Are you teaching ESY (Extended School Year) this year? Do you have your students or other students from your district? I am teaching ESY for my district this year, and I have a few tips for creating a simple ESY routine for K-2 special ed.
Visual Schedules
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with ESY. You know what works during the school year, so use that during ESY. One of the most important pieces of your ESY routine should be a visual schedule for your students. Once you get the schedule for ESY, make a visual schedule for each of your students that is similar to their schedule during the year. I will also write the schedule on the whiteboard of our classroom for ESY for the staff.
Morning Meeting
Another routine I like to incorporate into ESY is our morning meeting calendar group. I like to use this calendar routine ESY- shop it here. My ESY program is half day, so I like to do morning meeting first thing when the students arrive to begin our day like we would during the school year.
Rotations
At my ESY program, we do rotation classes. In years past, we have had social skills, adapted PE, math, etc. During these rotations, we travel to different classrooms to participate in the activities. If your program does not do this or if ESY is full day for you, don’t worry! There is a perfect solution for you. The Simple ESY Bundle (on TPT here) has all lessons and materials you need to teach ESY for 8 weeks!
There are tons of fun recipes, science experiments, adapted books, comprehension, and much more. There are also schedules and choice boards included that would be perfect to use for ESY.
IEP Goal Work
If you’ve read any of my blog posts, this won’t come as a surprise- I bring my IEP goal bins to ESY! For any of my students that I have for ESY, I will just take their IEP goal bins with me. It is a no brainer for easy data collection. For any students that are not mine during the year, I just make a quick makeshift IEP goal bin for them to have during ESY. Check out my blog post on how I setup IEP goal bins in my classroom here. For our IEP goal time during ESY, we (my IAs and I) rotate between each child to work on their qualifying IEP goals.
Lunch
The next part of my ESY routine is lunch. During lunch, I put my focus on communication skills. We practicing requesting help, requesting more, requesting needed items, talking with peers, and more. We also work on cafeteria skills during this time, such as going through the lunch line, staying in a seat, throwing away garbage, etc.
Reward Time and Pack Up
Our ESY day ends after lunch, so when we return we begin our pack up routine. We work on toileting, cleaning up, packing a backpack, etc. I also give my students a reward time during this time after they are packed up and waiting for the bus. My students love watching music videos on our Smartboard for reward time.
ESY is such a fun time in the summer! It is a great change of pace from the school year, and for me it is the perfect mid-summer job. I hope it was helpful to see my ESY routine. What does ESY look like for you? Is it all summer? Full day? Let me know in the comments!
