Hi, friends,

I'm hoping some of you have experience using Bridges Intervention with small groups of SpEd students.

I'm an elementary SpEd teacher in a resource room. I teach small groups of students via pull-out all day.

I have just found out that I am now required to use newly purchased Bridges Intervention materials, which are in a big tub that showed up the day before school started (We have now had three days).

I'm excited that SpEd was finally included in a curriculum adoption, but feeling overwhelmed because I have had no training in these materials, and I'm expected to begin using them immediately (I went to one grade level training in June, but we did not look at the intervention kit. We do have a specific training coming up, but not until mid October). I am wondering what the learning curve is here and hoping you all have some thoughts.

My other concern is that from looking at the Bridges website it looks like these materials would be perfect to use with a small group of kids who are all working on the same skill.

Unfortunately, in the real world of my classroom, I am often providing instruction to a couple of kids while several others are working on their own. Obviously, this isn't ideal, but it's what happens with the way the schedule is set up, and currently I have 25 or so students on my case load and no other help.

Soooo......I'm really not trying to whine; I'm just looking to hear your experiences with implementing this and any tips you have. Thanks much!

[Haley23]

I use it. The issue I have with it is that it's a tier 2 program. Like you, I was happy to have something to use with sped, but it really doesn't work with kids that have legitimate significant math disabilities. My school does a TON of reading intervention for all students and math is honestly an afterthought. So often, kids do make progress getting a so-so intervention with me just because they've never really gotten math intervention before. I do have a couple of kids though who very clearly need something different. Anyway...

Take the time to organize the materials. You will definitely appreciate it later. If I'm remembering correctly, the paper stuff comes in binders with directions of how to put that together. For all of the manipulatives, I used old book bins and organized them by volume and type. For example, "Volume 1 display cards" is one bin while "Volume 1 game cards" is another. I have 3-4 bins for each volume. On the front, I put a list of the materials that are in the bin. That way when I'm planning, I can quickly grab whatever is needed rather than digging around. Each lesson requires a lot of manipulatives/cards, etc.

I also received no training. There are placement assessments you can give (look in the papers/binder for volume 1). The lessons are fairly self-explanatory, but imagine my surprise when one of my groups completed volume 1 and I started volume 2 only to discover it was almost the same thing!!

Volume 1 is all about numbers/place value while volume 2 gets into addition and subtraction, but the concepts are almost identical. For example, in volume 1 you start with "make 5" and then go on to "make 10," "10 and more" etc. Volume 2 is the EXACT same sequence, but instead of just "making" it, you're writing equations and using number trees. I.e. instead of just saying, "5 and 5 make 10," you'd say, "5+5=10." Volume 4 is the same concepts, but word problems.

This year I'm skipping to Volume 2 for anyone who has even a basic knowledge of numbers. My K students are starting with the basic lessons that Volume 1 starts with, and then once they're ready to "make 5" etc., we'll use the Volume 2 lessons. You could pull in stuff from Volume 4 for word problems- I personally find it easier to just create my own word problems that go along with the other lessons.

The lessons are generally engaging and I like the way they present a lot of the activities as games. My kids generally enjoy them. I have 30 minutes and find that most of the lessons could be done in 20, which is another reason I tend to add in my own word problems.

As far as different ability levels, I tend to teach to the higher end of the group and then differentiate as necessary for the lower kids so they're still getting something out of it. For example, I was just doing a "make 10" lesson with 2nd graders. One of them has a cognitive disability and doesn't yet know all of the number names. When it was her turn during the game, I supported her through the questions and had her working more on identifying the numbers rather than the actual "making 10" part.