My students keep me on my toes. At any point in my day, someone has a meltdown over something as simple as the applesauce on the lunch menu is blue instead of the normal color to something as complex as a change in home life. Having a plan keeps me from living in constant survival mode, having a detailed lesson plan keeps my staff on the same page.
Lesson planning for my class keeps me sane. On any given day in my room, the unpredictable will happen. I have always planned lessons for activities and I have always done a schedule but this school year I stepped it up a notch after reading a blog post from Autism Classroom Resources and put them together.
My school district adopted a new teacher appraisal system called T-TESS. One of the components of it is goal setting. After reading through all the rubrics for each domain, I decided that lesson planning would be the area to target this year.
Added benefits of really having a written out detailed plan was a decrease in student downtime, more differentiated lessons that were aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills(TEKS) standards, and IEP goals and fewer negative behaviors.
First of all, I start by filling in the template from Autism Classroom Resources. My district provides model lessons for the TEKS assessed in the Performance Assessments then I create additional lessons to address the TEKS in the IFD. My students are not on grade level so I modify the TEKS through vertical alignment than I get to plug in all the fun stuff like when, where, and how to implement AAC, games to build social skills, and life skills activities.
I would love to hear how you lesson plan in your Special Education Classroom.
So I want to do a series about lesson planning but the best way to do that is to break down the components of the lessons. Communication is a major part of all my lessons because most of my students are non-verbal. Lately, I feel like that have reached a point in their language development that I can't get them the past, they have labels and can make a request but I really need them to use words for true language. So this post will be how I have started to be more intentional about getting my students using their preferred modality of communication functionally.
Project Core has great strategies for implementing the use of core words in the classroom. One of the strategies I have been trying is Predictable Writing Charts because it is a systematic approach to writing. Since I have seen success in the systematic approach to large group reading with increased reading comprehension I gave this a try. My district uses Fontas and Pinnell LLI so I decided to use the story that I read in the small group as sentence stems.
Here is my planning for Predictable Writing Charts for the upcoming week. This week in short because President's Day is Monday so we don't have school. The lesson is supposed to be 5 days but Friday I will do two activities. So during shared reading, we will make a book.
Tuesday: Day 1: Writing the sentences
Wednesday Day 2: Reread sentences and analyze
Thursday: Day 3: Cutting and reconstructing sentences.
Friday: Day 4: Be the Sentence/and Make a book.
We are reading the book titled Rex, so the Topic will be What do you like to play outside?
What activities do you use to incorporate in your classroom to add in Core Vocabulary?
To be honest I have not set goals at the start of the new year because a school new year is in August. But this year after reflecting on my classroom over the Christmas break I decided to set some goals. I saw a post that PreK Partner created in December that I wanted to link up with but was too late to the party. I decided to post anyway and link you to her page http://www.prekpartner.com/ for more ideas.
Last week the students started school on Wednesday, January 4. I used these 3 days to get my students acclimated to the new schedule and readjusted to structure after 18 days at home. So this week I will start off with regular instruction.
Two new things new things I will try in my classroom
1. Predictable Writing Charts to help develop location and meaning of core, concepts about print, print awareness and fine motor skills.
2. GoNoodle use GoNoodle to get students to work on motor imitation.
One thing I will change
1. Independent Work Stations. I don't use them daily because they are not user friendly. If it is not easy for myself or my staff to use and access then it is not easy for the students to use and be successful. I need to tweek these areas to implement them with fidelity.
One successful thing I will continue to do
1. Small group rotation.
Seven tips and tricks I'd like to share with fellow teachers:
1. Classroom management.
2. Ways to determine the cause of behavior.
3. The importance of lesson planning.
4. Paraprofessionals.
5. Organization tools and resources.
6. Routines for students.
7. Student learning rotations.
I have developed a passion for working with students that are non-verbal with autism. When I started working in my K-2 classroom for these individuals the support of bloggers is what got me through my first year. Last school year I was fortunate to be excepted to the Texas Autism Circuit Program where I learned how to implement the 27 evidence-based practices for individuals with autism and I think this is an excellent place to continue collaborating and sharing how I implement them in class.
I can say as this school year comes to a close I have had an extremely successful first year. I have navigated through the ARD progress and writing good IEPs. I learned how to align ABLLS-R to TEKS and keeping 8 to 10 severely Autistic and non-verbal students engaged in learning. I had a group of wonderful Instructional Aids (4) that helped me every step of the way.
So after having a great year I have decided to blog about my experiences in the classroom and to collaborate with other teachers.