Working in an Autism Unit or Self Contained classroom? You need this simple list of instructional strategies for students with Autism.
Your first year of teaching can be extremely overwhelming. Let's talk about what NOT to focus on in your first year.
Listen to this Special Ed Podcast with 15 great ideas for Functional Centers for students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism in High School. Read more and subscribe today!
Classroom hacks that actually work in a special education classroom setting. Tried and true methods from actual teachers. Read to learn more.
Being a new special education teacher can be overwhelming and stressful. Check out The FIRST thing to do as a new special ed teacher.
26 reading and autism ideas to help you figure out how to teach an autistic child to read and how to improve reading comprehension in a stress-free way.
A blog for Preschool, Special Education and Autism for Behavior Management, Classroom ideas and Resources
sign me up now! Find helpful ideas and engaging resources to support your special education students! And get back to doing more of what you love, teaching! DISCOVER IDEAS FIND INSPIRATION SAVE TIME ENGAGE STUDENTS
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.
How to teach an autistic child to write (17 tips). After 20 years working with children with autism, these are my best writing tips!
I teach a 1st through 4th self-contained, mod/severe, special day class. I am going to highlight some of the key elements in my classroom.
26 reading and autism ideas to help you figure out how to teach an autistic child to read and how to improve reading comprehension in a stress-free way.
A blog about autism resources and support from a special ed teacher with first-hand experience.
I absolutely love teaching Special Education. I have found the place where I am meant to be and have built a community in my classroom. I am currently thriving in SPED, but it hasn’t always been that way. Early in my career I was struggling to keep my head above water and breathe.Entering the Special ... Read More about 25 Ways to Survive and Thrive in SPED
Informal assessments for special education in the areas of Reading, Writing, and Math. Two versions: one printable and one digital.
26 reading and autism ideas to help you figure out how to teach an autistic child to read and how to improve reading comprehension in a stress-free way.
Do you practice life skills in your SPED classroom? If you don't, you should! Let me show you how to set up life skills centers.
Resources, tips, and materials to help you, help children with autism
Social skills for students with Autism is hard to teach, but a must have! Here are 4 strategies to teach vocational social skills...| NoodleNook
As special educators, it is SO important to set our students up for success throughout the total school environment. In early elementary years, this often includes visual schedules that we post up on the wall and have our students check when it's time to move from teacher time to speech, or any other type of 'switch' of task/environment. However, there is no 'one size fits all' for our students! Some students may require an object schedule, a word schedule, a real picture schedule, etc. What about those students who are in and out of your classroom but also require some type of schedule? They certainly can't be posted on your classroom wall if the student isn't in the classroom to check it! That is where portable schedules come in! Here are some of my favorite ideas from fellow special educators to create a portable schedule that can be used throughout the TOTAL school environment. This one has been used by many teachers over the years, and it is a simple (FREE) way to create a schedule that moves with a student! Head to your local paint store or hardware store and grab a few paint sticks, add some velcro, and voila! The one pictured above is one I used in the home environment with a client since we are not in the classroom setting. I created the icons using the editable template pages inside my Real Pictures Visual Schedule Pack. I love this checklist schedule from Erin at You Aut-a Know! She made them completely editable, and you can easily laminate this, throw it in a binder with a dry erase marker, and the student can check off each activity as they complete them. I also love how you can create a different one for each day of the week since we all know that each day can be different! This is a super appropriate and discrete way to give your students a portable schedule. A great option for older students! Another great option for portable schedules is using supply pouches (that you could also stick inside a binder that goes from class to class!). This idea comes from School Bells N Whistles and is a cheap way to access a visual schedule throughout the day. As they finish something on their schedule, they can remove the card and throw it inside the supply pouch so that the piece doesn't get lost! Jenn from Teach Love Autism created these Editable Visual Flip Schedules that can both be posted on a classroom wall but ALSO can be created to take with the student throughout the school day. I love these because you don't have to worry about losing random schedule pieces! The student just flip the schedule closed after they complete something on their schedule. Such a great way to move around the school environment with a schedule in hand! Hopefully this gave you some new ideas on creating accessible and appropriate schedules for your students that can be used throughout the total school environment! If you use portable schedules a different way, I'd love to hear about them in the comments below! Want to save this idea for later? Be sure to pin the image below for the future!
Resources, tips, and materials to help you, help children with autism
Navigating reading programs for autism spectrum disorders is tough. After my last post many readers asked for resources to help in their classrooms.
You aren't making these teacher mistakes in your special education class, are you? Here's 6 mistakes teachers and paras in SpEd make PLUS 5 easy fixes too!
What do you do as a special ed. teacher when a student with autism refuses to work? It depends on the function of the behavior! Learn the 12 Best Strategies!
Teaching Students who are Low-Functioning: Who are they, what do you teach them, and how do you get them included in academics?
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?
Do you want to work on life skills in your classroom? Are you looking for hands-on special education life skills activities that your students will love? If so, you've come to the right place. Because today, I'm sharing my top 10 life skills activities that you can do in your classroom. 1. Washing Hands One
Check out all my favorite robots and robotics lessons for beginners and elementary students! Perfect for introducing kids to the basics of coding.
In you special needs class, do you have any behavior issues? Any kids that are over-responsive or just the opposite, under-responsive? YOU.NEED.HEAVY.WORK. ...
Direct instruction is a crucial component of special education programs. Our students require direct instruction in order to learn, master and generalize skills. Here are some tips to help make your direct instruction time easier. In my classroom. we set aside an hour a day to do direct instruction centers. During this time, we take ... Read More about Direct Instruction Hacks For Special Education Classrooms
Informal assessments for special education in the areas of Reading, Writing, and Math. Two versions: one printable and one digital.
Autism activities to help increase communication, fine motor skills, sensory play skills, interaction & more in your home or autism classroom!
Are you a new teacher? I thought that my teacher prep program had prepared me for anything that would come my way….and I wrong!
Functional Critical Skill Key-ring Support This Visual support tool for Classroom Management has been used with our students to learn new skills such as requesting "break please", "help" and "wait" as part of my Behavior Management strategies. There are handy visuals on them for your student to have questions they need answered and things they may need to help. Some cards have blank spaces for you to add your own visuals to support individual needs. ************************************************************ Included:- 2 help cards with visuals 2 help cards with spaces for visuals 2 wait cards with visuals 2 wait cards with spaces for visuals 2 stop cards with visuals 2 stop cards with spaces for visuals 2 break cards with visuals 2 break cards with spaces for visuals 2 A4 pages of extra visuals NEW CUTE KEYRING SUPPORTS ADDED 2 X "HELP" "BREAK" "WAIT" "STOP" ************************************************************ The Picture Communication Symbols ©1981–2015 by Mayer-Johnson LLC a Tobii Dynavox company. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Used with permission. Boardmaker® is a trademark of Mayer-Johnson LLC.
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?
When setting up your classroom and lessons to give them the best education, here are some strategies for teaching students with an intellectual disability.
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!
In many ways, strong executive functioning skills are the foundation for success. These are the mental processes that help learners plan through assignments, organize materials, initiate a task, manage time well, stay focused, try new strategies when stuck, and persevere until the completion of a go
When you first start teaching in a school that does block scheduling, 90 minutes seems like an awful lot of time to fill with instruction.
Visual boundaries are a vital part of classroom setup. Let me show you how I utilize these visual boundaries in classroom!
Teaching Students who are Low-Functioning: Who are they, what do you teach them, and how do you get them included in academics?
Experts weigh in with advice for teachers working with blind or visually impaired students.
My students love their individual behaviour supports now I’ve made the token board easily accessible and manageable for little fingers. Easy to make up! Once the pages were printed out …
NOW AVAILABLE ON TPT! It's never too early to get organized for the fall!
I'm here today to talk to you about errorless learning - what it is - & why I think it's important! What is errorless learning? It is exactly what it sounds like! Errorless learning is when you give a student a task where they CAN NOT get an answer wrong. Each answer is the same - such as the student would match all of the circles (& there won't be any other shapes!). All of the responses need to be the same for it to be truly be errorless. Why should I use errorless learning in my classroom? Where do I even begin?! Errorless learning is a great way to introduce a new skill. Just recently, I created some errorless alphabet tasks and they have helped one of my clients SO much with identifying her letters! She loves being able to correctly match her letters and after she matches each one, we say the letter out loud together! The biggest reason I like to use errorless learning is to create independence in ALL of our learners. Independence is one of the most important life skills as we get older, and we need to be teaching our students to be independent as well! If you have learners who are not yet correctly identifying things like colors, shapes, letters, etc. - this is a GREAT way to get them working independently and doing the work correctly - ON THEIR OWN! So what kinds of errorless learning materials could you be using with your students? I've got you covered! I created these Errorless Number Worksheets and Errorless Number Tasks to work on numbers one at a time for 1-20 with one of my clients. They are SO cute - little to no prep - and seriously have been working at getting her to learn her numbers! I also created these Errorless Alphabet Worksheets and Errorless Alphabet Tasks for the same client. The worksheets are print & go and although the tasks CAN be turned into file folders, I just laminated them as boards and am storing them in a 3 ring binder! There are both upper and lowercase tasks for each letter, so you could even mix the upper/lowercase to work on errorless uppercase to lowercase matching! These Errorless Seasonal Scenes are the PERFECT filler for independent work bins! Just put one mat in a bin with the pieces, and students just put the pictures on the velcro dots. There are no wrong answers and they will love the pictures. This Errorless Color File Folders & Worksheets product is MASSIVE. There are coloring sheets, bingo dauber pages, and file folders for alllll the colors. It's a great way to introduce just ONE color at a time. The Errorless Shape File Folders & Worksheets are the same as the colors set - but with shapes! So many opportunities to learn a shape one at a time and to increase independence. Are you looking for another type of errorless learning? If so - let me know in the comments below! I am happy to create more materials to help boost your students knowledge of skills AND their independence!!
