Hello and welcome to another episode of PATINS TV.
My name is Jim Lambert and I'm one of the PATINS Specialists.
Today I want to show you some very low-tech ideas that can be used in life skills classrooms
or any classroom as a matter of fact.
[intro music]
As you can see here I've been to office supply stores and I've got a cardboard box,
some card stock paper and some self adhesive foam board.
Let's look at ways that these three items can be used to create tools to use in your
classroom.
Let's first look at the piece of cardstock.
I'm going to fold the cardstock in half to create a tent.
And... with two pieces [sound of Velcro pulled apart] of Velcro attached to the outside of the tent
and one piece attached into the inside of the tent, this now becomes a simple choice board.
I set this one up to make choices of what I would like to eat at lunch.
Do I want hamburger or do I want pizza?
I'm going to select the pizza. I place it inside the cardstock folder and I have made my choice.
Then what I want for lunch is selected so when it's time to go to lunch and the grass
looks greener in that serving line, I have to learn to live with the choice that I've made.
This is very simple and easy to make.
Instead of using just Velcro, I would recommend using something called Dual Lock.
It's a little stronger than Velcro and the nice thing about this is you don't have to worry
about having the rough or the smooth side to the Velcro.
Each piece of Dual Lock hooks in together with itself.
Now let's look at what can be done with a 6 by 6 inch cardboard box.
After assembling the box and taping it, I now have a cube.
WIth this cube I can take either laminating film or sheet protectors and on each of the sides of the box
I can tape those, either laminating film or sheet protectors, along three sides.
I now can now on each side of the cube slide anything in here that I would like to be working with the students.
If I want to be working with colors, I could have colors. If I want to be working on numbers, I could have numbers here.
Or if I want to be working on recognizing symbols from Boardmaker, I could be doing that.
The nice thing about this is when I'm done we can throw it off the table or we can be
sitting on the floor and groups playing with this.
You can even use two cubes and have one cube for nouns and the other cube for verbs and have the kids
create simple, fun, wacky sentences this way.
The last thing I want to look at today is the self-adhesive foam board.
All students now are expected to be able to write short sentences and this is a great way to
help them do that.
I just took the idea of magnetic words to a different level.
What I've done is attached either text, a symbol, or symbol and text
to the self-adhesive foam board,
so that the students can arrange these on their desk to create a simple sentence.
For example, I... see... the... blue... bird.
They've just created a sentence. They've shown you something they know.
They became writers. They've become authors.
I hope you enjoy the simple low-tech ideas to use in your classroom and they will help you
and your students have an enjoyable, successful school year.
[upbeat outro music]