Math Facts Graphing!

I have been so busy this week working on my classroom, that I am going to apologize right now for this being a short post!  But, I am EXHAUSTED!!  I have spent a majority of my time creating my class schedule which incorporates schedules for each student and each adult for every day of the week.  More to come on that tomorrow!  For today, I wanted to share a math fact activity we have been doing in my classroom.  

Morning Group for Kids with Autism

Day 2 went a lot smoother than our first day of school and my kids are starting to settle in to their routines.  The only downside of today was the fact that someone broke into our school and stole laptops and iPads out of 10 classes (mine included!).  But back to the topic at hand...many elementary grades start their day with a morning meeting or circle time, and my class is no exception.  However, a class targeting students with autism may need to do things a little differently.  Here are some pictures of my morning group board and supports I put in place to help aid in my students' learning.

Great Calendars for Kids with Autism

So yesterday was the first day of school, and I don't know about you, but I am feeling a bit overwhelmed!  I am super excited to see my kids, but feel like I don't have anything 100% finished in my room!  I keep finding more things to do everywhere I turn in my classroom.   One thing we all know our students need to start the school year off on the right foot are schedules and calendars.  

Work Task Tuesday!

Time for my second Work Task Tuesday.  This week, I am going to focus on Money Activities.

This activity is matching coins to the coin pictures on the cards.  To make this activity more interesting, I tried to use pictures of reinforcing items for my students!

Question Words

With such high language deficits, so many students with autism struggle with answering/asking questions.  We have been working on teaching students the difference between a sentence and a question during one of our small reading groups.  We use this visual in the classroom to help them distinguish between the two as well as to help them come up with their own questions.  

Teaching Strategy 5: Behavior Management Tools

When trying to determine which behavior management tool you want to use, you first need to consider the function of the problem behaviors.  Behavior usually occurs when students want attention, access to a tangible item (toy/food), they want to escape or avoid a non preferred activity/person, or there is something automatically reinforcing (a behavior that is not socially mediated) their behavior.  A lot of times, we think we know what the function of a behavior is right away, but we can be wrong.  

This is my favorite "bad behavior" visual...haha. ------------------------------->

Teaching Strategy 4: Schedules

Schedules are so important in an autism classroom.  They help make the day predictable and organized for our students.  You can and should use schedules for everything!  

In my class, we have a class-wide daily schedule...