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This is a long delayed follow up post to the one introducing the Unique Learning System (ULS). Sorry it’s a bit more delayed than I had planned.  [Disclosure–I subscribe to two levels of the ULS that I pay for. They have not provided me with access free, but they did give me a great t-shirt today when I talked with them.]  I had the amazing opportunity to talk with the folks from ULS this week at the Autism Society national conference (see my post from last year for reasons why this conference is worth attending).  Throughout the conference, as I listened to presenters talk about the importance of aligning curriculum to the common core in education, it became increasingly clear how much products like the ULS are needed for teachers to be able to do this for our more complex learners. ULS continues to work to expand their offerings within the same subscription to provide more for what you get.  They have added a preschool age band for the upcoming year and continue to develop resources for teaching basic concepts in the classroom.  As the use of ULS grows across the country, resources available to supplement the use of the curriculum continue to grow as well.  This post is designed to share some of those resources.  If you have more, please add them in the comments.

In a recent search I found a wiki that serves as a file and idea exchange for teachers (including smart board templates) and a Boardmaker Share group designed for ULS users to share materials they have made to supplement the lessons.

The video below demonstrates the use of Classroom Suite for interactive technology with ULS.  Classroom Suite is a software by Intellitools and they have developed lessons that accompany the ULS lessons for each theme.  The video is of a talk given about the integration of the two tools to increase interactivity based on the core curriculum.

Along the lines of interactivity, there are also some ULS lessons that have been developed and shared on SMART Exchange for Smartboards.  N2Y indicates in its discussion boards that they are working on an iPad app for using the Unique, but I have been able to use it on the iPad for sharing the books with students and for the assessments.  It allowed us to take the assessment to the student and assess them in short bursts without having to transition to the computer area of the classroom to do so.  The students were also very engaged in the assessment and may have performed better with it because of the iPad.

I will try to keep you updated as changes occur with the ULS and remember, if you haven’t tried it yet, you can preview and use the summer curriculum for a brief time more by registering here.  Keep in mind that the ULS will not be your only curriculum used in your classroom.  You will still need scientifically based reading and math curriculums and may need specialized functional or developmental curricula.  I will focus on some of those in combination with ULS in a future post.

My next post will focus on organizing the many materials and resources from ULS in your classroom.  In the meantime, if you have used ULS, please share your thoughts in the comments.