Saturday, November 28, 2009

"A Christmas Carol" Theme Unit

This blog entry is a work in progress, feel free to comment to contribute!

For the month of December (as there is not a full Unique Curriculum Unit and I am missing creating my own units) my class will be doing a unit on "A Christmas Carol".  We will be working from Pete's Sensory Story version and most of our activities will stem from that simple retelling.  Here are some of the resources we will use.

Pete's Sensory Stories - A Christmas Carol
This sensory story version is a slide show with sound effects and simple animations which is activated by switch.  Meanwhile the teacher reads from the script which comes with the slideshow while the teacher and aides expose the students to related sensory experiences, like touching a chain or smelling cinnamon.  I will also have large TOBI (true object based icons) of the characters which have textures added to them for the students.


Multi-Media
Audio Retellings
Our classroom iPod will also be loaded with a couple of audio versions of the story.
Videos

Academics

Math
  • patterns of either real cranberries and popcorn in garland (note: this is a CHOKE HAZARD do not use if students may place items in mouth) or symbols/photos of popcorn and cranberries
  • add and subtract sets to 5, 10 or 20 using chocolate gold coins (or symbols of them)
History
Life Skills
  • using Victorian Paper Dolls practice dressing for the weather and compare and contrast clothes now vs. then

Arts and Crafts
  • cranberry and popcorn garland (note: this is a CHOKE HAZARD do not use if students may place items in mouth) or make other dried fruit garland (in the Victorian era all sorts of dried fruit were used)
  • make Christmas Crackers (video directions)

Sensory
  • bin of cranberries and popcorn (note: this is a CHOKE HAZARD do not use if students may place items in mouth)

Vocational
  • shop for and package hygiene items into kits to give to a homeless shelter (Dickens was the benefactor of a shelter for women)

Cooking

Community Based Instruction
  • See a local production of A Christmas Carol
  • See the movie version of A Christmas Carol
  • Bring donations to a charity in the community
CC Bingo                                                                                                                                                 

      3 comments:

      1. Thanks Kate- I will pass this on to the teachers at my school.
        Jeannie

        ReplyDelete
      2. Hi Kate,
        How did you make the larger icons? I see the pictures on your bingo boards but am unable to copy and enlarge. I can only grab part of the picture. Thanks for any help!
        Marianne

        ReplyDelete
      3. I cut the images out of the Power Point story from Pete Wells into Boardmaker and stretched the symbol squares. I posted the bigger image files on Adapted Learning if you want them. Kate

        ReplyDelete

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