Ipad Apps: What I use everyday

iPads are such and amazing tool for our students, and I just love that mine love social skills apps as much as they do.

I use my iPad daily for exciting things like data tracking and keeping track of my calendar, but I also like to pull it out every once in a while to use with my students.  I don't like to use it every session for most of my kids, but for my non-verbal kiddos, technology like these are a lifesaver.

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Special Education Referrals and Meetings: Organization

One of the things I always used to say on interviews was that I was highly organized.  I thought I was, until I started working and realized that my organizational skills were only a fraction of what I needed to survive as a school psychologist.

One of my many jobs is case managing new special education referrals that come in to our school.  With multiple timelines, and multiple referrals at once, I found early on that if I didn't find a system for tracking these, I would be in the trenches faster than you can say "60 day federal timeline".  :)

I came up with a spreadsheet for tracking all referrals, and a cover sheet, I use for my own testing, that I am now on my third year of using (I don't like to share success of things until they have proven effective for a while).

You can find this (Freebie!!) download on my TPT store, or create one yourself.

Here's how and why this has proven a successful tool for me:

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Facilitating Friendship Skills: Friend Files

While many of my students were vacationing and beaching, I spent my summer in the comfy air-conditioned office of one of our schools (no complaints there), helping my little sunshines learning social skills and more.  One of my favorite things I have done since working as a School Psychologist is running a week long "social skills" camp, that focused a lot on friendship skills and getting along with others.  My first summer working, I needed an activity that facilitated my little sunshines asking questions to each other to learn about what their friends liked.


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