The class finishes watching an age-appropriate video about reptiles and mammals. The teacher says, “Okay everybody, let’s take out our science journals and write one sentence to answer this question: What are some differences between reptiles and mammals?” What the curriculum hopes to assess is: Does the student understand the difference between reptiles and mammals? … Read more
Intellectually, I am aware that “science” does not mean “mixing a bunch of bubbling purple liquids together”. But like, doesn’t it feel like sometimes it SHOULD? We did “science” today in my OT room. (I accidentally referred to us as wizards and our work as potions a couple of times and was promptly corrected.) I … Read more
One of my kids who does not like to write and feels particularly threatened by writing, really does like to have some kind of transition object to hold in the hallway while we walk from their class to my therapy gym. We have experimented with lots of different options. A couple of months ago I … Read more
This was from a session in which a child and I were pretending that he was exploring space. We built a space pod out of tents and filled it with cardboard box “panels” on which I drew various buttons. I made sure to make some of the buttons interesting and write various labels on them, … Read more
While I was writing some goals for a student’s IEP, I thought about what it would look like in a world where we had developed the system differently. Instead of writing goals to say how I think I’ll change a child over the course of the year, I could write goals about how we’ll change … Read more
Most of us who are trying to work in a way that is aligned with our values have so many moments of doubt. Are we actually doing a “skilled intervention” we are billing for? Is the work we are doing truly making an impact on the child’s life? Are we inadvertently causing harm? Is … Read more
Somebody asked me the other day if I’ve ever written a post defining what modeling is. I haven’t, but it’s a good idea since I suggest modeling things for children basically constantly. 🙂 I think I probably picked up the language from time in the AAC (augmented/alternative communication) community, because there’s a growing push and … Read more
People ask me semi-often about learning “letter formation”, or, to put it in other terms, what would be the “right” way to teach children letters? (assuming that they WANT to learn to write letters…none of this information will be nearly as relevant if they are being FORCED to learn to write letters.) There is technically … Read more
There was once an occupational therapist working at a school. The occupational therapist had a young teenage boy on their caseload. They were supposed to see the teenage boy to work on handwriting goals. The therapist could work with him for thirty minutes every week. The therapist spent a lot of time thinking of creative … Read more
I mentioned this idea almost offhandedly in a training recently and it was profoundly exciting to the people in the training— so I’m making it into its own post! Here’s the idea in brief: ask kids to plan ahead, and write their idea down. And then reference your written note about it at a later … Read more