You’ve probably heard a LOT about color coding in special ed self contained. Teachers RAVE about color coding and everything that it can do for your classroom organization. I’m going to tell you what it REALLY can do for your STUDENTS. Cause they are why we are here right?
Color Coding is something that I didn’t always find necessary. ESPECIALLY VISUALS. I loved being able to grab and go with visuals from anywhere. I would find a stop visual on the floor and use it… * you can still do this with color coding* but I didn’t THINK you could.
So, what does color coding do for the students? Color coding schedules and student belongings gives students a quick and easy way to find their own things. Matching your schedule pieces to the color of their schedule board gives you a way to know who is missing a piece… and therefore dismantling a tragedy of the student not knowing what is next… or even worse the WRONG picture being next.
I thought that color coding would be a lot of work… but if you stick with the colors of Astrobrights… you can easily print name tags for each student with no effort or ability at all… right on their color paper. I would print 25+ names on each student color… and label everything. Schedules, binders, notebooks, hooks, lunchboxes, data boards… the list goes on.
The schedule pieces themselves weren’t that big of a pain to make either. Students became flexible and could definitely use another color visual on the fly by the end of the year… but the colors held us all together like glue… even the students knew where to place a visual back if it had gone missing!
Overall color coding keeps everyone organized, but it also gives students a sense of identity. They know where their belongings are and can easily find them. For the staff it’s SUPER easy to do schedules at the end of the day and put pieces back where they go.
My color coded schedule pieces come in 13 colors, you can find them here.
You can also find my color coded token boards here.
