Welcome back to the podcast episode 98 and can you feel summer coming? 2021… 2022 is almost in the finished basket. And they say that knowing full well, but one of my campuses is now on an extended year. So we end in mid June and we start in July. Wish me luck. But for those of you guys who are starting summers soon, we've got an amazing podcast episode for you today. And hopefully a fun one. So I hope you're in a good mood, are you in a good mood because I'm in a good mood, and we're gonna get this party started, pun intended.

In this podcast episode:

• Party Theme Ideas

• How to Have A Party Planning Unit

  1. Week 1: Planning the Date

  2. Week 2: Budgeting for the Party

  3. Week 3: Shopping for the Materials

  4. Week 4: Room Familiarisation

Transcript of the Episode:

Okay, know that this is all about parties. But it's not just about the party. I mean, with O&M is it ever just about the thing that we are doing? Here's the deal, so often, we teach one lesson and then we either repeat that lesson until we are bored or the student has mastered it, or until it's been like three lessons in. And then we haphazardly move on to the next lesson. And there's very little continuity between them. And this is a way that we've been taught to do things. And so we're indoctrinated to believe that this is normal and this is how it should be done.

So for example, we might have been teaching an L shaped route to a grocery store. We'll do that three times. You know, I do, we do, you do, typical scaffolding, and then they do it, and then we move on. And now we're doing another L shaped route. But to convenience store, if we are lucky, we have the privilege to take the learner to their actual grocery store. But most of the time, we're asking them to generalise these skills. Because we either don't have the car or the time or the resources, or the location ability to take them to their actual grocery store. Either way, it's not about the grocery store. It's about the fact that we have a habit of haphazardly moving between lessons. And while that can be cool, like O&M is super fun. And if you can take people on a joyride here and go over there and explore this place in that place, and you're working towards your goals, there is a much better and easier way to do things.

So today, we're going to deep dive into the power of creating units in our ECC classes, specifically, with parties in mind. Moving haphazardly between lesson subjects leaves little room for expansion of understanding. Instead, if we can plan entire units, we can then build on our learners skills to help them solve the real world problems that they will face when they are not with us. And what better way to do that than with a fun party. May is a great time to introduce party planning unit, because they're fun, and they're less work. And to be honest, my brain is a little mushy by now.

Personally, I'm wrapping up three different assessments on the same week and all the learners have the same initials. It's been super fun. Okay, okay. But that's not the real why the real why has more to do with it being in line with SBOE and how general education classes teach. They don't just teach one lesson and then move on. They teach in units. Why? Because it allows for the work to build on one another. Units are groupings of sequential lessons by theme, topic, a step in the process, skill, essential question, etc. that are components of the course. They have their own objectives that appear within the course.

For us also, units are project based learning. Project Based Learning, I'm going read this excerpt because it's more eloquently stated than anything I could say, project based learning is more than just a teaching method. It is a revitalization of education for students, so that they can develop intellectually and emotionally. By using real world scenarios, challenges and problems, students gain useful knowledge and skills that increase during their designated project periods. The goal of the complex questions or problems is to develop and enhance student learning by encouraging critical thinking, problem solving teamwork and self management. The project's proposed question drives students to make their own decisions, perform their own research and review their own and fellow students processes and projects.

This is how we do things in the real world. And teaching party planning was actually introduced to me by Barbara Miles at a workshop that I went to. I cannot find the information anywhere, so if you have it, send it over, because I would love to cite her. I can't remember exactly what her research showed. But the main theme was that if you teach a party planning to learners with deaf blindness, that allows their connection and their communication skills to develop. And it also brings forth the opportunity for them to start planning things in advance because their lives are so here and now often, that they lack the ability to plan in advance. And planning in advance is a skill that we all need in order to do things like get a job.

Party Theme Ideas

Some of my favourite party themes, we’ll go into this and then I'll break down how to plan your party unit and what you need. And how to break it down into three or four weeks or what to do or what to pick and choose if you only have a few. My favourite party themes of course right now are summer. I mean, because who doesn't need a reason to just celebrate the sun and summer.

If you're going the more morbid route like I've done in the past, a pancake party works wonders. It's also very messy but it's delightful. Just celebrating the fact that your learner's did not get smashed by pancakes. So at the pancake party what we've done before is either have microwavable pancakes and the learners chose their toppings. This was an entire class all of O&M students, or you can bring a griddle each have their own bowl, choose their toppings and then a teacher… I want to say fries a pancake, I guess you do, you fry a pancake. I think Jim Gaffigan has a joke about that somewhere.

Along the same topic, if you're allowed to bring in food, just trying different foods, maybe international or maybe different types of foods, or your learners might be into YouTube and a lot of the young YouTube stars have food challenges, where they have to eat like all the same food colour or things of the same letter, something of that nature. I personally have been seeing different chip flavours come out recently, who wants to give me an amen for that one, I want a gaggle of kids, we're gonna have a chip party, we're gonna try the ice cream flavoured chips. We've already dried the pizza roll flavour, they are amazing what other kinds of flavours or chips are there. Or whatever your party theme is, let's break down how to have a party planning units. So that you can have so much fun. And of course, take this information and use it as you wish.

So I like to do it with four weeks or four lessons. So if you have a learner that has one lesson, a week, if you have the next four weeks or even if you have the next three weeks, this would be the time to do it. If you have a learner that has class twice a week, you might only need two weeks, or they might need repeated lessons within the unit in order to grasp the concepts. Or you might touch on different aspects of each lesson for your objectives. And also, if you're in clarity, all this stuff is already in your portal, just search at the top search bar party and it all comes right up.

How to Have A Party Planning Unit:

There are four different lesson plans. I apologise, there are three different lesson plans. The fourth one is to host the party. You don't need a lesson plan for that, as well as all the materials and lists and everything. All right there for you.

a. Week 1: Planning the Date

So the first week, you're going to sit down with a calendar. Yep, calendar skills, right? Yeah, I'm getting there. And you're gonna plan the date of the party, the day and the time and the location and then start to talk about who do you want to invite and if there will be a theme. That conversation can take like five minutes. And then you roll right into writing the invitations.

If you are a TVI, or speech language pathologist or AT specialist, pull out whatever IEP goals you're already working on to write those invitations. You'll also right now have the opportunity to include ideas about address systems, which I highly suggest including no matter what your job description is. And at the end of your lesson, you can either mail or deliver your invitations. You could also do this over email pretty easily, or however you want to do it.

b. Week 2: Budgeting for the Party

Week two! week two, you're going to budget for the party. This is when you get to bring in money, budgeting, shopping, counting, picking the items or the food. I like to teach list creation in a very specific way. I have the learner determine all five components of the actual item. That way when they get to the store, there's less actual decisions to be made. Because there's so many variations and if they're new to soliciting assistance, or shopping in general, or these are new items for them, we want to set them up for success as best as possible. So the five components are the item itself, #duh right? You could just write eggs on your shopping list. But you also want to know the brand name. And if it's produce, it might just be organic or generic.

And then we want to know the flavour, or maybe put a descriptor in there. We want to know the size. And we want to know the price. For each category within the food products, those are going to look a little different. Because you may or may not have a family pack of cheese, or you may not have a large bag of onions and a small bag of onions, it might just be a bag of onions. And of course eggs come in a different size. And milk comes in a different size. These are all great concepts to talk about. But if you just put eggs on the shopping list, you don't talk about them until you're also in the grocery store, battling the environment, the noises, the orientation, everything else. So the second thing is to budget for the party.

c. Week 3: Shopping for the Materials

Then the third one is to shop for the party. That's super fun, you can bring in soliciting assistance. Travelling to the grocery store, you can park far away from the grocery store, travelling within the grocery store. Again, if you are any type of related service staff, and you have the ability to go shopping for the party with your learner, you can incorporate your IEP goals into this. This is not just O&M.

d. Week 4: Room Familiarisation

And then the fourth week you decorate, which is room familiarisation. Yeah, you got it. And you have a party, including your social skills. Maybe you've come up with some, some little one liner jokes. Maybe you've come up with like a social skills game. Maybe you've talked to the SLP and they're in on it too. And they've got some games, or some turn taking things that they can bring in. Maybe you've talked to the a PE teacher or the PE teacher and they are loaning you some hula hoops, or some balls or some scooters. There are so many different ways that you can go about this party planning unit. The key is just to make it fun for you and your learner so that you have something to look forward to at the end of the year. And so that you as the teacher aren't struggling to figure out what to teach. The key component here is also to reinforce the skills that you learned before in that lesson.

So week one, you're going to do some things. But then week two, you can bring out the calendar again. You can bring out address systems again. You can bring out the theme again. And build on it so that way the repetition gets embedded in their brain and it gets assimilated more and look at that. You're solving real world problems because who doesn't want to be able to throw a party when they're older?

Now I know I know I know some of you guys are like house I don't have that long of a time. We have other things it's now field trip season. How do I make this work? I can't do this because I can't do this because brand. Just do one lesson. Or have it be a party just between you and your learner. There is nothing wrong with going to the grocery store to buy some popcorn, or chocolate pudding. And that being your party, and yes, I do use the milk from the cafeteria, it's fine. And any of these ideas can be scaled up scaled down, go to the left, go to the right. However you want to implement this that aligns with your IEP goals go for it. This unit can be taught in a variety of seasons, it can be taught to a variety of different levels of learners, it can be taught in a variety of different related service subjects.

Okay, so I know that this was kind of a short one, I hope that you enjoyed it. Party planning is definitely a lesson that I thoroughly enjoy. And sometimes I forget that the things that I teach on not everybody else teaches on if you're in clarity, hop into your portal, it's right in there just search party and it'll pull right up. And if you're not in clarity, then DM me and get in with us. We have workshops every month, and an entire library of 150 plus lesson plans and we are adding to them every single month and we are hiring mentors to come in and teach you guys even more than I possibly can. I'm really really excited about what's to come and clarity. Alright friend if you enjoyed this let me know on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn at Allied Independence and we will talk next week. I hope you can use this information to take a step forward into your best self.

You know that feeling when you've been rushing around all day. Your kids need food your students need to be scheduled. It's five minutes before your next lesson, and you have no plans. Teaching during a pandemic has had many challenges. Wouldn't you agree? One of which being it takes so much longer to plan for a remote O&M lesson, then he did to plan for a face to face lesson. But that's not a problem anymore because my friend we have got you covered. Your Allied Independence community stepped up. And we've bundled together eight remote O&M lesson plans that can be taught virtually or distance all created by your community and customisable to your individual students unique needs in five minutes or less. You want ‘em? I know you do. All you have to do is go to Allied Independence online.com forward slash remote R E M O T E and grab your copy. Eight free O&M lesson plans so you can start spending your time doing what you do best and that my friend is teaching.