State Reports for Special Learners

My class had a blast studying the beautiful state of California. I teach a moderate to severe 4-6th grade special education class. As you know, studying state history is part of the 5th grade curriculum. In hopes of making it possible for my students to participate in the general education curriculum, we studied our beautiful state and even completed state reports. It also was a really fun theme for Back-to-School Night! I hope the following pictures can be inspirational and helpful for your own state history unit.

My students watercolored on the California map. Then, my aides and I cute them out and glued them on black paper. This created the cover for their state report book (upper left square). The pages of their state reports were created using Teaching Special Thinkers Spring Easy Art Pack. I modified it a bit to correlate with California's flower, butterfly, and bird. 

The state report books were displayed on their desks for Back to School Night. 

I printed out pictures of various missions in California. Each students was able to choose a different mission. The students then watercolored them. They looked beautiful when they were done. 

Below the "California Missions" bulletin board is a California timeline utilizing magnetic numbers. 

We had so much fun building our mission! 

We also panned for gold and talked about the difference between "Golden Good Choices" and "Rocky Bad Choices."

 We cannot forget about Hollywood! Each student received an award and got a fun candy ring.

My students also put their handprints on the Hollywood "window" and took pictures on the red carpet.