My Day At School

Do your students' parents want to know what they did at school today?  Do you want to help facilitate more conversations between your students and their families at home?  For many of our students with autism, communicating about their day is difficult.  And if parents don't know what happened at school each day, they don't really know what to ask their child besides "'How was your day today?"  "What did you do today?"  These type of open ended questions are so hard for many students with autism to answer.  If you send home a daily sheet so parents know what activities their child completed, they can ask them questions like "Did you have speech today?" "What did you make in cooking?"  These questions are more narrow in focus and can make it easier for students to answer.

I know, I know, having to write a summary each day for every student can be time consuming and hard to keep up with.  I often liked to communicate special activities with parents through sending home monthly newsletters, monthly calendars of special events, and sending text messages with pictures/info about my students' days.  The other way I communicated with parents, was through sending home these daily "My day at school" sheets.  To save time and energy on the adults' parts, I had my students fill these out for themselves!  What a great way to work on answering questions, increasing the ability to reflect on past events, as well as increasing independence.

As your school year is starting up, why not incorporate some time into the end of every day (15 minutes should do the trick) where you work on teaching your students how to fill this sheet out for themselves.