Consider this the first installment of what I hope will be a weekly recap of collaborative JARS lessons. In the spirit of "Cinco de Mayo," I worked with a fellow SLP and one of our favorite special education classroom teachers to facilitate a silly, fun and engaging routine activity.We started out with a dramatic reading of "Dragons Love Tacos
," (which, FUN FACT! - is also available in Spanish as Dragones y Tacos (Spanish Edition)
.) I take full responsibility for potentially making the reading TOO dramatic as two of our kids started crying when the dragons burned the house down towards the end.Rest assured, I showed them the picture of the rebuilt house and told them it was going to be OK. Dragons are very good samaritans and they did not mean to burn the house down. It was the darn spicy salsa.I really exaggerated the word HATE because:1) Dragons really HATE tacos and2) It's an important concept for kids to learn and will start to introduce them to the idea of opposites and antonyms (love vs. hate.)We defined hate as "don't like" and the adults in the room gave examples of things we hate. I, for one, HATE olives and cars that honk their horns too much. I shared that with the class. The kids with noise canceling headphones were empathetic. I mean they didn't say it, but I imagined they might be haha.The kids then transitioned from circle reading time to their tables where they went through with the joint action routine schedule (JARS) to create SILLY tacos.
Once the students finished following directions to create their silly tacos, they were prompted to feed the hungry dragon, signal that they finished and get the attention of an adult to ask for a snack. Today's snack of choice was chips and ::drumroll please:: SALSA!!Mild salsa only, but if you're brave you can bring in some spicy salsa for your kids.The visual schedule is currently available in English AND Spanish on the TpT store. Check it out! And please comment and share if you decide to do this with your kiddos.
Update: I repeated this lesson from my fourth and fifth graders and they enjoyed it just as much as the kindergarten class. They were also able to follow the schedule more independently and practice their reading skills.
