Balancing Your Daily Schedule

I am so excited to share with you my schedule series! I have been working these first 2 months of school to get my schedule situated and am excited to share so many of the pieces with you!

First up! My daily schedule. YES, my kids go to specials and inclusion, and YES my paras each take lunches. But this is the general schedule that my classroom follows each day. Students go to specials with their homerooms, and are pulled for therapies, but it all evens out and they make up things they missed by the end of the week.

Here is the major things we do each day. The schedule is posted on the white board, mainly for all staff to see.

YES, Each student has a visual schedule or Student Binder (these are awesome for kids who go to inclusion more often!)  that contains all of their personal therapies and specials. We also post on the board the specials and therapies each student has that day, so we can quickly glance up and have time to get kids ready. ( I’ll post more on this next time) But this is our main classroom schedule of daily activities.

My students arrive 15 minutes earlier than other students in the building due to van drop off times. I actually like this a lot because it gives us time to beat the “rush” of kids running down the hall, get through all of our first bathroom trips, and get started on our morning work.

Each student has an arrival checklist to help them remember what comes next.

Each students morning work is a little different based on their needs. Some students work off of a visual schedule for morning work and some have a whiteboard written list of things to do.

At this time some of my students may go to Math or ELA with support for some inclusion. But most of my students remain in the classroom. We rotate through 3 centers at this time and have 2 staff present in the room.

1:1 Work: This is a discrete trial center, the student works 1:1 with a teacher or para on individualized goals.

You can grab the sight word flip cards seen here, here.

Teacher Table: I am able to work on IEP goals at this time 1:1 or 1:2 depending on therapies and specials each day.

Independent work: Teaching my student how to perform independently at this station directly for the first month of school has made it possible for this center to be completely independent. Students follow a schedule, clean up after themselves, and even access rewards all independently at this center. Having an independent work center makes it possible to have so many students at once with only 2 staff in the room.

This is another bathroom break time. We eat snack as a group and work on social skills! (I love these question cubes from amazon!) We work on opening our packages, eating neatly, manners, and clean up. We also work on hand washing at this time and may even through in natural life skills we are learning in our life skills centers like the vacuum or dustpan if necessary.

At this time students may also have enough tokens to cash in for a break. Some students earn breaks on iPads, Computer, or our break area with toys.

We go back to work centers at this time and rotate through until lunch.

My students eat lunch in the cafeteria but this is a heavy data time. We take data on lunch routines, independence, social interactions, and other behaviors.

After lunch, we need some time to unwind. We use our small bath mat rugs for quiet reading, or work on other leisure skills and playing with toys the correct way. I also play soft music at this time and turn the lights down. It’s basically a rest time without the nap 🙂

We go right into comprehension group at this time. I am alone with the students and we play a story on youtube, project a comprehension story and worksheet on the board, or work on WH questions WHOLE GROUP, using the interactive board to keep everyone engaged. Because this is such an engaging activity, I like to put it during low staff times to ensure that everyone stays on track.

We love to use Teaching Special Thinkers Storytime packs when we are low on staff!

Group work is different every day. It is sometimes art group, exercise group, News 2 You, fine motor or even a board game. I mix it up to keep everyone on their toes and engaged.

same as earlier in the day!

Our life Skills Centers change each month, we focus on a certain skill, and send home letters to parents to let them know how they can help reinforce at home. The way I run my centers is we work on this month’s skill with extra support at one center, and then are generalizing the 2 skills from the last 2 months with more independence and less support at the other two centers. You can read more about my Life Skills Centers here.

When students are done the three centers they know that it is time to brush their teeth. Each student has a labeled bin with their supplies in it, and paras take data on this skill each afternoon, giving support as needed.

This is also part of my life skills block, but I thought I would separate it out to explain more to you. After are are done with centers and teeth brushing, we “clean up and pack up”.  This is when I take the time to communicate with parents using communication sheets, students come get their communication binder from me, empty their student bins, pack their backpack and get their coat from their hook. We leave our backpacks against the wall, so they are ready to go at time of dismissal.

I can’t speak more highly of these communication sheets. I have been using them for three years and parents love how quick and easy it is to glance and jot down a note, it makes a huge difference!

 

{{{So here is my big secret. My students LOVE THE AFTERNOON. They all know that music group is coming up soon, they see it on their schedules and they are SO MOTIVATED BY MUSIC, isn’t that great and so age appropriate? I think so too! Remember to reinforce your students with what THEY like, and they will work so hard for you too! }}}

This is also known as “trade in time”. Most of my students work all day to earn this highly preferred activity. Students are able to take turns making choices of pre selected age appropriate you tube videos. We practice raising our hand, following a schedule, making choices, and waiting our turn.

My students also earn dollars for good behavior throughout the week ( you can see the chart on the right, more to come on this process!). This is the designated trade in time. The students can go down to our school “store” in the behaviorist office to trade dollars for rewards.

All of our students grab their backpacks and head out!

So that’s a peek inside our daily schedule! Remember that this time of year we start to feel settled in, if something isn’t working in your schedule it is never too late!!! I am constantly changing things to make things the best fit for our students!