Teachtown enCORE is a standards-based, core curriculum built on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for students with moderate to severe disabilities. –Teachtown enCORE
Teachtown enCORE is a full, standards based curriculum for special education classrooms. It is an all encompassing curriculum to include reading, math, writing, science, and social studies. I can show you how to use Teachtown enCORE!
What is Teachtown enCORE?
Teachtown enCORE is a standards based curriculum for students with moderate to severe disabilities that offers access to the general education curriculum. Within the program are units with 2 books per unit. Within the units are activities that align to the books in the areas of reading, math, writing, science, and social studies.
How do I teach it?
Teachtown enCORE is great because it breaks down each lesson with a script and all materials needed per lesson. I plan a month at a time using enCORE. The best thing about Teachtown enCORE is that is covers all subject areas. No more pulling curriculum from a million directions to cover all bases. I teach each book per unit for 2 weeks, so 1 unit will take me a month to complete. As I’m prepping for the month, I will print and copy any of the worksheets we need, manipulatives, sentence strips, etc.
How do I prep it?
There is A LOT of materials that go along with each lesson. I have found that the best way for me not to get overwhelmed is to teach each book per unit for 2 weeks. This makes the pacing much more manageable for me, and it gives my students more time to learn the material and skills. When I am prepping for the month, as I print the worksheets I write what day of the week I need them in the date line. Then, I copy and file them in my monthly Teachtown enCORE binder. After school or on my planning, I will refill my centers for the next day’s activities. I do not laminate any of these materials since we only use them two weeks at a time. This cut down on a lot of prep time.
What to Use Day to Day
I keep the materials for the unit we are working on in a binder, and I pull the materials out each day as we need them. I use a three inch binder for this since the books themselves take up a lot of space.
Within the binder, I use page protectors to store all my materials. I print each level of the story and staple it together like a book. You can laminate and bind, but I typically choose to just print and staple since we only use the stories for 2 weeks. I also copy, cut, and label all my lesson materials and store them in page protectors in the binder. I use post it notes to label what materials are needed for what day. This makes pulling daily materials a breeze!
How to Store Materials
As we complete activities, I file them by unit and book in my filing cabinet to store for the following year. Moving the materials from my monthly binder to storage cuts down on clutter and helps me keep all materials together. This organizational system as been a total life saver! The materials can become overwhelming quickly, so it is imperative to have an organizational system that makes sense to you.
Starting a new curriculum can be extremely overwhelming. I hope these tips will help make it simple! Do you use Teachtown enCORE in your classroom? Check out this blog post on how to get funding for curriculum in special education!