Carpe D-Em's Blog

Hello S'cool Moves Friends,

Thanks to Becky Darst and her second day class looking for more Daily Five activities to enliven their reading stations, we are in the final stages of completing our Brain Spark Reading Flips. Our video of her class is posted on our YouTube channel at dwschoolmoves. If you have a product you want us to make, let us know. The entire focus of our products is "reality." We want you to love using our materials, and we want them to be loved by your students. We test drive all materials in real classrooms with experienced teachers. Often, we have to revise products many, many times before they are easily usable by teachers and students. We had a lot of fun designing our new Brain Spark Reading Flips. Coming to your classroom soon…

Thanks for all you do for children, Deb

Hello From my Shasta, CA office. Ah, it is good to be home and just in time to decorate for the holidays. I had a terrific time at the Therapies in School Conference in Framingham, MA where I enjoyed meeting so many interesting people. Of special note is Debra Widmer-Reyes who is doing some amazing collaboration with her Collaboration Kindergarten approach. Check out her website at http://www.taap-project.com. I learned from Dr. Meira Orentlicher, professor at Touro Unversity in NYC, that the challenges we've been experiencing with therapists going into classrooms is due to where the money is coming from to pay therapists.
Schools can use up to 15% of their budgets for collaboration. If Medi-Cal is covering a therapists session, they require pull-out at this time, but the powers that be are trying to change this.
She said in her keynote that these are the parameters for a therapy session:  working with the student directly, modifying the home or school environment, parent training and consultation, working with the teacher and/or other professional to identify or model effective strategies, developing routines for daily implementation, contacting a physician or outside therapist about a student's physical or mental health, or reevaluating.

I am working on my reading book at this time. So many of you have asked me to get this done, so I am working on it when I can. I am going to design templates to plug-in (not push-in) students using S'cool Moves materials and whatever other techniques you like.
I hope you will consider posting and begin the chatting soon. I am getting lonely out here in cyberspace!
Happy Holidays to you all and thanks for all your support this year. It has been a wonderful year!  Debra Em