My first year of teaching was HARD. I had five kindergarteners, one first grader, and one fifth grader.
From developing fine motor skills, letter and number recognition, sight words, sorting, sequencing, reading, and math, these task boxes for autism tasks will help develop important life skills and beyond!
Task boxes can be highly beneficial for special education students for several reasons: They provide structured learning by way of presenting learning materials in an organized way, they provide visual supports, repetition & practice, and skill generalization. Task boxes can also be customized to meet each individual student’s needs and IEP goals, promote independence, and […]
Starting a task box center and system in your special education classroom is a way to increase student independence and free up staff.
Task boxes can be highly beneficial for special education students for several reasons: They provide structured learning by way of presenting learning materials in an organized way, they provide visual supports, repetition & practice, and skill generalization. Task boxes can also be customized to meet each individual student’s needs and IEP goals, promote independence, and […]
Overwhelmed and understaffed my first year as a special education teacher in the self-contained classroom, I discovered that implementing an effective independent workstation helped my students become more successful and independent. Click to learn how I got control using task boxes and independent workstations in my special education classroom. My students loved the differentiated math, language arts, science, and social studies curriculum with age appropriate clip art and real photographs.
8 ways to use task boxes in your special education classrooms from instructional purposes to leisure activity.
In February I blogged for the first time about what was actually INSIDE my work boxes. My first post focused specifically on "put in" work t...
There is something about the structure and routine of Michaela's Especially Education task boxes students are drawn to. They take immense pride in showing off their finished work, keeping all the materials together, and putting the tasks away into their rightful places.
Task Boxes are important to practice mastered skills, work independently, and gain life skills to be successful in their special education curriculum!
Who is prepping more work boxes this summer? I just love getting new ideas, especially for our older life skill students! Christina Bailey, a transition life skill teacher, offered to share a bunch of her work boxes on my blog! Thank you Christina! Christina works with transition aged students (19-26 years old) with severe cognitive and/or health impairments. Her school serves students from multiple school districts within the county who learn best in an alternative placement. Are you ready? Here they are!! Putting together (or taking apart) flashlights. Bonus points if students can get the batteries in correctly and get the light to turn on! (Motivation!!) Ice cube tray and colored pebbles with tongs. I love the fine motor aspect added here. Marker packaging. I absolutely love this task and would be a great one to buy during back to school marker sales (especially on those really cheap markers you don't really want to use in your classroom!) Erasers on pencils. This has always been one of my favorite tasks! Silverware sorting. A must for every work task station, am I right? And a super easy and cheap one to put together. Silverware rolling / packaging. I love this task as it is perfect for vocational preparation. Putting together curlers. Ribbon threading around a wire basket. I never would have thought of this task! I love using the wire basket to thread the ribbon, and bet students would have fun with this task too. Sewing kit packaging. Packaging tasks like this are great! Tea candle sort. I love this age appropriate color sorting activity. Toiletry packaging. Wouldn't it be awesome to get donations of items like this and put together kits to give out to the homeless as a classroom service project? So, there you have it! Did you get some more good ideas? Happy task box prep! If you ever have anything you want to share, feel free to email me. I love being able to share your fantastic ideas with other special education teachers like yourself!
Looking for a way to organize independent work time for your special education classroom? Students gain more independent and personal responsibility skills with an organized Especially Education Task Box Independent Work Station. Ideas to organize task boxes for independent time or for work time. #independentwork #taskboxes #organization
Do your students love dinosaurs? Keep your learners engaged and busy with this Dinosaurs themed task box/busy box! This product includes 14 identical picture matching task cards. Perfect for little learners, special education students, or ELL's. Use during centers, table time, morning work, small group activities, activity schedules, or 1:1 teaching. New to using task boxes? Simply print the images, cut and laminate the pictures, and then velcro the front of the card and back of the matching card. Store in a zip-lock bag or storage box. *Watch the video preview to see the full product*
Can you believe that we are already three days into March? It seems like I was just blogging about my February task boxes. As many of you know, in hopes of keeping my students engaged and learning new skills, I center my task boxes around monthly themes. We had so much fun with our February task boxes, which you can look at here, but now it's time to say goodbye and welcome in March. With only six students in my classroom currently, I have a ten task box system in my classroom. You can check out my task box system here. I typically use the following formula when setting up my task box rotation each month: three math (various levels), three ELA (various levels), and four fine motor. I usually have a few extra prepared so that I can rotate them in as needed. I then assign each student one math box at his/her level, one ELA box at his/her level, and 1 fine motor task at his/her level. I have learned that I can find many appropriate FREE tasks just by doing a simple Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers search, but I always create a few myself as well. This month, I am sharing some of my favorites that I found while searching. Simply click on the title of the task box activity to be taken to the website/store where you can download and view an amazing product for FREE! 1. St. Patrick's Day Beginning Sound Match by Playdough to Plato 2. Shamrock CVCe Puzzles by Playdough to Plato 3. Easter Egg CVCe Puzzles by The Kindergarten Connection 4. St. Patrick's Day Vocabulary Clothespin Task by Shining STARS Special Education 1. St. Patricks Day Math Sort (Numbers 1-10) from Mrs Ps Specialities 2. Rainbow Sorting Coins Activity from Spinner's End Primary School 3. Pin the Tail on the Bunny Color Match from ABCs to Acts 4. Eggs Visual Addition Matching from Heidi Songs 5. St. Patrick's Day Ten Frames from Michelle Breaux 6. St. Patrick's Day Count and Clip Cards from Shining STARS Special Education 1. Easter Egg Color Match from Child Care Land Pre-K 2. Pom Pom Egg Crate Sort from Burbuja de Lenguaje 3. Easter Egg Match from Makes and Takes ALSO.... I do admit that I have fallen in love with a few PAID products! I LOVE LOVE LOVE Autism Adventures' Interactive Bulletin Board Set for task box activities. With each month, there are two themes, which means I can easily switch out my boxes every two weeks. Additionally, each month focuses on very similar skills, which means my students can work on the basic skills that they still need to master on while being INDEPENDENT. I also LOVE Simple Special Ed's Vocabulary Binders. I have the students work on the vocabulary matching during our task box rotation to mix things up. The students first focus on matching picture to picture and then move on to matching picture to word. I even use her flashcards as a matching task as shown in the picture blow.
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With so many of our students only doing level 1 or "put in" task boxes, we are constantly making new boxes to keep the students from getting bored. We have also been trying to use materials that make noise because we have a few students with vision impairments this year. Here are the latest boxes we've made all from cheap supplies from the Dollar Tree or items we already had in the classroom. These little rattles were $1 for 6! I found them in the baby shower section. They're super fun because they actually make noise! These mini-maracas are great because they make noise too! I found them in the party favor section at the Dollar Tree. Simple counting bears! I found a whole bag of coins in the toy section at the Dollar Tree. Rubber ducks! I had to buy 2 bags of ducks (there were only 4 ducks in a package) but it was well worth the $2!
Overwhelmed and understaffed my first year as a special education teacher in the self-contained classroom, I discovered that implementing an effective independent workstation helped my students become more successful and independent. Click to learn how I got control using task boxes and independent workstations in my special education classroom. My students loved the differentiated math, language arts, science, and social studies curriculum with age appropriate clip art and real photographs.
Do you ever wonder how to prep task boxes for special education, prek or kindergarten classrooms? If so, you’re in the right place! I’m going to walk you through step by step instructions on how to prep task cards that you can use for task boxes, literacy and math centers, morning tubs, or bin syste
From developing fine motor skills, letter and number recognition, sight words, sorting, sequencing, reading, and math, these task boxes for autism tasks will help develop important life skills and beyond!
Errorless work tasks are needed in every special education classroom! These task boxes can be used as teaching tools and building independence through student work. This resource includes detailed instructions for teacher setup, Amazon list of possible materials, digital data tracking form, student visuals, teacher visuals and directions for use for 60 work tasks. These activities are for students using errorless work and materials. Best part! You can either use the pre-created student visuals with images taken for you to show each step of the task OR you can create your own student visuals! This resource requires the addition of some basic materials such as bins and velcro. A detailed Amazon supply list is included to make it easy to determine what you will need to create all of these centers! BUY THE BUNDLE AND SAVE! If you use this in your room, make sure to tag me Full SPED Ahead on Instagram or Facebook! Don't forget to leave feedback that way you can earn points towards future TPT purchases! I love hearing your feedback! Also, follow me on: TeachersPayTeachers Facebook Instagram Pinterest Blog As always, please contact me with any questions! Email: [email protected] Thank you again for your purchase and download! Heather Cacioppo
Made For Me Literacy provides special education teachers with engaging, comprehensive reading units meticulously crafted with special learners in mind covering various subject areas, including basic reading, writing, math, science, and fine motor skills.
I could never say enough positive things about using a work box system in the classroom-- for any child. I've used them with typically developing peers in the classroom as well and it's an amazing way to in-bed practice and skill maintenance, all while working on attending to a task as well. Over the summer I did a whole post on how I structure this system in my classroom. You can check it out {here}. But one thing I've never done is actually post photos of the activities I have in my boxes. My boxes have grown since I last posted a photo this summer. I have 83 work boxes available in my classroom at all times. I know that sounds like the only thing that make up the shelves in my classroom are work boxes, but I promise it's not. It might be close, but it's not! I don't have a lot of remaining storage in my classroom. So to constantly be changing out activities and finding a storage system for previous activities is a little challenging for me. So I prefer to just have a lot of boxes available. We also need a high number of boxes to complete each day. Let's break it down. I have 10 students total, 8 of whom complete work boxes at some point doing the day. Children complete anywhere between 1-10 boxes a day. Right now, as a class, we are completing 28 boxes a day. We come to school 4 days a week, so that's completing 112 boxes a week. And planning so strategically that a child doesn't repeat a box during the week. It's a huge planning challenge. And my paras are awesome at catching my goofs! I'm hoping to come across some appropriate shelving between now and the end of the year to expand our boxes even more. Sounds crazy I know, but it will make the planning challenge so much easier when there is a larger amount to pick from. So the whole point of this post-- what's in the boxes?! I use a combination of handmade activities, printable activities, and existing manipulatives from my classroom to make up my boxes. Our lowest tasks are simple "put-in" activities and our higher tasks include activities like capital and lowercase matching using clothespins and sight word matching mats. I've been trying to come up with more and more put-in activities so that's what I'm going to share with you today. In another post I'll share another category. For this activity I saved a small peanut can from the grocery store. (Yes I washed it out) I simply cut slits in the lid--these lids are super easy to cut into which is nice. It's the perfect height for dropping these mini popsicle sticks into. This activity is another saved container- an almond one. I have saved a ton of these! They are a great size and again, the lids are easy to cut into. This one has a circle in the middle of the lid and heart erasers to put into the container. This activity I found on pinterest. I simply saved a Parmesan cheese shaker, washed it out and added q-tips. When students open the box the cheese shaker is already open. (It would be too challenging for my little guys to get open independently- it's tough!) This task I clearly didn't make. It is courtesy of Lakeshore Learning. Students simply place the buttons in. This jar is one of three included in the pack and can be purchased by clicking {here}. If you wanted to make a more challenging task for a student you could place two jars into one task box so the student has to sort as well. This is the second jar included in the Lakeshore pack. I used another almond container for the activity. And obviously a hole punch to put the holes in the lid. Students have to put the beads into the container through the holes. I saw someone else blog about these small paint containers they found at the Dollar Store. They really are great! I bought four of them and used one for this work box. Students simply push the pom-poms into the container. This activity is similar to the Lakeshore bucket with buttons. I found the small yellow containers at the Dollar Tree in the baby section. They come in a multi-pack which is nice, BUT, they are a pain to cut holes in the top. It's a much harder plastic than I thought, and it cracked in the corners. If I hadn't gone through so much trouble to cut the slot in, I probably would have used another almond container. This was one of the first work box activities I made. I recycled a cookie dough container and cut holes in the lid. Then students just have to put pom-poms into the holes. I'd like to re-do this container at some point because most students catch on that the middle hole is big enough to just drop the pom-pom in versus pushing it through the hole. I don't know if you would call this a "put in" task, but I do. They're putting pegs in a peg board! I can also guarantee you that this peg board is older than I am. For this activity students push down the lever on the gumball machine to get a stone out, then they have to place the stone in the container. I liked the idea of students using their index finger to get the lever done-- additional fine motor practice. Sometimes more than one stone may come out, but that's okay. So there you have it. Those are our current "put in" activities. I hope you get some new ideas for your own work boxes from these. Next I'll share our sorting activities.
Are your students needing to build their fine motor muscles? Learn how using fine motor task boxes can help.
A blog about autism resources and support from a special ed teacher with first-hand experience.
My first year of teaching was HARD. I had five kindergarteners, one first grader, and one fifth grader.
Work Task Wednesday featuring a test tube center to practice patterns, sequencing, color ID, following directions, hand dominance, grip, and more.
From developing fine motor skills, letter and number recognition, sight words, sorting, sequencing, reading, and math, these task boxes for autism tasks will help develop important life skills and beyond!
For our learners who need to work on foundational learning skills, such as simple matching, I have always love creating hands on task boxes put-in tasks and ...
You all LOVED the 4 simple task boxes I shared here, so here are 4 more! SIMPLE task boxes that don’t cost a fortune and are low level for independent work and beginning learners are so hard to find. What’s even harder to find is ones that are appropriate for ANY age. These 4 hit […]
I can't believe that it has taken me so long to implement task boxes in my classroom. Task boxes have been such a game-changer for not only my independent work station but my direct instruction when I am working with just one student. Not only are they super engaging, but they provide sensory input that […]
CBI | Job Skills | Life Skills | Vocational Education| Special Education Easy Prep Dollar Tree Vocational Task Box: Fill the sweetener containers To complete this task, students will fill the containers with the correct number of pink and yellow sweetener containers. More Dollar Tree Tasks can be found HERE Task Box BUNDLE available HERE Task Boxes are the perfect way to promote Independence in any Special Education Classroom. They are engaging, Build Fine Motor Skills, Reinforce IEP Goals, and Teach a variety of Skills & Levels! Look for more learning resources in my TPT Store Connect with me: Facebook and ETSY (pre-made task boxes here) HOW CAN YOU EARN TPT CREDITS? When you leave feedback, TpT rewards you with credits that you can use toward future purchases. I welcome all feedback! It helps me improve and create better resources.
I’m back to talk more about independent work stations. I don’t know if you’ve realized, but I’m basically obsessed with them. I think I’ve written about independent work stations at least a half dozen times on this blog if not more! I love them because not only do they provide an opportunity to teach students ... Read More about 5 Mistakes you are Making in your Independent Work Stations
Made For Me Literacy provides special education teachers with engaging, comprehensive reading units meticulously crafted with special learners in mind covering various subject areas, including basic reading, writing, math, science, and fine motor skills.
ind out all the details of how to set up this system, who it works best for, what the goal is, and why you need one!
A free printable for fine motor task cards. Help kids strengthen their fine motor skills with these easy activities!
Do you have a task box system? Are you looking to set one up? Read to find out ways to organize your task box system!
Get them HERE! Task boxes have been a hit for the last couple of years – especially with these super convenient photo storage boxes. I got mine from Michaels! These boxes I made are perfect f…
This week's IW inspiration is a simple plastic egg put-in task that is perfect for beginning independent workers. It's the start of egg tasks.
Making task boxes is like therapy to me... there's nothing like spending a few bucks at Target or the Dollar tree and making new tasks! ...
