Something that I often feel my students are lacking is the opportunity to produce written work. as special educators, not only do we focus on academics, but we are teaching independence skills, social skills, communication skills, shall I go on? We have students with varying strengths and needs, so having daily worksheets that meet each student where they are is difficult to come by. Especially if you are similar to me teaching students in 6 different grade levels. The Autism Helper’s Leveled Daily Work is the perfect solution to this problem! There are 5 different versions of this resource, leveling from 0.5 through level 4. I decided to begin with Level 1 for my elementary-aged students. Here is the run down.

Each bundle comes with 180 interchangeable templates (an example of one is in the photo to the left). You will also find the blank worksheet, which our students will fill in each day. What I decided to do was print several blank worksheets for my students, but only one set of the templates. Gotta save the trees (and my school’s money) after all! I slipped the templates into a page protector and put it on the ledge of my white board so that my team of paraprofessionals could take turns using it with the student they were working with. Obviously, this means my students were not all doing their daily work at the same time. You could totally utilize this resource in a different way, such as whole group or small group instruction, all still sharing that one copy of the daily template.

Level One Skills

I decided to start with Level 1 for my classroom because it focused on a lot of the same skills my students are working on. It is also a great option for learners who are still working on handwriting skills. There are opportunities to write words, circle the numbers, color within the lines, and draw. With the provided “key pages”, students are able to work on transferring information from one page to their own. This is a key skill when learning in the general education classroom. Let’s break it down to show the skills being worked on.

• Two vocabulary words  
• Number correspondence for 1-9
• Color identification
• Copying a picture (awesome visual perception and matching practice)

Creating Modifications

Although this resource seems close, there is obviously no such thing as “one size fits all”. I have students who are still working on pre-foundational writing skills, so their daily work may look a little different. The go-to modification is making the writing portion a tracing activity with the good ole highlighter. For my student who needs this support, I ask them to tell me or “how many” or “what color” and once they receptively or expressively answer correctly, I write the word in highlighter for them to trace.

As for copying the picture, this modification takes more prep work, but works great. Use liquid glue to “draw” the outline of the picture on your student’s worksheet. Once it is dry, it creates a great boundary and provides guidance when coloring in the designated areas. This way your student is still responsible for matching the colors to the correct area of the picture and utilizing their fine motor skills, just with some support on the drawing portion. Happy working, friends!