8 Ways to Use Binders in Your Classroom

As many of you are aware, I am obsessed with using binders in my classroom.  Today, I thought it would be fun to do a round up of all the different uses for binders.  As many of you are getting ready to go back to school, you may be looking for some new organization systems or work stations to set up in your classroom.  And this time of year is the best to purchase binders for discounted prices.

I used binders for a variety of different work tasks, student schedules, as well as storage and organization.  I included some pictures throughout the post, but please feel free to click on links throughout the post to get additional information/pictures of what is included in each of these binders.

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.

TPT Sale and a NEW PRODUCT

Time for the BEST YEAR EVER Sale on TPT!  I, personally, feel like it is a little early to think about Back To School (I'm enjoying summer too much!), but we might as well take this opportunity to stock up for the upcoming school year!  A little confession time...I may have stayed up until midnight last night, just so I could buy some materials as soon as the sale started...

Just enter BestYear at checkout and you will receive 28% off all of the products in my TPT Store!

And what better way to celebrate a sale, but with posting a new product!  I have been working on these Beginning Reader Center Activities for a long time and I am so excited to finally have it posted on TPT yesterday!  It is over 400 pages and can last you the ENTIRE SCHOOL YEAR!  Most importantly, it is on sale for 50% off today only!

This product is great for students who have recently mastered letter identification. If they are still working on letters, think about checking out my letter identification worksheets and letter assessments and activities.

Once letters are mastered, our students are ready to begin reading and spelling!  For many students in special ed, typical sight words (I, but, the) are not the place to start. Instead, I like to start with functional words that have more meaning and make reading more motivating and fun for my students. 

This product can be used to work on reading, spelling, or both!. This product can be used with the pre-made word lists, your own word lists, or a combination of both! 

The activities and assessments included are good for beginning writers, although accommodations can easily be made to most activities for non-writers. Students do not need to be verbal to utilize this product.

This product includes:

*30 Weekly word lists for student use as well as a blank list for your own word lists.

*30 Weekly word lists for Parent involvement and blank parent lists.

*4 Parent letters with different ideas for implementation at home (plus a blank version for you to add your own suggestions)

*9 Center Activity Mats and accompanying materials

-Write your words 3x

-Build your words with letter tiles (tiles included)

-Stamp your words

-Word Bingo (using current and mastered words)

-Write your words in rainbow colors

-Type your words

-Match words to pictures blank activity mat (and all words/pictures provided).  This can be used as a cut/paste activity for students to complete or you can laminate/pre-assemble each set.

-Make your words out of play-doh (blank mat as well as pre-made play-doh mats for all 150 words)

-150 Worksheets (one for each word covering color in the word and picture, trace the word, write the word, fill in the missing letters, identify and circle the word)

*Weekly reading/spelling assessment for students

*3 Types of data sheets for progress monitoring throughout the school year

*Flash cards for easy assessment

*Picture labels for all materials

*Schedule templates and visuals for reading center schedule

*Implementation Ideas and Tips including photos of how this product is utilized in my classroom

This is a great product for a station run by paraprofessionals or for students to complete independently.  Let me know your thoughts...if you would like anything added, if you would prefer me to sell any of these activities as separates, etc.   Happy Shopping!

Mini-Series: Strategies to PREVENT Elopement #3

No....this mini series isn't about getting married....in the special ed world, we know that elopement is just a fancy word for running away.  This is one of the most challenging behaviors to deal with in a school setting as it is disruptive and can be very dangerous.  As a consultant in a school district, this is one of the most common issues I get called in to help with.  As some of you may already know from reading my blog, I do not like to be put in a position where I have to be re-active on the fly to challenging behavior.  I would rather PREVENT the behavior from occurring in the first place...and then if the behavior still occurs (which it most likely will), I want a specific plan laid out so everyone in my classroom knows what to do.  This mini series of posts will cover identifying function/replacement behavior for elopement, simple to implement prevention strategies, and creating a safety plan.

Even with all of your hard work in identifying the function of the behavior, teaching a replacement behavior, and putting tons of preventative strategies into place,  elopement will most likely still continue to occur for a little while (sorry...old habits are hard to break!).  And when it does happen, everyone in your classroom will feel better if there is a plan in place.  There are 2 parts of an elopement plan that need to be thought about...one is for less dangerous forms of elopement and would include all of the elements of a behavior intervention plan.  And the other is an actual safety plan where you will lay out what to do in emergency situations.

Mini-Series: Strategies to PREVENT Elopement #2

No....this mini series isn't about getting married....in the special ed world, we know that elopement is just a fancy word for running away.  This is one of the most challenging behaviors to deal with in a school setting as it is disruptive and can be very dangerous.  As a consultant in a school district, this is one of the most common issues I get called in to help with.  As some of you may already know from reading my blog, I do not like to be put in a position where I have to be re-active on the fly to challenging behavior.  I would rather PREVENT the behavior from occurring in the first place...and then if the behavior still occurs (which it most likely will), I want a specific plan laid out so everyone in my classroom knows what to do.  This mini series of posts will cover identifying function/replacement behavior for elopement, simple to implement prevention strategies, and creating a safety plan.

As we discussed in my last post, identifying the function of the behavior and teaching a replacement behavior are key ways to reduce elopement, but today we will talk about some simple strategies you can implement to prevent the behavior from occurring in the first place.

Mini-Series: Strategies to PREVENT Elopement #1

No....this mini series isn't about getting married....in the special ed world, we know that elopement is just a fancy word for running away.  This is one of the most challenging behaviors to deal with in a school setting as it is disruptive and can be very dangerous.  As a consultant in a school district, this is one of the most common issues I get called in to help with.  As some of you may already know from reading my blog, I do not like to be put in a position where I have to be re-active on the fly to challenging behavior.  I would rather PREVENT the behavior from occurring in the first place...and then if the behavior still occurs (which it most likely will), I want a specific plan laid out so everyone in my classroom knows what to do.  This mini series of posts will cover identifying function/replacement behavior for elopement, simple to implement prevention strategies, and creating a safety plan.

As with any other challenging behavior, the first thing we need to think about before we can prevent the behavior from occurring is, What is the function?  In order to figure this out, we can look at antecedents and consequence (what is happening before and after the behavior occurs).  You can use an ABC chart such as the one below to take this type of data.

Animal Habitat Book

In one of my last posts, I wrote all about my love for Adapted Books and how they helped transform literacy in my classroom by motivating and engaging my students.  Today, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite adapted books about Animal Habitats.  The books covers habitats such as a farm, ocean, rain forest, bee hive, nest, desert and house.