Thursday, October 11, 2012

What to Store by your Door??

As we all know, being a Special Education teacher is different than a typical classroom.  For one, you are constantly juggling all of your students' and assistants' schedules.  And on top of that, lesson planning looks a whole lot different when you are creating and running a different curriculum for each student.  Luckily, my principal is very supportive and has let me come up with my own templates for both schedules and lesson plans.  I keep copies of my schedules (see my earlier post on creating these), my general lesson plan, as well as my evacuation plans posted by my door for easy access for administrators, classroom visitors, and parents to see.  I store them in top loading sheets which I velcro to the wall.  





Here is a screenshot of what part of my lesson plan looks like.  My lesson plan template is very simple and just gives a brief overview of the different types of topics covered under each subject, how they are assessed, etc.   Click here to access and edit my lesson plan template


When submitting my lesson plans to my principal, I also attach a list of each student's IEP goals as well as a spreadsheet showing in which classroom activities I am meeting those goals.  (These spreadsheets are also very helpful in figuring out minutes for my IEPs as well as explaining to parents what their child is doing each day!). 



For my evacuation plans, I use a template given to me by my district.  Click here to access and edit the template to fit your school. These evacuation plans are helpful in making sure there is always an assistant assigned to a student.  However, we rarely look at them, as our schedules say who each of us is assigned to at all times (so we know who to accompany out during fire-drills/evacuations).




6 comments:

  1. Hi! I found your blog today and love it! Can you explain your goals and mins spreadsheet a bit more?

    Thanks!
    Caitlin
    Learning AhoyM

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    1. Definitely! So what I do is list the goals (using a brief phrase) down the left side of the chart. Then across the top, I list all the different centers/activities in my classroom. Next, I make an X in each box if that goal is being addressed during that activity. To figure out my minutes, I make notes (on a separate piece of paper) about how many minutes in each activity we are working on that goal. For instance, during morning group (abbreviated as AM in the chart) we work on identifying how we feel each day (i.e. meeting some of my students goals on emotions). But this doesn't take up the whole morning group activity, it only takes about 5 minutes. So I make a note that we are working on that goal for 5 minutes of morning group. I do this briefly for each activity to figure out how many minutes we are working on each goal (and write the total minutes per week in the box on the right). Sorry, that is a pretty wordy explanation...hope that makes sense. Let me know if you have any other questions! Thanks for reading!

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  2. Hi do you have a blank template for the goal spreadsheet? Thank you!

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    1. Yes! Do you have boardmaker? That is the program I made it on. If not, I am planning on making a non- boardmaker version soon!

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  3. I do have boardmaker but would love both versions of you made one yet!

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    Replies
    1. Email me (autismtank@gmail.com) and I can send it over :)

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