[ Post a Response | Games, Thematic Units, and Class Lessons ]
Posted by pat on 5/31/2007, 10:21 pm, in reply to "Thematic Units" I find that my students love the themes and the rich and varied exposure they get to the thematic vocabulary and concepts through these activities really enhances learning. We pre- and post-test the thematic vocabulary every month, and even my lower functioning students regulary score 80% and above on receptive vocab, and the verbal students are at the level, too, on expressive vocabulary. I also use many of these materials in my pull-out therapy with regular ed students and students in learning support. There are many ways to go with thematic teaching. This is what works for me. Hope this helps! Pat Mervine
68.82.46.218
Are you working with regular ed or special ed? In the classroom or pull-out therapy? Nearly all of my therapy is thematic. I collaborate with the teachers to determine what theme will fit with their curriculum. In special ed, we do mostly themes related to holidays, seasons, and life skills. Boardmaker is used for everything. The materials that I've published through Mayer-Johnson Co. are essentially the thematic curriculum that we use. I CAN COOK, TOO! and ART FOR ME, TOO! provide lots of hands-on experiences along with choice-making, expressive communication, following directions, etc. PRINT 'N PLAY GAMES, PRINT 'N PLAY BEGINNERS BINGO, PRINT 'N LEARN THEMATIC UNITS, and PRINT 'N PLAY DICE GAMES all provide oodles of activities that can be used with classrooms or small groups to rehearse lots of skills, and they are all centered around a core vocabulary. A new product is coming out very soon -- Scene Detective -- which is an interactive, on-screen computer game of I SPY with three levels: symbol matching, finding symbols by spoken label, and matching text to symbols. It requires Boardmaker 6 to play.
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