Setting Up Schedules for Special Education
After being in a self contained/ special education classroom for a few years, I’ve noticed that a solid schedule for EVERYTHING is the key to really keeping the special education machine rolling! This is all about how I set up my classroom schedules for my special education classroom.
I usually set up my schedules in a very specific way to ensure and build continuity and predictability within the classroom. Research tells us that students with Autism really need and thrive off of predictability and consistency within the classroom.
Keep reading below for how to set up various schedules within your special education classroom.
1. A classroom schedule overview. Below is an example of my very own classroom schedule. I have blocked out some parts because those are names and identifiers in my actual classroom. The idea behind this was to create an overview. You can do this on any editing app (Google Slides, Docs or Powerpoint). This was created on powerpoint because there are more edibility options through that program.
Follow me on tik tok for more videos on creating with powerpoint.
2. The second schedule that I create before launching the school year is the IEP work schedule.
In our classroom we work on academic IEP goals (math, language, science, social studies based) for about an hour and a half per day. We follow a very specific, ABA principled system with this. I’ll chat more about what happens at IEP work goal times a bit later this month. If you want videos on how we run this follow me on instagram!
With this schedule we separate the days into our school week days and we rotate which staff work with which student on any given day. This allows students to learn how to work with a variety of staff on their academic goals. Some students struggle with the change in staff at first, but we have a few strategies that we use to work with the students and build their resiliency and stamina through this area.
3- The final schedule that I create for my classroom before the start of the year is the integration schedule. Our students are all integrated during some afternoons with other mainstream classrooms, so it’s imperative that this is organized!
We try to switch up who supports where for integration, but sometimes some students prefer to work with certain adults. We prefer to keep their preferences at the centre during this time because integrating with many other children is difficult enough for our students! We work on that resiliency and change factor when we work on IEP goal time (see paragraph above), so we tend to keep this part of the day low risk and high engagement.
Below is an example on how to create this schedule. I’ve made mine on powerpoint but you can use google slides, google docs or even canva to do it yourself!
