Focus on Five: Five Benefits to Daily “Meetings” with FREEBIE!
What is a daily "meeting"? In my classroom, I use meetings as daily routine for a group of students on the same level. My meetings are within subject areas and include a large format on the front board and a daily worksheet for students. The format is the same each...
Focus on Five: Ways to Level Up TAH’s {Leveled} Daily Curriculum!
The school year's back in full swing! Now that your centers and procedures are ready to go, it's time to set up curriculum! This is my third year of using the fabulous, functional Language Arts Leveled Daily Curriculum and the dazzling, differentiated Math Leveled...
Leveled Daily Homework
Special Education Teachers are busy. We have IEPs, lesson plans, behavior plans, staff training, staff meetings, parent meetings, parent communication, communication systems, AAC devices, clinician collaboration, case managers, and once in a blue moon we may need to...
Language Arts and Math Leveled Daily Curriculum
The start of the year is stressful. We have so freaken much to do that it’s hard to even get started because the pile of work is so monumental. As special education teachers, we don’t have a preset curriculum to follow. There is no perfect set of textbooks or...
Monthly Theme: Teaching Techniques
The new year comes in with a new energy. There is definitely a sense of revitalization. Those two weeks away from your classroom are pretty powerful. We can so easily become so entrenched and engrossed in our room that we lose sight of the big picture, long term...
iPads & Anchor Charts: Why Your Independent Work Doesn’t Need to be Mastered
You may be hesitant to include too many academic tasks in your students independent work activities because your students haven't completely mastered many of these academic areas. But guess what? Want to hear a little secret? Independent work doesn't need to be...
Literacy, Math, and Writing Centers {why I’m OBSESSED with these}
Independent work is the backbone of any successful classroom but that doesn't mean your kids need to be stringing beads and sorting colored bears all day. If you are like me, you may feel like sometimes our understaffed schools have forced us into a situation of...
Leveled Daily Curriculum
Creating curriculum is basically a second full time job. I am advocating for second salaries for sped teachers but no such luck quite yet. Creating materials that are aligned to each students' needs, utilizing assessments, taking data, sequencing skills, and making...
Interactive Reading and Math Work Books
The start of the year is all about training staff, teaching your students routines, implementing new behavior plans, and trying to get the new barista at starbucks to memorize your order (venti unsweetened iced coffee!). You were probably nodding your head along to...
Visual Math Activities {LEVEL 2}
As a child, my parents say I was always a "two cookie" kinda girl. If I had a cookie in one hand, I needed one for the other. It make sense. If you have something great - it's always better to have more. And although that philosophy has not always been so great for my...
Interactive Math Work Books
If you are a regular reader, you probably think I am huge freaken liar sometimes. I say everything is my favorite. This is my favorite resource, no this is my favorite resource, no wait this for real is my favorite resource. I can't help it, guys. I've got a lot of...
Addition Mega Pack
This resource contains a completel addition teaching guide! This massive packet focuses on breaking down the addition number operations into small and manageable pieces. The scope and sequence of this curriculum is structured in a way to build on each previously...
Let’s Keep Score! Holding Students Accountable for Their Grades
For our higher functioning students - especially our ones who are older - we want to continue to make them more and more independent and self-aware. We want to be constantly increasing their self-management skills so they can be a functionally independent adult. It's...
TouchMath: Why It’s Great & How You Should Use It
Are you familiar with TouchMath? Known as The Alphabet of Mathematics - this visually based approach to math can be perfect for our learners. It embeds prompting and utilizes the numbers as manipulative themselves! If you have students that are struggling to...
Menu Math
I am all about math tasks that are functional. I am also all about tasks that are engaging and motivating to students. Food and math collide in perfect harmony with these menu math activities. Students love working on these tasks because they get to talk about chicken...
Rotating Student Binders {being efficient with your resources}
It's a whole lotta work to setup an autism classroom. I think I have permanent blisters on my fingers from cutting laminating. Having an overwhelming amount of rescues is essential in our rooms. Bored students = naughty students. We need to make sure we have enough...
All About Animals {an Adapted Book}
Guess what sneaky skill we often forget that our kids possess in spades? Memorization! So often we think our kids have a concept completely mastered. We are all ready to pat ourselves on the back and throw up our feet but then we have a sinking feeling that maybe we...
Math Sorts for Interactive Learning
I get super sick of velcro. It seems like my staff and I constantly cutting, sticking, or ordering velcro. On a regular basis, my butt is covered with this: So take a break from velcro and emerge yourself into the world of sorts. Especially for your higher functioning...
Setup & Organization of Leveled Daily Curriculum {Video Tutorial}
We are in full swing of using our Leveled Daily Curriculum for both Language Arts and Math and I am in LOVE. It makes my planning so easy and makes my day to day instruction run more smoothly and cohesively. I feel in control of my instruction. I feel like I have a...
Hard Work Tasks for Advanced Learners
Need some advanced work tasks for your higher functioning kids? I've got some great ones for you! If you have tasks that are too easy your higher functioning kiddos will fly through those tasks before you have a spare moment to run to the bathroom. You want to keep...