Finding Independence in the classroom.

This year, a wonderful reading teacher opened up her classroom to me allowing me one of my favorite classroom corners. I have learned so much from her just from being in that classroom this year. Often we have the same students on our caseload and we have found a mutual tool that has worked well for many students. It is easily affordable to access and implement. One of her big challenges with a small classroom of students is that many of the students needed individual attention to work on reading strategies- yet couldn't work independently on selected tasks to allow for the differentiated instruction in the classroom. Of course, the OT goals were focused on increasing functional skills, improving academic independence as well foundation technology skill development. We have found that a membership to www.raz-kids.com website has been a very useful tool for many of our students. I am in 5 different schools this year and have shared it now with almost 4 different classrooms for kids in grades 1-11 with varying reading levels and abilities addressing many different individual goals. It is another educational technology tool that I have added to my bag of tricks. There are also some nice content books to introduce lessons. I've also used some of the books this year in sessions while working on body awareness, some social skills, feelings identification as well as overall functional problem solving and choice making. The one thing that would make this site better... is a possibility for accessibility features such as the inability to click out of books until completed, the option of not showing the arrow key to advance until the reading is completed, and an option for scanning for my switch users. I love that it is an online service with constant upgrading.