Progress Monitoring and Small Groups in Kindergarten
This year is my first real experience in kindergarten. I have been having a blast working with a new team of educators and learning about the skills at this developmental age. With a son who started kindergarten this year as well, I am learning how hard kindergarten...
Engaging Summer Activities
Many families, and even teachers, worry that their children and learners will lose skills over the summer. Whether there is time embedded throughout the day for homework or structured activities throughout the summer weeks, there are many activities that can be...
Focus on Five: Classroom Restaurant Experience
This year, I really wanted to make my social studies lessons more engaging and hands-on. Using The Autism Helper’s Social Studies Daily Leveled Curriculum (Level 1) as inspiration, we are starting units based off of Unit 2, “All Around Town” and creating interactive...
Focus on Five: Graphing Mega Pack
Sometimes it can be a challenge coming up with science goals for students that are applicable across a variety of science topics, can be adapted for multiple levels and align with state standards. Since we see graphs in textbooks, in news articles and on TV, teaching...
How to Start Experiencing History
What is better than watching your children experience the world around them? I love giving my son hands-on experiences and explorations to bring history to life. Though history can feel like a huge task to take on, it’s not! In fact, it doesn’t have to be a task at...
How To Fade The Adults During Play
Throughout the school day, it is an adult job to create natural environments and situations for students to learn. Teachers and other team members teach children by asking questions, lecturing, modeling, reading, playing, and so much more! When working on play skills...
Focus on Five: Creating Science Lessons
It’s hard to believe at this time last year we were all figuring out how to teach online and now that most of us are making the transition back to in-person learning. While I will be back in the classroom soon, I will use a lot of the digital resources that I created...
(FUN)ctional Routines
Practicing functional routines is an essential life skill. In doing so, our learners will work on becoming independent in the classroom, their homes, and their communities. Functional routines can be fun and motivating, even if they are challenging and stressful right...
Organizing the Leveled Daily Curriculum
The Leveled Daily Curriculum has been growing over the past few years. There is Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Functional Literacy. Level 0.5 and Level 4 has been added to LA and Math. I love these resources because it includes...
Focus on Five: Setting Up a Content Center
This month’s theme at The Autism Helper is centers and October is the perfect time of year to establish the centers in your classroom. School has been in session for about a month, you have gotten to know your students and they know their schedules, so now it’s time...
Social Studies Leveled Daily Curriculum
There are so many functional and important topics within the social studies umbrella that it made me so excited to get started on creating the social studies curriculum. Working on map skills, traffic signs, cities, community helpers, needs and wants are all such...
Science Leveled Daily Curriculum
I have been working on this resource for MONTHS and am so excited that it's finally done. One day into using my Language Arts and Math Curriculum the first year I knew I needed more. I was instantly in love with the structure, the organization, and the peace of mind...
Election Unit
It's that time of year - and I don't mean Pumpkin Spice Latte time. Election season is upon us (if you never watch tv or go online you may have missed that....hehe). Yes, which ever candidate you are supporting the election is smacking you in the face everywhere you...
Community Helper File Folder Activities
We love working on categorizing and associations in my class. It's a great way to take students beyond just basic matching tasks and it's essential to get more complicated concepts mastered. These are some of my favorite file folder activities because they target...
All About Emergencies
When life skills and academics come together in perfect harmony - literally nothing makes me happier. This life skill is the pretty much the life skill of all life skills - working on the essential and critically important skill of identifying emergencies. I mean, can...
Weather & Season Themed File Folder Activities
Make science fun and interactive with these visual and engaging file folder activities! File Folder Activities are my go-to in my class. These structured and interactive puppies of love are on constant rotation in my room! My Weather and Season Themed File Folder...
Social Studies File Folders
There are some topics that so challenging to adapt to our students' level. Our brains twist and turn and our faces get all smushed as we wrangle internally. How do we teaching our student about the solar system - when they don't even know colors yet? It gets...
Earth Day Must Have: Recycling Unit
Earth Day is around the corner folks! April 22 will be here before you know and I love this resource for some Earth Day fun! Sometimes incorporating these seasonal themes in our multi-level and extremely diverse classrooms can be tricky. For our lower level learners -...
Teaching Wants vs. Needs
Teaching the concept of thankful can be ridiculously challenging. Well I bit off a little more than I could chew and took on teaching wants vs. needs. Again a great and necessary concept to teach but it was hard for my kids! They did really well though. We did tons of...
Science File Folder Activities
Science concepts can be difficult to target at the foundation level. Teaching some of these higher level and more abstract can be very hard for some of our students to understand. Use these fun and engaging file folder activities to teach basic science themes. File...