In this video, self‑contained special education teacher Angela Kulcsar (The Autism Helper) presents a comprehensive winter‑themed vocabulary unit designed to provide structure, routine, and academic instruction during the chaotic holiday period. She explains how the unit includes anchor charts, matching activities, cut‑and‑paste spelling tasks, traceable worksheets, and writing supports, each paired with data‑sheet tracking for receptive and expressive language. The resources cover Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s, and general winter words, offering multiple levels of difficulty to meet the needs of pre‑writers, emerging writers, and more independent students. Kulcsar demonstrates a weekly schedule—anchor chart review, receptive/expressive data collection, matching, spelling, and further data tracking—showing how the activities can be integrated into morning meetings, writing centers, or sent home for homeschool connections. The overarching goal is differentiated instruction that reaches every learner in a self‑contained setting, providing consistent practice from November through February.
Chapters
If you are a self-contained teacher, this time between fall break or Thanksgiving or the end of November and winter break is really tricky. Our schedules are out of whack. Students are so excited because there's new and fun things every day, probably dress-up days or candy or parties or all kinds of fun and different things, and it just makes for a stressful and hectic time in the classroom. And so I I want to share one of my favorite things that I did that helped incorporate some structure and routine and academics in the classroom, but it did it in a really fun way. And it was something that I carried all the way through. I always introduced it in winter and I carried it all the way through summer in my classroom. As a self-contained teacher, you know, it is so hard to find a one-size-fits-all solution, and that's why so many of our resources here at The Autism Helper are differentiated. And one of my favorite things to do was use those structured activities in my classroom, especially during low structure times like the time between November and December. Those are just tricky times. And so this winter vocabulary unit, it really does fit all of the boxes. And I used this with prewriters, I use this with writers, and I wanna share with you how I use this. First, you're gonna get a huge page of information on how you can use it, but also every section comes with a data sheet. So you may not be able to use the Christmas words in your classroom, but there's winter words that you can use as well. There's New Year's words, Valentine's Day words, lots and lots and lots of choices here. Um, so I'm just going to show you the Christmas one because that's lots of fun. It comes with an anchor chart, and so it's got the picture and it's got the word on it. Then there are matching activities. So here students can match either picture to picture Or they can match word to word, or you can give them the word page and they can match the picture to the word, or you can give them the picture and they can match word to picture. So really, you've got a million choices here on how students can do this, and you can really meet whatever need they are. You know, if, if students are matching picture to picture, that's perfect. If they're more advanced and they're matching word to word, you've got an activity for that. Also, students can spell words. What I love about this is that this is simply cut and paste. So here we're asking students to be able to cut out and paste. Now, if students can't cut, I would absolutely cut these words for them, have them cut out, and then I would help them glue and then help them put the piece on here. If students are ready for a bigger challenge, but not yet independently writing, there's a traceable version, which is absolutely fantastic. And then if they are ready to write, look, we have boxes to help support that writing right here. So lots and lots and lots of choices. And not only do we have this, like I said, for Christmas words, we have it for New Year's as well. Again, here's this data sheet. So we could do receptive language. And what I would do for that is I would show the New Year's words. Like, first of all, can we just talk about how great those are? I love these images. They're so bright, so colorful. Times Square, New York City, January, countdown, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, resolution, party, celebrate, and midnight. So here are all of the words. And so I could ask students to receptively identify them. I could just have them point, or I could do expressive language, and I could have the child tell me which each one is. I could actually print an extra copy of this and cut these out and use them like flashcards and have the student tell me. Lots of choices there. But not only do I have New Year's Eve, I've got all of those same activities for New Year's. So now I've got something that'll carry me through not just you know, the Christmas time, but New Year's as well. You can see all the different varieties here. I also have Winter Words. Look how cute these are! And not just Winter Words, we also have Vocabulary Valentine's Words. Look at that, aren't those adorable? So really, this will take you through middle of February. This one product, it'll meet most of your learners, if not all of your learners, in that self-contained setting. And it's going to be something structured that you can practice every single day. Um, the way that I did this in my classroom, I'll show you with the Valentine's words. We would pull out the anchor chart, everybody would practice here. Then I would take data and I would do receptive or expressive depending on the student Then that would be on Monday. On Tuesday, we would do a matching activity. On Wednesday, we would come back and I would take expressive or receptive data again. And then on Thursday, we would do a spelling activity. And then on Friday, I would take data one more time, receptive or expressive. So really, you could do this every day and just practice these words. You can incorporate these into morning meeting. You could incorporate these into your writing center, really wherever you want to do. These anchor charts are so great. And you can also send these home, which is phenomenal. I love a good homeschool connection. No matter how you choose to use these in their classroom, I know that with the wide variety of choices for your students, you will find something that really makes them successful. And that's what this is all about. Having differentiated materials to where every student in your classroom is reached.
