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Are you looking to refresh your autism schedule? Do you know where to start? Here's a dive into my daily schedule in an autism classroom!
Teach your students about the five senses, touch. What exactly can they feel? wood - hard, cotton wool - soft / fluffy, and so on.
Parents and teachers, feel free to print this for your classrooms and kids if you think the message could be useful, as long as you don’t use it on anything you plan to sell. Click HERE to download a higher resolution. To see […]
These ABA therapy activities for kids with autism spectrum disorder will give you heaps of ideas you can use at school, in therapy, and at home!
Print out these visuals on cardstock, laminate, and add velcro to use with a picture schedule or picture communication system. If you don't add velcro you could write on these with a dry erase marker. First/Then is especially great for students who are on a work/break schedule - they will be able t...
Echolalia- Learn strategies for your Autism classroom. What echolalia is and how to reduce it with activities to decrease repetitive speech or non-authentic communication.
Are you overwhelmed by the amount of Behavior supports there are available out there! Are you looking for that particular one you need to help you manage behaviors and maintain structure in your cl…
Wonder about behaviors typical to kids with Autism and want to know why they do that? Read on and learn more! || Why do kids with Autism Do That?
Through the years I have had a few students with selective mutism. When I met my first student with S.M., I thought she was just very shy. For this post, I will call her Sally but that is not her real name. But, after a couple of weeks of school, it was clear that there was more going on that a case of shyness. That is when I asked for a meeting with Sally's parents to get their insight into what was happening. Her parents told me that she would only talk to the people in her immediate family and one neighbor. She wouldn't even speak to her grandparents or cousins. After observations and meetings with her pediatrician, counselor, speech pathologist, she was officially diagnosed as having selective mutism. Luckily, Sally's parents were very open to ideas and happy to try anything that we suggested. Sally's mom would send me something to school on a weekly basis. Sometimes it was a bag of cookies that Sally and her mom had baked together. Other times Sally's mom let her pick out a packet of stickers to donate to our class. Sally's job was to hand the item(s) to me. We set the following goals: 1st: Hand the item to the teacher without mom standing beside her. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 2nd: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 3rd: Hand the item to the teacher and say you're welcome. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 4th: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher and say you're welcome. I said thank you but did not ask her any questions about the item. 5th: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher and say you're welcome. Answer teacher's question with one word. I said thank you and then asked her a question that could be answered with one word - usually a yes/no question. 6th: Hand the item to the teacher while looking at the teacher and say you're welcome. Answer teacher's question with 2 or more words. I said thank you and then asked her a question that required a few more details. Once again, Sally's parents provided extra support to help her build relationships with her classmates. Sally and her mom loved to bake. Usually students only brought treats for their birthday. I gave her mom permission to send in treats more frequently. When Sally passed out the treats to her classmates, she was concentrating on the actual process of passing out, and less about her anxiety about communicating with her classmates. We set goals for this too. 1st: Pass out treats without teacher support. 2nd: Pass out treat and make eye contact with classmates. 3rd: Pass out treat, make eye contact with classmates, and smile when student says thank you. 4th: Pass out treat, make eye contact with classmates, and say you're welcome when classmate says thank you. Sally received weekly support from our school counselor. Our counselor let Sally choose a buddy come with her. She and the buddy played games in the counselor's office. In the beginning, Sally would only smile and shake her head for yes or no. But, over time she slowly began to whisper to the counselor and her buddy. I think it helped that there was only one buddy and they were in a quiet office so she felt more comfortable. By the end of the year, she was able to invite 3 buddies to go with her. As you can imagine she became very popular because she got to pick her buddy(ies). Word quickly spread that if Sally chose you, you got to go play games. Students wanted to sit by her at lunch and invited her to play games with them at recess. There are different reasons why a student may have S.M. Sometimes it is an anxiety issue. Click HERE to read more about this topic. Interested in reading more posts? Click on the pictures below.
A blog about autism resources and support from a special ed teacher with first-hand experience.
Sometimes it's the littlest details that make the biggest difference in a classroom. Here's a few of my little classroom details. Someday I will show you all of the big details too...I just need to be more prepared for that! Supply station central. With visuals. AMAZING - because students and staff know where everything goes. So simple and organized and makes my life easier than my last two years when I thought I was pretty organized but had different things throughout the room. Everything in the same place is the way to go. Work task boxes on a cart. When you don't have shelves...you can find something else that works! I love our independent work stations. Someday I'll have you show you all what's inside these boxes!! Update: See all my posts on work tasks. Visuals for greetings in the morning, right outside the door to encourage students to greet each other as they come in. This was a freebie from The Adventures of Room 83! Visuals on the door help students to remember to ask before leaving the room and to tell staff what it is they need. Keeping the door shut helps too! This fabulous "Turn it in" idea was from the Autism Helper - um so smart! I took hers and edited it a little giving myself spaces for 3 forms coming in (they always seem to happen at the same time) and also color coded so the students can better recognize their names. The wet ones and the Clorox wipes frequently were confused in my classroom, so I had a student draw these pictures for me and it has helped so much. Someday I'll give you the grand tour, but until then I hope you enjoy these snapshots!
Our family sought out occupational therapy for dysgraphia (or writing problems) and achieved excellent results for our eight year old daughter.
Resources, tips, and materials to help you, help children with autism
Here are a few games for kids with Autism suggestions to use in your classroom. There are also many ways you can play these games...
Perfect for kids with autism and sensory sensitivities, this is a great collection of tips and tools to teach you how to calm an autistic child quickly!
Find out exactly what it means for a child to have an oral aversion, why some kids experience oral aversions, and most importantly how to overcome oral aversions from a feeding therapist!
Today I have another frugal literacy tool for you to make when working on identifying certain sounds in words with your children: missing letters clip sticks! These clip sticks are great because you can adapt
The toys you choose for children affects different areas of child development.
Wonder about behaviors typical to kids with Autism and want to know why they do that? Read on and learn more! || Why do kids with Autism Do That?
You asked and I listened! I got such wonderful feedback about my first set of vocabulary books with the 'Back to School' themes! I have a TON of plans about types of books to make
These ABA therapy activities for kids with autism spectrum disorder will give you heaps of ideas you can use at school, in therapy, and at home!
Here are 4 essential 21st-century learning approaches along with some practical suggestions for teachers to develop them.
A blog about autism resources and support from a special ed teacher with first-hand experience.
Easy, hands-on positional words activities for your preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten classroom. Make learning prepositions fun!
Learn more about seven easy steps to teaching social skills to students with disabilities. Good social skills are essential, learn more...
Resources, tips, and materials to help you, help children with autism
What is the prompt hierarchy and how can it help you promote student independence in the classroom? Read this article to find out!
Look, listen, touch, taste and smell are often taken for granted. Yet these senses are pivotal to learning complex tasks. Sensory play helps children to build skills in cognitive growth.
21+ tips to help you deal with common challenging behaviors and autism, including hair pulling, scratching, picky eating, sleep disruption, and aggression.
32 Sensory Play Activities For Kids With Autism. Sensory Play helps all children learn, but for kids on the autism spectrum, it can
AMPLIFYING your ESL instruction is all about increasing comprehensible input for your students. In other words, ELLs learn best when you use instructional strategies that make your teaching (input) as easy to understand as possible (comprehensible). Makes sense, right? Amplification strategies are easy to adapt to whatever content you are teaching, and they are naturally differentiating (meaning students of all language abilities will benefit from their use). AMPLIFICATION STRATEGY: Use realia and hands-on activities Realia is a fancy word for everyday objects. You are using realia whenever you show your students actual objects (rather than an image or explanation of the object). Even something as simple as using real coins during math lessons counts as realia. Research shows us that the more ways we allow students to interact with the material we teach, the better they learn it. Realia and hands-on activities encourage students to participate and interact to the fullest. By handling, manipulating, and observing objects, ELLs are able to use more than just language to help them construct meaning. They are receiving information through interacting with the objects you present, which helps them understand your lesson in a deeper way. We've created a sample Five Senses unit to give you an idea of how easy it is to incorporate realia and hands-on activities into your teaching. Remember, amplification strategies can be added to any lesson to make it more comprehensible for ELLs! Below are a few ideas to get your wheels turning. 1.) Assemble a collection of objects. Have each student pick an object (secretly, if you want to add some drama) to describe using their five senses. They can write their description as a paragraph if they're more advanced students, or in list form if their English skills are intermediate. A true beginner may decide to create a drawing with labels or select from a collection of words you’ve supplied in a word bank. Pre-literate students may give an oral description of their objects. Allowing students to choose how to participate in this activity gives you the opportunity to assess their mastery of the content, regardless of their language abilities. 2.) Read “touch and feel” books. These relatively simple books are wonderful for helping students understand the more subtle variations in texture that we try to describe. They may seem inappropriate for older ELLs, but a more advanced activity could include asking the students to feel the texture and then come up with an appropriate word to describe its feel. Providing a word bank or the first letter of the target word makes this exercise slightly easier. Usborne has a series of books that are great for teaching vocabulary words about the sense of touch. In each of these books, a mouse is searching for something, but each time he thinks he’s found it, he realizes “it’s too (insert vocabulary word here).” The accompanying pictures allow students to feel the texture while hearing the word that describes the feeling. You can find many of the books in this series on amazon.com. 3.) Brainstorm a list of words that describe touch and texture with your students. Then ask them to go out and find objects that illustrate those words. Your class can create a poster of the different vocabulary words and objects they find. If you allow students access to this poster throughout the year, even beginner ELLs will be able to incorporate more advanced vocabulary into their writing. These sensory words are very useful when teaching students to "stretch their writing" in Small Moments units! For added cuteness, young students could trace their hands or even make a handprint using paint. The bottom line: Integrating hands-on experiences whenever possible is an important way to reinforce new concepts and vocabulary for ELLs. It encourages students of all language levels to participate to their abilities and is naturally differentiating. Not to mention, it motivates students, helps them stay focused (especially those kinesthetic learners), and encourages interaction with peers. Did you find this post helpful? Check out some of our other posts for more ideas about amplifying for ELLs. Here you'll find a printable list of questions for parents to ask their children to encourage deeper reading comprehension. For more tips on involving families in their children's schooling, visit our ELL Family Resources page and print out some of the forms on our post about parent communication. Want more suggestions foranchor charts and graphic organizers? Or take our quiz to find out how you're doing in terms of amplifying instruction for the ELLs in your classroom.
