Meet the Teacher Behind WonderGrove S.O.A.R.

Her students love WonderGrove, so she created a WonderGrove curriculum just for them.

"It’s important to me that students with disabilities aren’t an afterthought. Everything in WonderGrove SOAR was made with my students in mind."

When Janelle Vargo started using WonderGrove in her classroom in 2014, she had no idea that six years later she would spearhead the creation of a WonderGrove curriculum made for students with exceptionalities.

The Intervention Specialist from Dayton, Ohio knows that her elementary students often carry baggage into her room. “I may not always know what they are coming in with, but if I can get them to smile, if I can get them to engage in the learning, I know that I can get their mind off of their troubles for an hour. WonderGrove does that for my students.” 

When a friend introduced Janelle to WonderGrove in 2014, she was impressed. “There aren’t really great books of social stories to just pull out when I need them, but with WonderGrove I know exactly what I’m looking for, and it’s right there at any moment.” The 250+ WonderGrove animations address everything from social skills, to safety, to daily living skills. “When I have a problem in my classroom, there’s a WonderGrove episode to address it.”

Soon, Janelle began to work with Wonder Media to create extension lessons featuring real activities she used in her classroom. It wasn’t long until she was thinking of ways in which WonderGrove could be used to address the unique needs of her students.

Fast forward to 2020, and Janelle was working full time for WonderGrove. “It was exciting to me because I really believe in this product, I see how it works for my kids.” After all of those years, the idea for a version of WonderGrove built just for students with exceptionalities was still in the back of her mind. “It wasn’t until I was working with Terry Thoren and the WonderGrove team that I realized ‘Hey, we could really do this.’” 

And that’s just what the WonderGrove team did during the summer of 2020. WonderGrove SOAR for Students with Exceptionalities launched this fall. “We had teachers reaching out from all over the country who had always used WonderGrove with their students, but now they had a version built with their needs in mind. It was really exciting for everyone,” said Janelle Vargo.

One thing that was important to Janelle was using the same animations that her students loved. “My students loved WonderGrove. I think that so often, resources for students with exceptionalities aren’t written with a child’s age in mind. It was really important to me that we keep the high-interest animations that my students loved.” What did change was the extension lessons. Janelle and a team of intervention specialists spent all summer adapting the K-2 extension lessons to address the needs of students with disabilities, while still maintaining alignment to 85% of the Common Core Standards.

Next, the team began to add new resources. Thirty-six new videos addressing letters and numbers launched on both WonderGrove SOAR and WonderGrove Social Skills in October. New classroom resources such as bathroom passes, schedules, behavior bucks, and more were added to allow teachers to further integrate WonderGrove into their classroom routines.

“I’m just happy to see my students reflected in the new content we are making. It’s important to me that students with disabilities aren’t an afterthought. Everything in WonderGrove SOAR was made with my students in mind, and I know that it will work for educators all over the world.”