Velcro? Scissors? Laminating sheets? Card stock? Check! Sorting activities are essential in our special education classrooms.
As an Early Childhood Special Education Teacher, I often use materials that are modified or need to be adapted. Student work is consistently modified to meet my their needs which is why I always look for activities that target many areas.
I find activities to use as supplemental work or for IEP goals. Simply Special Ed has a variety of resources for us special education teachers to use. Check out how I prep my materials, sort, and differentiate the activities! Oh, and I give a few IEP goal ideas too!
How to Prep Materials:
Materials needed:
- Cardstock
- Scissors
- Laminating sheets
- Laminator
- Velcro dots
- Printer
My teacher assistant helps me prep the activities. I have most of my materials mentioned above in a rainbow cart in my room. We have our own personal laminator but we have a school one as well. I like to print them all out and leave them in my “To Do Bin”.
Pictures can be sorted or kept in a pencil pouch, pencil box or zip lock bag. The goal is to keep visuals together. My goal is to have the activities I need ready to be prepped on Thursday for the following week. I look for materials related to our IEP Goals and out theme for the month.
How to Use
Centers, independent work, 1:1 work and small group are some of the ways I use velcro activities. For my 3-5 year olds, I love to use it for independent work( IEP bin work). I love this specific sorting activity because it has real life pictures which is perfect for making real life connections!
Love how we can truly use these type activities at any time throughout the day. Sorting activities can be added in work bins, morning binders or even used as morning/arrival work! Read ” How to Set Up IEP Bins” HERE for more information.
How to Differentiate
As teachers, we know we have students on different levels which leads us to differentiating. As always, the goal is to fade support for independence and add more or move on to next topic as they master the activity.
To simplify the work you can: limit the amount of pictures provided to student, use work as a “put on” activity, provide object that match the visuals.
To make the work more challenging, you can: Have students label the pictures as they put on, provide multiple shapes, or numbers etc., have student draw or trace the shape when completed with sort, add objects or manipulative if counting, use as a center activity and put in bin for use as students prefer.
IEP Goal Ideas
It’s amazing how sorting activities can be used to target many areas! You could target language goals, sorting, academics (shapes, coins, colors, community helpers, etc.), play goals, life skills, and social skills goals. A few goal ideas are:
By the next annual ARD, given visuals, Student will classify pictures into the corresponding categories in 3 out of 4 trials.
By the next annual ARD, given visuals, Student will be able to match the visuals to the correct picture in 3 out of 4 trials.
By the next annual ARD, given an object and a choice of three picture choices, Student will choose the non-identical picture within the same category, with 80% accuracy, in 3 out of 4 opportunities.
By the next annual ARD, given two pictures of objects to compare, student will determine if the objects are the same (identical) or different, with 80% accuracy, in 3 out of 4 opportunities.
These are just some examples! You can make them your own and be more specific. I’d love to hear some more IEP goal ideas, if you have any comment below!