First Week of School in Special Education
This week’s post came from my instagram DMs. I get a TON of DMs every single school year around this time in regards to what I plan for the first week of school. I remember starting off my special education journey and being so overwhelmed with the idea of the first week of school. I thought to myself, what do I plan, how much do I plan, should I go with the flow or start structure right away? What if I need to change? Even though I am in my sixth year of teaching, I still do get a little nervous around this time of year because after all, every year is so different!
Throughout this blog I’m going to attempt to show you my step by step guide for running a successful first week of school with your special education classroom. I say attempt because as we know, every classroom is different- so feel free to tweak this to suit your students needs!
Firstly, when students come in they engage in free choice play for about 10 minutes while we settle everyone in, and do the washroom routine. After this we do our morning meeting activities. Our activities consist of
1- Morning Song
2- Morning stretch
3- Feelings activity
4- What’s the weather
5 – What’s the date
You can either create this yourself with Google Slides or canva, or you can get mine for just $3.00 on Teachers Pay Teachers. I’ve linked it here for easy access in case you’d like to try it out!
The next thing after our morning meeting is specials. During this time I have my prep time so my students are with another teacher. We have those classes on the second floor of our school which means we need to walk there. We always do a transition to this part of the day with a movement break. After the morning meeting, we’ll have a song or dance on our schedule which signifies a movement break and then a transition to specials for our students. Our students have music, dance, drama and gym as their specials prep coverage teachers
After specials, we transition to washroom and snack. Students line up for the washroom and engages in the washroom routine and then they have snack. All our students are pretty independent with snacks, so this time of our day is pretty independent. Some years we have had students with G tubes, so our para professionals usually support to feed during those times. After this time of our day we have morning recess and outdoor play. We transition to our door play with a walk in our neighbourhood. Our students absolutely LOVE this time! There’s something about being in nature that is so regulating for our students. It’s very calming and we love it!!
