More secret input! (post-story or reading activity)

Here is a secret input activity that I decided to do when I was exhausted and trying to teach on crutches.  Note to self: stop getting injured!!!  This, plus FVR and a post-reading review activity, took up a full hour and they didn't finish.  Hooray, Monday plan!  This secret input activity, with storyasking, was 2+ days.   It qualifies as Some Prep, in that you do have to take pictures, print them, and make a response sheet.

Secret input + being out of their chairs!

Day 1: First, I asked a story.  This story was one I created to teach some structures  for  Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro, and if you have the teacher's guide, it will soon be (or already is!) part of the online supplement.

It was one of those days where I finished the story mid-class, and had to come up with something to do for the rest of the hour.  You may be familiar with this!  Luckily, Martina Bex has lots of great suggestions for what to do in this post:  The story is done but class isn't over.

This is a mural.  

I had the kids grab mini white boards and markers, and introduced a mural to them.  (This step, for me, is really important because they tend to draw comics or more linear drawings, and I wanted something different for this activity.  We draw comics all the time.)  Murals are: non linear, with events happening in different places, all different sizes.


I retold the story from memory (which helps me remember for later when I type it up) while they drew.  I quickly took pictures of each mural.

SOME PREP:  The next day, I typed the story up and made copies for each kid.  Then I quickly imported the murals into google drive* and made a slideshow that could be printed.** I printed it in black and white.Finally, I created this response sheet: 

Click for a downloadable version!  

In class, after some FVR and reviewing the story as a class (this day, I did a volleyball translation, but  you could do any kind of oral reading activity with them or skip it and go straight to the secret input), I posted the murals around the room and gave kids a copy of the story.  They walked around the room, quickly sketching, and started finding the sentences and translating.

Some thoughts about this:  
It took a while for kids to do- longer than I was expecting.
Students were 100% engaged.
They can self differentiate- choosing the sentences that they feel like they can translate.
Some of them went around the room and did all the illustrations first (and then moved on to the next sections),  some did illustration-sentence, and some did illustration-sentence-translation, in that order.

Truthfully, I am playing around with using it as a reading assessment and assessing their translations, but I haven't decided.

STEPS for Murals/Read the Room
1) Find or create a text.
2) Explain what a mural is.
3) Read it out loud and have students draw the action as you read (or retell).
4) Photograph the murals.
5) Create a quick slideshow (or otherwise find a way to print them) and print the murals. (see below for Tech tips)
6) Give each student a copy of the text and the response sheet.
7) Hang the murals around the room.
8) Students look at the murals, quickly sketch one element, then find the sentence in the text. They transcribe the sentence, then translate it.


Technology Tips:  
*How to quickly import photos into GoogleDrive:  install the app on your phone or tablet.  Open the app and tap the + button.  Choose Use Camera, OR, if you have already taken the photos, choose upload.  They will go directly to your drive and are super easy to import into GoogleSlides.

**Change the page size in GoogleSlides.  Open a new Slides document.  Go to File>page set up> Custom.  Type 11 by 8.5.  Now your slides will print nicely.

Lesson Planning: how I power-plan to make day-by-day planning easier

First and foremost, when lesson planning, I need time.  

I need time that is productive for me.  I know that I am a morning thinker.  I can just about manage copies, if they are not complicated, in the afternoons or after school.  Maybe some emails.  (Maybe not, says the teacher that emailed the wrong parents about a kid on Monday afternoon.  #teacherfail.)  For me, this means  I utilize my morning preps and before school time very intensively.  If you haven't thought about your own most productive times, I highly encourage you to do so.  

Something else to consider when thinking about when to lesson plan (which I consider to be a very important step in the process) is to set aside time every week to do so.  Once I started blocking off my morning prep period and before school time on a certain day for lesson planning,  I stopped feeling so overwhelmed.  Mind you, this works for me because I power-plan.  (That is what I will describe below.) Basically, I do all the thinking, resource gathering, etc. in one go (if possible) but none of the prepping (copying, making manipulatives, etc.).  Then, once a week, I power-prep.

Angela Watson over at TruthForTeachers.com (and leader of the 40 Hour workweek) is my inspiration and guide for helping me manage lesson planning much more effectively.  Her advice is why I really only work 40 hours.  

Also, it's worth noting that as a TPRS/CI teacher, I still follow a purchased curriculum.  (SOMOS, by Martina Bex, if you were wondering.)   Now that I have taught most units a few times, I don't necessarily follow it exactly as written, (as in,  I add, drop, create, and personalize more for my context) but it helps me a great deal to have a general idea of what is going to happen.  That being said, if I am starting something new that I have never taught before, it looks very similar, but with fewer resources I've saved to dig through.  And it does take more time. 

Something else that is important to know: I plan ahead.  For example, at the moment, I have one group working on SOMOS 1, Unit 2, and they are about halfway through it.  Another two classes are doing a long-term Food and Flavor unit, adapted from this post.  My Spanish 2s are finishing up Somos 1, Unit 21, Aventura de Camping, before their actual camping trip, but they are nearly done with it (it's short but sweet) so I am going to focus on them first, since they will be first to start a new unit.  

Big picture planning:  

Last year's year at a glance page

I have a scope and sequence for all my classes that I have created through trial and error, and I *roughly* follow it, depending on if I think it was a good idea or not.  I also keep a document like this from Calendarpedia.com every year for each class.  A few times of year, I sit down and write in what units we did, and roughly when I started them and when they ended.  I save these year to year to see what happened previously.

  Based on these two sources, I know that I want to teach SOMOS 1, Unit 14 next.  

If you are feeling overwhelmed by resources, check out this post by Angela Watson.  She has a lot of great material and I credit her for helping me be more efficient.  

Here is what I do  

Step 1: Gather resources
For me, this means: collab files from the Collab drive, paper notes from my paper lesson plan, re-reading what I put in my evernote file, pulling any activities from my paper files, and if I am really on top of things, looking at saved posts from Facebook. 

Paper Files

*For how I organize my electronic and paper materials, take a look at this post.  This helps in the efficiency department as well.* 

What it looked like this week:  First, I pulled out the paper lesson plan from my binder and all the various things I have for unit 14.  I checked out my evernote file, and I skimmed through the Collab drive and found a cool activity that I downloaded.  I saw that I had noted that a lot of my kids were using subjunctive clauses (es importante que, quiero que) in their final writing assessment for this unit, but most were not using it correctly.  Then I remembered that I went to a fantastic session at IFLT18 on using advanced structures with Donna Tatum-Jones, so I pulled up my notes from that session and read those through as well.  Finally, my paper lesson plan had a big sticky that said "escucha activity in file", to remind me to grab the class set of an input-based reading game that I had made previously that is in the manipulatives file.  This whole step took maybe 15 minutes.  


Step 2: Ask Questions

• Do I need an assessment for this?  Hint: the answer is not always yes. 
• Do I have assessments already? Did I like them?  

Note:  I have made it part of my practice to note when assessments aren't great, or need tweaking.  That gets noted in the paper lesson plan, usually on a sticky.  It'd be better if I just fixed it (for next time) when grading them, but sometimes I just don't have the mental capacity to figure out what went wrong.  A note like "no advanced option" or "needs scaffolding" usually suffices, and then I have time to fix those when I actually sit down and plan the next time that I teach.  Click here for more about how I deal with assessments in reading and here for writing. 

• What are the reading resources that are going to get glued in the interactive-ish notebooks?  What else do I want them to glue in? 
• What are the actual things (activities, tasks, readings, story-askings, ClipChats, songs, etc.) that we are going to spend our time doing? 
• Are any of those resources from Step 1 too good to leave out?  
• CRITICAL QUESTION:  How much time will it take to make those something that is truly input-based and is that a good use of the time I have available?  Is it a 5 minute thing where I gloss some words, or is it recreating the whole thing so it works in my context?  Is it worth it?  

What it looked like this week:  For unit 14, I saw that there was a reading and writing assessment included in the unit, and aside from the note about the subjunctive stuff, nothing I really need to do for those.  For reading resources, I will be asking a story then typing it up, and the song (No Debes Jugar, by Selena) has an amazing critical thinking activity so that will get glued in.  There is a video viewing guide/graphic organizer included in the plans, so we will use that too.  This took about 5-10 minutes to go through the included resources.  

But I really want to try to use more subjunctive clauses with the kids, so I spent some time thinking about possibilities with that.  Donna had some good ideas, but what I eventually decided to do was to create a challenge activity for the manipulative-input game.  The game is basically a matching activity with a bunch of cards, kids read scenarios and match them together.  In the scenarios, someone says something like "Lo que debes hacer es comer menos azúcar."  (What you should do is eat less sugar.)  I decided it would be really fast to create cards that said the same thing but with a subjunctive clause, so this one would say "Quiero que tú comas menos azúcar."  

I have a program that  allows me to edit pdfs, so I opened that, made a copy of the original game, and quickly rewrote the phrases.  My idea is that I will make separate games of these cards and fast finishers can grab them and read/match as well.  Creating the activity took about 15 minutes.  Deciding what I was actually going to do and going back to my notes from Donna's presentation took about 10 minutes.   Copying, cutting, and sorting the activity will take a long time, but it is mindless and I can do it when I have a chance.

 If you are thinking that I have used up an hour already, well, know that on Monday mornings, I have a block of 2 hours and 15 minutes to plan, even after AM duty at 7:45, so I am still doing ok on time.

In fact, I really liked that activity I downloaded from the Collab Drive, so I opened that document and noticed that all I had to do is make a very few changes to it to personalize it for my students, so I did.  I did not do it in the most efficient way possible; it took about 10 minutes. It should have taken 5 or less.  Oh well.  

Step 3: Plan it out on paper
I use a single sheet that I call my Unit Planner for this step.  I use it to organize what goes in the notebooks and to keep a list of things to Find/Create.  You can download it here.  

What it looked like this week:  Really, step 2 and 3 happen at the same time. I have the unit planner out, and I start writing down what gets glued in and things that I need to create or improve.  As I complete them, I check it off.  

  

If I am doing something radically different than the purchased day-by-day plan suggests, I start writing the sequence of events on a sticky note that will live on the printed lesson plan.  


Step 4: Making the Masters and Prepping to Copy

• Make master copies for students.
• Put things in a protective sleeve to keep them together.
• Make / Modify day-by-day lesson plan packet.
• Put it all in a big folder to save for Copy Day.

Sleeve with master copies for students

What it looked like this week:  As I created the challenge manipulatives activity, I sent one copy to the printer to be the master.  I did the same for the thing from the collab drive.  Then, I grabbed my paper file of student master copies, and made sure that I had a master of everything that I was going to give to the students (with the exception of the story- I will type and copy that once we are done with it).  I found that I was missing a copy of the song activity, so I sent that to the printer too, then walked over to grab my copies.  I made sure I had one master copy and one copy to add to my day-by-day packet, stapled my day by day packet together, and put all the new masters in a sleeve to be copied.

Big folder to save for Copy Day 

The day-by-day plan, the manipulatives, and the sleeve all got put in my Big Folder (which is just a large plastic folder I saved from the trash bin- one of four) to save for Copy Day.  I know I will need a little extra time to make the game, and I will need to get envelopes and colored paper from my secret stash of supplies for it, but I will do that when I make the copies.  No rush.  The planning is done. The copying will happen on Copy Day, when I have something else ready and planned, later this week.  Probably Thursday afternoon, when I have no energy but no one is at the copier.  

Notice that I have not put anything into a day-by-day format at all.  And honestly, I won't do that until the day or so before I actually start this unit, as the previous one winds down.  Then I will probably note a couple of day's worth of activities- bullet points in my lesson plan notebook, because...I already have the lesson plan materials printed out.  All I need in my planner is something that says "start unit 14".  If I need more specific information (like, a breakdown of what activities I am going to do each day) I will do them for 2-3 days at a time, because inevitably something takes a different amount of time than I think it will, and re-writing everything (even in my favorite erasable pens) is not a great use of my time.  

To be clear: when I first started this curriculum, I did write out bullet points for every day, activity by activity.  I needed that structure, so if that helps you, do it.  If it doesn't, I am sure there is something else you'd rather be doing!  

This is a format that I really like, by the way, posted by a user (Janice V) in the SOMOS Collab files.    

Soy Yo as a celebration of diversity (and also a sub plan)

Background: (Feel free to scroll down to the actual plan!)

I had the opportunity to sub for a colleague who was going on a weeklong camping trip with the entire 7th grade.  The plan was that I was going to teach her 6th grade Spanish class.  In order to minimize what she needed to do, I also offered to write my own lesson plans for the week because I wanted to try out some of the great lesson plans I have seen others posting and have had kicking around in the back of my head.  Also, I have developed an obsession with Bomba Estereo and wanted to teach Soy Yo.  Since one day of the week would be taught by a non-Spanish speaking sub, I had to write out plans for that, but for rest of the week I was going to wing it. I mean, I had a loose plan.  But it was very vague.

I spent a week in Moab!  

Well, I did not get a chance to teach it.  Instead, due to a family emergency for another teacher, I also went camping in Moab. For a week. And it was awesome!

So we had a sub for a sub, and no lesson plans.  I threw together a plan in between packing knowing that the sub's sub spoke Spanish.

The feedback I got when I returned was that it was an awesome 3-day plan. (Oops- I hoped it would be four days. Oh well.)  She strongly recommended that I teach it in my other classes and had nothing but good things to say.

So, I will teach it to my others (probably my 8th graders, with some modifications), but I thought that I would share it with the world as I am pretty proud of it.  Scroll down for credits, as I borrowed and adapted lots of great resources from other people.

THE PLAN

Day 1 -INTRODUCTION to SOY YO

This activity was adapted from Elevate Education Consulting

Resources:     

Slideshow for Day 1 (circles of care, etc.)      

Activity handout: Soy Yo                        

Day 1 Teacher plan 

Please note: these are view only files. To edit, please make a copy.

1) Circle of care

Awesome activity borrowed from Anna and Rachelle!

Show first slide and demo circles.

Students WRITE NAMES ON PAPER, draw circles of care.

Lead discussion.  -who is in your circle?  (Can do in small groups too- whatever feels right.)

2) Qualities of people we admire.

Show slide two.  Students can write or think. 

Lead brief discussion. 

3) List of qualities (that have easy Spanish cognates!) in our circle of care

Show side 3

Students will add the qualities they admire to the people in their circles of care. 

They can add qualities that are positive that are not included on the slide. 

4) Share with partners or groups of three. 

"The qualities that I admire..."

Then maybe whole group share. 

5) Independent work

Pass out activity.  Students fill in - there are key structures at the top, and word lists at the bottom.  Help them to understand every word.

6) Soy Yo activity. (movement)

  Show slide 4 -

Explain directions- it is about moving if the statement applies to them, not just standing up if it applies to them.

Read the statements in Spanish.  Translate if they are confused.  (Translation is better than charades.)

7) If time, have them turn the activity over and follow instructions. (Slide 5)

DAY 2 Clip Chat / Modified MovieTalk

(This is not part of the sub plan unless your sub has experience doing ClipChats/Modified Movietalks)

Here is a description of Clipchat / Modified MovieTalk from Martina Bex. 

Resources

Soy yo embedded reading adapted from Sr. Jordan (USE AS SCRIPT for clip chat / modified movie talk)    
 Soy yo song lyrics  

Slideshow Slideshow (Movietalk from Sr. Jordan)   

Please follow the directions on this slide to access Sr. Jordan's materials and read his blog post!   

Video link 

1. Establish meaning: make sure students understand these words: 

se va- leaves
piensa -thinks 
les debo enseñar mi talento- I should show them my talent
toca- plays

2. Narrate: Either use screenshots or the video, and narrate what is happening in the video. Ask lots of questions and make sure students understand what is going on. Use either version of the Embedded Reading for a script or modify for your students. Remember- you want students to understand the words that you are using, not guess! 

3. The carrot: Be sure and let them watch the whole video a couple of times through!

4. Still have more time? If you have extra time, you can pass out the song lyrics and watch the video or just listen to the song.

DAY 3 
Materials     Soy yo embedded reading

Read the embedded reading- read version 1 together, then version 2.

Learn about embedded readings, created by Laurie Clarcq and Michele Whaley, here. 

Reading activity options:

• You could do a volleyball translation (one kid reads the spanish, the other translates to english then reads the next one in Spanish, then the other translates. They are familiar with it.)  Or, go straight to version 2. 
• With whiteboards or blank paper, each kid picks a moment from the reading and draws it (but no words).  Put the drawings around the room and in pairs, kids wander and use the reading to decide which sentence from the reading best describes the picture.  Play the video.  Stop at key moments and have kids in pairs decide what sentence best describes the action.  

¿De dónde eres...?  
Write soy de - I am from and soy- I am on the board, and eres- you are, eres de- you are from on the board
Read some of the the De donde es…slideshow together.   The focus is on nationality and where people are from,  and work in adjectives from day 1 in your discussion.  Ask lots of personalized questions! 

Day 4- Writing

Updated Jan 2022: I would choose not to do his part of the activity with my stronger understanding of comprehension based teaching.  However, I might use this as a sub plan! 

Materials- Soy yo activities and slideshow from day 1 

I was thinking that the first line is Soy yo, then three lines, then last line is soy yo.

Soy YoSoy yo.
Soy interesante y creativa
soy de Colorado
Soy una maestra.
Soy Yo.

They can illustrate them and make them pretty them on blank paper.

Other ideasLyrics training- lyrics training?  https://lyricstraining.com/play/bomba-estereo/soy-yo/HTX6w0ZWzT#b7w

Read about the special flute Saraí uses in the video- https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaita_colombiana

A video of the band singing the song for NPR live- http://www.npr.org/event/music/551210935/bomba-estereo-tiny-desk-concert
http://zachary-jones.com/zambombazo/tag/como-eres/

CREDITS: I have taken a variety of free resources and adapted them for my needs.  I have asked permission for use and re-posting if the resources were not freely posted in public forums.  Copyright is important! 

• Lyrics to song- posted by Donna Graham Rubio (found in the files of the IFLT/NTPRS/CI Facebook group)
• Original embedded reading-  created and posted by Jeremy Jordan. (Here are all his great resources including the original)
• Soy yo screenshots for Movietalk- also by Jeremy Jordan
• Diversity-positive attributes and circles of care activity by Rachelle Adams  (Elevate Education Consulting) and Anna Gilcher, PhD.
• Original Soy Yo activity that I modified, by Leslie Van How Phillips (found in the files of the IFLT/NTPRS/CI Facebook group)
• ¿De dónde eres?... slides posted by Sara Shreiner (found in the files of the IFLT/NTPRS/CI Facebook group)
• Soy Yo movement activity, adapted from Alina Filipescu 

More activities for stories...especially for Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro

My Spanish 1B class of 8th graders is really enjoying Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro.  Here are some more activities (click here for chapters 1-4) for pre, during, and post reading that I have adapted or created.  As I mentioned before, I do not want to violate copyright so some of these activities I can not share, but if you own the teacher's guide, you could make them too!

Chapter 5

Still of video...la mano hace...

PRE-READING
Review hace: I wanted to get reps in of hace because it is new for my kids.  I found this incredible video and word cloud of animals in Spanish.  I did a short Movietalk without really pausing the movie.  The script goes:  "La mano hace ....[animal name].  ¿Qué hace la mano? (You know, for variety.)  Kids had to cross off the word on the word cloud when they heard me say (or saw) the animal name.  Not fancy, but engaging.

DURING READING
 Now What: I created a quick, disposable version of this game using about 8 sentences from Chapter 5.  As I read it out loud, students had to find the most logical ending of the sentence.  I quickly went around the room and checked if the kids were right- we didn't do a choral response just because, well, I wasn't feeling it.  But next time I do the activity, I probably will.  I asked the kids if they liked it- they really did.  It seemed a little unexciting to me, but they really enjoyed it.  Note: I read the story to them and they did not read along with me for this, just had the now what cards in front of them.  I could also see doing this as a paired activity where they face off and can see each other's guess and compete.

Audio Book: I also had students listen to the audio book and read along.  This chapter lends itself very well to audio narration because there both the dog and the boy make dog noises, and it's both funny and engaging.  Students LOVED this too.

POST-READING
Youtube Videos: Finally, we had a few extra minutes in class so we watched this awesome video of a doggie surfing competition.  Because we can.

Chapter 6- the teacher's guide has great activities and supplemental readings for this chapter.

PRE-READING
Check-in writing assessment:  I added a writing assessment that is super easy for the kids after we go over different dog breeds slide show.  They can take guided notes.  (This is based off the resource included in the teacher's guide.)

Click on the link above to see my guided notes for this activity. 

The writing assessment is simply to: Pick two dogs breeds.  Write a short paragraph about each dog.  Be sure to include the following:

·      Description of dog  (You may use your dog breeds page)

·      Is it a good fit for Brandon?  Why or why not?

Story-ask to review vocabulary:  Here is a brief outline of the story.  It includes examples of how I start to include the subjunctive into stories.

Read the Room Predictions:  I also asked kids to write predictions (on the form in the teacher's guide) then used the copy machine to increase the size of the seven or eight most funny, interesting, or weird predictions that were also mostly correct.  (Some I corrected to get that good input.)  As a starter the next day, I put them around the room and students voted for the funniest, most likely to happen, and most creative.  They voted by using little award cut-outs that I have, but you could just have them sign their names or put a star on the one they wanted to vote for!

Helping learners learn how they learn...or how I am turning my classroom into a sensory OT experiment

Many elementary teachers know that some kids truly need supports to learn.  These supports are frequently written into IEPs and 504 plans.  Many parents and OTs are the ones who get these supports written in, and good teachers incorporate the fidgets, lap weights, earphones, etc. into their classroom without a blink.  Other teachers can't get over the idea that "fair is not equal."

I'm not here to judge.

I am here to say that in every english - speaking classroom that I have taught in, there has been a huge sign saying "Fair is not equal."  I taught a series of lessons around this idea: that if Johnny needs (glasses, crutches, a cast on his arm), than it would be silly if everyone in the class also needed that support for it to be fair.  Or...more to the point, if Jane is allergic to chocolate, than to keep things fair, no one should be allowed to eat chocolate.

That's usually the point where kids nod and agree with me: how ridiculous.  Fair is not the same as equal.  They get it pretty quickly, especially once it's normalized.

Now, I can't do everything for everyone but I can do my best.  I can do my best to differentiate, to personalize, to make learning relevant and interesting, and to help kids learn what they need in order to learn.

You see, secretly I have had a lot of experience and training with behavior plans,  observations and tracking of behavior, identifying and data-keeping for IEPs and 504s, and that sort of thing.  I have been incredibly fortunate to work with amazing school psychologists and occupational therapists who have supported, mentored, and guided me as I tried to make my classroom equitable as well as a place for learning.  Those skills are not ones I have had to draw on too much since I moved to my current school.  Truly, I get to focus more on teaching and building relationships with kids, and less on behavior and/or meeting kids' basic needs.

I currently teach in a middle/high income independent (private, not parochial) school.  We do not have IEPs or 504s.  Some students have as many learning needs as in any of my public school classrooms, but our school doesn't have a strong culture, especially in the middle school, of trying to help kids meet those needs with more unusual accommodations.  That's not a criticism.  It just is.  Independent schools work differently.  We work as a staff to meet individual needs in different ways and we do have a culture of making traditional accommodations and modifications.  Both approaches are valid.

http://www.codeshareonline.com/plan-b.html

  But this year, I have been confronted by groups of kids who really struggle with impulse control.  To the point that in one class, I have gone to Plan B a bunch of times.This form is one of my favorites for this kind of formalized data keeping.  I can not recommend it highly enough.) I realized that I needed to go back to some of the strategies that I have used before.  Because there is no reason not to try.
 Seriously frustrating and boring for all!   After watching the kids for the first few weeks of school and thinking deeply about what their behaviors are telling me,  (

I spent a few hours re-reading notes from other accommodations, plans, and searching the web for DIY OT sensory kits.  I realized that many of my most challenging students are sensory seeking (chewing, touching, bouncing, etc.).

As I told them when I started discussing this in class, all those behaviors (not Behaviors!) are well within "normal" human range.  In fact, I am sensory seeky myself: I asked them if they had ever counted how many times I put on chapstick or check my pocket to make sure that it's there.  (One observant student pointed out that those behaviors happen about every 5 minutes.  I think she was being generous!)

I made a plan, a budget (which got a little out of hand...that's what happens when a sensory seeker goes to put together a sensory toolkit!), and a shopping list. I was going to get fidgets, make some lap weights, and whatever else I could find to make my classroom a sensory seeker's favorite place.

I hit up the thrift store, dollar store, winco for bulk rice and beans, and a party supply store just because it was near the dollar store. I ended up with a huge variety of squishy, hard, textured, and soft items.

Best scores:
coiled keychains for chewies (party store) + ziplock bags to keep them personalized
beads, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks  for small fidgets
a bin and vertical magazine storage thing to store it all in
a great Frozen fleece sweater that was repurposed into lap weights - both non gendered and fuzzy!
a huge variety of squishy balls and critters from the dollar store
a variety of pet toys (soft, soothing), duster mitts (textured), and massage tools (hard, pointy), also from the dollar store
lengths of rubber from Amazon for chair fidgets

Homemade weighted lap belts-very popular! 

Tool check out system- very high tech

I knew I wanted some sort of accountability for students to use these "tools" so I also bought some clothespins, and wrote numbers on them (each kid has a number in my class) as well as"Tool check out".  When they check out a tool, they simply move their numbered clip to the correct bin.

I am introducing the tools slowly- and with great success.  The lap weights are the biggest hit so far, followed by some of the squishies and the chair fidgets.  I will follow up this post later...once the magic has worn off.
My biggest take away after two days with them are:
1) Students lit up when I asked them to try something (like a chewy, or a lap weight).  They knew what they needed- they just needed to be told it was ok to need it.  Seriously, the love was overwhelming.
2) I said that I was going to try this so all students could have a chance to learn the best way possible- and maybe other teachers would come on the journey with me if it worked out.  One student told me "well, you are way ahead of the rest of them.  Thanks!"  I reminded her that we are all on a different journey- this is mine, and I don't mind a little contained chaos.