pictures or objects can be attached to wooden spoons, fuzzy car washing mitts, a child's mitten, or small gloves. Young children who are unable to hold puppets can dress up as book characters or wear visors or hats with puppets or book props attached. Explore ways to engage each character/puppet during story time. For example, in Pete the Cat books, everyone with the red shoes puppets will come up and sing the song. Next, everyone with the blue shoes puppets will come up and dance to the song.
 
- Make it easier for children to turn pages by adding page extenders (e.g., large paper clips, popsicle sticks, clothespins) to the sides of each pages. Add page fluffers to the bottom corner of the pages on the right using Velcro® dots, sticky foam pieces, or small pom-poms.
 
- Recreate pictures of important characters or images in the book, mount them on foam, and attach Velcro® to the back. Add the matching Velcro® to the images in the book. Now your book is a matching activity too. Extend this activity by collecting props that match the characters or objects in the book creating a literacy play box. These activities make independent reading more engaging!
 
- Now for the fun part! Pull out your art supplies (e.g., glitter, glue, foam letters and shapes, feathers, shiny and textured fabrics, stickers, wiggly eyes). Have fun adding texture throughout the book. Secure these materials firmly with glue. Children will love exploring these textures and concepts will be reinforced.
For more information, contact Sharon Jones (scjones@vcu.edu), Program Specialist, T/TAC at VCU.
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Using high leverage practices
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As a special educator, you are expected to use instructional strategies to address the unique needs of your students. Yet, with so much information available, what strategies should you use? Where would you find them? How can you ensure that what you find are effective practices?
High Leverage Practices are essential instructional practices for general and special educators, and co-teaching teams across all content areas. Thanks to the combined efforts of the
Council for Exceptional Children and the
CEEDAR Center, twenty-two evidence-based practices are organized around four areas of educational applications: Collaboration, Assessment, Social/Emotional/Behavioral, and Instruction. An evidence-based strategy is one that has been implemented, documented, researched, and published in scientific journals and has been proven to be effective. According to
The Survival Guide for New Special Education Teachers, special educators should adhere to best practices and provide high-quality support and services based on evidence-based practices as often as possible (Martin & Hauth, 2015). When successfully implemented, the twenty-two high-leverage practices can improve the educational outcomes for struggling learners.
For a complete overview of high-leverage practices, links to other publications and resources, videos of the practices in action, webinars, presentations, research synthesis, and professional development guides, refer to the
High Leverage Practices website from the Council for Exceptional Children.
Resource
Council for Exceptional Children & CEEDAR Center. (2019). Introducing high-leverage practices in special education: A professional development guide for school leaders. Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children & CEEDAR Center.
www.highleveragepractices.org
Reference
Hauth, C. & Martin, C.C. (2015). The survival guide for new special education teachers. Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children.
For more information, contact Mary Addeo (mjaddeo@vcu.edu), Program Specialist, T/TAC at VCU.
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Jen Alexander's (2019)
Building Trauma-Sensitive Schools, Your Guide to Creating Safe, Supportive Learning Environments for All Students
provides the reader with an in-depth overview about trauma and how trauma affects school performance and behavior. She provides practical tools that educators may use to inform their practices in the classroom and beyond. Alexander (2019) defines trauma as a "distressing experience or set of experiences that threatens a person's actual safety or perceived sense of felt safety to such a degree that it exceeds an individual's capacity to cope in healthy ways" (p. 5). When we think about Adverse Childhood Experiences, nearly half of all children in the United States have experienced at least one type of trauma (Alexander, 2019). These traumatic experiences could be physical, mental and/or emotional abuse as well as household dysfunctions such as parental mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, divorce, or poverty.
Establishing and maintaining safe and supportive relationships and acknowledging students are doing their best to cope with the effects from difficult issues is the key to building a trauma-sensitive school environment (Alexander, 2019). Adults can provide a variety of practices and strategies to help students modify and learn new behaviors. It is important that educators not assume that all students who display maladaptive behaviors, social difficulties, emotional issues, or have been diagnosed with mental health issues have been traumatized; we have to consider students as a whole.
Alexander (2019) shares her thoughts on how educators can assist traumatized youth, by providing supportive, accepting, empathic relationships and providing environments to help students feel safe and connected. All students, not just students that have experienced trauma, need to learn how to self-regulate in healthy ways so that they are ready to learn.
"Some traumatized students will need more interventions, supports, and programming than others, however, it is critical that educators be trained in how to recognize and understand the many ways childhood trauma can affect students, including when students' trauma responses may become triggered in relation to things in school"(Alexander, 2019, p. 43).
Educators must be cognizant of their own biases and how we respond to student behaviors so that they are more aware of students' academic and behavior needs.
Reference
Alexander, J. (2019).
Building trauma-sensitive schools: Your guide to creating safe, supportive learning environments for all students. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
For more information, contact LaTonja Wright (wrightly2@vcu.edu), Program Specialist, T/TAC at VCU.
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A great resource to build your toolkit for including students with disabilities
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Book studies are a great way to build knowledge and skills. They can be easily incorporated into a professional learning community so that teachers can learn together and share ideas. Inclusion can benefit all learners and our toolboxes may need a few additions of strategies to meet the needs of diverse learners. The library at the T/TAC at VCU offers a variety of book study kits for groups to use. One book study that provides resources and strategies for including students with autism is "You're Going to Love This Kid" Teaching Students with Autism in the Inclusive Classroom by Paula Kluth. Paula Kluth's book provides resources and strategies that can be used with a variety of learners in the classroom. Topics explored in the book are fostering friendships, building communication skills, planning challenging and multidimensional lessons, and adapting the curriculum and the physical environment. The book kit includes ten participant books and a facilitator's guide that supports participants through discussions and sharing on topics such as how to include students with autism, teaching them effectively and sensitively, and appreciating the gifts they bring to the classroom. In addition to the borrowed book study kit materials, the TTAC at VCU provides a copy of the book to add to their school's professional library.
Resources
20 Ways to Adapt the Read Aloud:
Adapted from: Kluth, P. & Chandler-Olcott, K. (2007).
"A land we can share" Teaching literacy to students with autism. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
This article is from the website of Dr. Paula Kluth. It, along with many others on inclusive schooling, differentiated instruction, and literacy, can be found at www.PaulaKluth.com. Visit her website to read her Tip of the Day and dozens of free articles and to learn more about supporting diverse learners in K-12 classrooms.
Free Printables: Six Paula Kluth Tip Sheets on Inclusion:
TIP SHEET 1:
Discover the four habits of highly effective inclusive educators-and how you can develop them.
TIP SHEET 2:
From brown-bag lunches to school celebrations, here are five ways you can create an inclusive culture in your school.
TIP SHEET 3:
What are some ways to get learning "off the page" and make it more active and engaging for all learners? Paula Kluth has eight great ideas.
TIP SHEET 4:
To provide stronger social supports for your students with autism, try these four ideas in your classroom.
TIP SHEET 5:
Do you have students who are especially sensitive to sound? These ten tips can help them manage auditory discomfort and remove obstacles to learning.
TIP SHEET 6:
How can you ensure that your classroom is comfortable and welcoming for students with and without disabilities? This handy checklist will help you consider your whole environment, including sounds, smells, lighting, and seating.
Inclusive Literacy Learning:
Five Ways to Reach and Support All
Adapted from: Kluth, P. & Chandler-Olcott, K. (2007). "A land we can share": Teaching literacy to students with autism. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
For more information, contact Jackie Neidle (neidlejm@vcu.edu), Program Specialist, T/TAC at VCU.
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