Welcome (or welcome back)! Here are this week’s free lesson offerings:
Free Adapted Literature Selection: A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
This retelling of William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily reads at an automated readability index of grade 5/6. This text aligns to the version in Holt’s Elements of Literature: Fifth Course.
Classic literature doesn’t have to be scary, boring, or too hard.
Summary sites online and those little yellow and black notebooks are no longer your only choices for students who are struggling. Universally designed texts preserve the storytelling…while taking away the confusing word choices and hard-to-navigate formatting.
Universally Designed texts take classic literature common to secondary ELA classrooms and rewrite them with words and style that are easier for ALL students to read. Fewer frustrated kids. Fewer heads down on the desk. Less refusal. Less acting out. More engagement. More confidence. Better understanding.
Your purchase includes three variations on this easier-to-read text that you may print for students or share digitally on the non-public platform of your choice. Variations include:
- A text-only copy
- A text copy with a blank, lined column on each page for teacher-customized or open-ended note-taking
- A text copy with a lined column and inference-based questions on each page for guided note-taking
All copies are formatted with the needs of neurodiverse learners in mind and include:
- Text in columns on the page to reduce the need for lengthy eye-return at the end of a line
- Sans-serif fonts that are dyslexia friendly
- Adequate spacing between lines to prevent line-jumbling and to allow for use of tracking accommodation device
- Extra space between each paragraph to aid in identifying transitions in the text…and finding your place again after stopping!
- Consistent formatting that aligns to other Universally Designed texts. Students won’t have to learn a new format every time they read a new text
- Engaging cover art that engages visual learners to want to read and provides conceptual clues about the text
- Iconic lines quoted directly from the parent text are highlighted
PLEASE NOTE! These are secondary level texts. Although the Lexile difficulty has been reduced, adult themes and adult language (in some texts) have been preserved. Texts may not be appropriate for younger learners.
Free SECD Lesson: Sensory Grounding BINGO
*This lesson was designed to use inside of a school building to practice sensory grounding, but it would be simple to adapt for use at home. If ever there were a time students needed some deescalation coping strategies, this would be it.
5-4-3-2-1 Sensory Grounding is a great tool for self-regulating during times of stress or dysregulation. However, many younger or intellectually disabled students find it difficult to remember all the steps. Others find that some senses (particularly sound) serve as more of a trigger than an aid in calming.
I developed single sensory grounding as an abbreviated version of the skill to use with these populations. I designed the coping strategy to be simple to remember and to engage breathing regulation and muscle stretching, as well as focusing on a single sense. My students found visual grounding and tactile grounding to be the easiest to do and the most regulating, so those are the scripts I created. However, you could easily create scripts for other senses (hearing, smell), as well.
This activity gets students out and about in the school in small groups, practicing an effective grounding strategy in actual locations most likely to trigger anxiety and dysregulation.
Download includes detailed instructions, discussion questions, alternative and extension ideas, scripts for the exercises, and sample BINGO cards.
