About Mrs. Mays

I teach a self contained special education class at Kennedy Elementary School in Winder, GA

Playground fun

Learning Job Skills

At three times during the day, the students in our class have jobs to do to learn domestic and vocational skills. In the morning one student takes attendance

In the morning one student takes attendance, one does the lunch count, one checks and records the weather, one changes our special on the schedule, and one sets the calendar.

After lunch one student wipes out the kitchen chairs, one wipes off the placemats, one cleans the counters, one sweeps the floor and one washes the dishes.

In the afternoon one student empties our trashcans, one wipes down the desks and tables, one vacuums the rug, one starts the laundry in the washing machine and one wipes down the bathroom surfaces. We have a couple of 6th grade peer buddies who come over from the middle school to help with the afternoon jobs (thanks boys!).

Here are some pictures of the kiddos doing some of their afternoon jobs during the first few weeks of school. (The jobs rotate every week so the kids have a job for 5 days at a time).

AHS cheerleaders

On the last Friday of each month, Mr. Butcher has special groups come greet the students in the morning as they arrive at school. Today the Apalachee High School football players and cheerleaders were outside and in the halls to welcome the kids. Some of the cheerleaders even came by our room to see the students who were overwhelmed by the crowds in the hall!

Life Skills

While we learn academics like reading, writing and arithmatic in our class – we also work on life skills that students will need to live as independently as possible.

Today in math we counted dollars to see how we could buy things to take care of pets.

 

We also read a recipe and followed directions to make “animals on the trail”.

Egg-citing Science!

We have been learning about animal parents and babies and know that birds lay eggs in nests and baby birds hatch out of the eggs. This week, we conducted a science experiment to see what kind of nest would best protect an egg.

We made three types of nests – a cotton nest, an egg carton nest and a balloon nest. Each student made a guess or *hypothesis* about whether or not each nest would protect the egg.

our three nests

Dr. Mays put an egg in each nest and dropped it. Which nest do you think kept the egg from breaking?

Cotton nest:

 

 

Egg carton nest:

 

Balloon nest:

 

After we conducted our experiment, we organized our data into a chart and used that chart to make a conclusion. We compared our conclusion to our hypotheses to see if we were correct.

Our conclusion was that cotton nests protect eggs. Egg carton nests and balloon nests do not protect eggs. This is good because birds can’t blow up balloons or cut egg cartons to make their nest but they can find soft things to build their nest out of!