As September,  Yes!  September draws to a close I can say that time has flown by. My students have transitioned fairly well to life at a new school. We are blessed to have a staff that is welcoming and sensitive to the needs of our children. We had a great lesson on force and motion during the middle of September. Our regular education third grade class joined with three out of the four classes in our department and participated in activities and races using various items that produced force and motion. We had an old-fashioned tug of war, airplane test flights, push and pull scooter races, sling shot target practice and straw and ping pong ball blowing races. This past week we utilized our reading resources from News-2-You and the Ryder Cup Golf story that was featured and attempted golfing (putting) and bowling. Needless to say it has been a busy month and trying  to get students to attend to and follow a schedule has been challenging. We are slowly making progress in the use of technology within the classroom. I have plans to begin using laptops within the classroom in the coming weeks. I have already introduced the laptops during small group instruction this past week.
      During my introductory lesson I had to move away from the laptop to help one of the students and when I looked down a student had pulled the laptop in front of him, turned it on and proceeded to imitate typing. It was obvious to myself and the assistants in the room that he has been exposed to a laptop before and new exactly how to use one. When I relayed the information to his mother she started laughing and said that when she is doing work from home is constantly trying to get on her computer. On the other hand, I have a student who would never go to a computer and to have her sit for periods of time was almost out of the question. Just in the past week we have gotten her to sit in front of a computer and choose by pointing to an activity that she would like to do.
     I am fortunate to have an assistant, a student specific assistant and the occupational therapist willing to help with laptop usage. All of my students will be paired with an adult when learning how to log in and complete lessons on how to use a mouse to control the cursor which will be a lesson that will need to be repeated until my students are able to log in and control a mouse with minimal adult prompting.

   I am stilling looking for and researching ideas for using laptops as centers within the classroom. I ideas and activities that can be modified for verbal and non-verbal students. Please let me know if you have any ideas.