February is a time for love.  I love my job, but sometimes, love hurts. When I started working in the schools in self-contained programs, I was kind of thrown in without any training of what to do if a student tried to hurt me.  Honestly, I was pretty naive, and never even thought it would happen.  My first three years went without a hitch.  I worked with students in self-contained rooms for students with cognitive impairments.  Then, my fourth year, I was placed in two self-contained rooms for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).  I thought, "Ok, I've got this too."  I was not totally new to working with students on the spectrum, however, I had not worked with non-verbal students on the spectrum before. To say that year was difficult for me is an understatement.  The first time I was grabbed, I was shocked!  I didn't know what to do.  I was also kicked, scratched and hit a lot that year.  Nobody in the room was trained on what to do to avoid or escap...

I was contacted to check out a new app that focuses on verbs.  As you know based on my last post, I am always looking for ways to target verbs.  This new app is called Learning: Verbs by Language Concepts. This is a very simple app that targets only receptive language learning of verbs.  It starts with you choosing which verbs to target.  Initially, you can choose from 22 different verbs, but there is also an option for you to add your own, which I will show you in a minute.  After you choose your verbs, you can choose how they will be displayed for your student.  You have a choice of one, two, three, or four verbs presented at a time.  You can also decide if you want text on the page that states the verb, audio, and feedback after the student answers. For my first session, I chose four pictures with audio, text, and feedback.  The audio does not happen automatically, I had to push the speaker button to hear the audio recording.  After I pushed it, the speaker said, "Show...