As an occupational therapist (OT) working in a school setting, I focus on student access to their learning environments. I look at their strengths/needs and compare them to what is required of the activities. By doing this within the unique context of their classroom environment, I work with teams to find ways students can be successful. One of the biggest skills needed for this is generalization! It is not enough to demonstrate a skill for me during a 1:1 session! I want students to be able to show what they know in all settings. When a student demonstrates a need in their classroom setting, I automatically am thinking about how I can incorporate it into my sessions for extra practice. Recently, my speech therapist co-worker and I were noticing that many students did not know calendar skills. Even our upper elementary kiddos did not know the days of the week. Upon further exploration, we noticed they were also missing similar skills like months, seasons, and other time concepts. What an important life skill! We started looking for ways we could work on this in our sessions.
One of the best resources we found was the Morning Meeting Real Pictures from Simply Special Ed. This product is designed specifically for special education settings, so it works well for our kiddos. It can serve as a powerful tool during any therapy sessions. You don’t have to exclusively use it in morning meeting. I regularly use the mini calendar book for dry erase [but you could also use the velcro calendar book set] as well as the worksheets. I love that it comes with a digital version as well! Here’s how you can utilize this resource to support your students’ development in various areas.
Practice Makes Perfect
Consistency and routine are vital for many students, especially our students with autism. Repetitive practice helps students to build skills. Morning Meeting traditionally serves this role. However, we notice that many of our students beyond 1st grade are not having this daily time. Morning Meeting Real Pictures resource can help establish a structured routine within therapy sessions as well. By using the morning work resources to start each session, you can help students understand what to expect, and get the repetitive practice they need to solidify these skills. In general, having a visual schedule allows students to feel more secure and engaged in their learning environment, so take a look at these daily visual schedule cards too!
Pair Calendar Skills with Handwriting Goals
Integrating the use of the Morning Meeting pictures into hands-on activities can enhance fine motor skills [a school-based OT’s bread and butter!]. I chose to laminate the pages that say “Today Is…” and have triple lines for writing below. Students write the full date (ex: Monday September 5, 2024). It is perfect for copying accuracy and/or handwriting legibility goals! You can also have students cut out the pictures and labels to fill each section.
Language, Cognition & Executive Functioning
Using the morning meeting cards can aid in cognitive development by promoting skills like categorization, sequencing, time concepts, and critical thinking. My speech therapist co-worker creates activities where students must sort pictures into categories (ex: days of the week, months, seasons, etc.) or has her students arrange them in the correct sequence. We both work on “before and after” sequencing concepts within these activities as well.
FREE Calendar Labels
The Morning Meeting Calendar Labels are available for FREE and the perfect place to start when adding in some temporal concepts to your sessions! I hope you enjoy using this resource across settings with your students to teach important life skills!
