I would like to begin this post by stating the obvious; teachers are superheroes. We take on more than anyone outside of education can even attempt to understand, and we do a lot of it with little to no preparation. The reality of being a special education teacher and having double digit, varying aged students on your caseload is that you simply must go with the flow.
At night I lay in bed dreaming of the day that I get to have a daily plan time. During that glorious, uninterrupted hour, I’d look over my collaborating teacher’s lesson plans and brainstorm ways to make each worksheet and activity meaningful, fitting each of my student’s needs while allowing ample independence. That way, when they walked into class, my paraprofessionals would have exactly what they need to support their student and then we would all live happily ever after! Wow, am I being petty or am I being petty?
Let’s get back to reality; you rush into reading groups with your student, 7-minutes late because let’s be honest, we are always running late. The general education teacher hands you a worksheet that is nowhere near where your student is academically, what do you do? The tips I am going to share are not rocket science. They are zero-prep, in a pickle, get with it or get out, kinds of tips. These are tools that I teach my team so that no matter what student they are supporting and in what subject, they can make each learning opportunity as meaningful as possible.
Your Basic Toolkit
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Highlighter for tracing
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Black sharpie to “eliminate” multiple choice questions
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Scissors to literally cut the worksheet in half, limiting distractions and length of assignment
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Use student token economy board during these assignments to allow for breaks within the classroom environment (while also giving yourself more time to better modify the next activity)
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PEERS! You can make nearly anything a partner activity with creativity and willingness from the teacher
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Using iPad apps when needed. For example if students are reading independently, use Epic! to allow for the student to have a book read aloud to them
Know Your Student’s IEP Goals
Knowing the specific skills that your student is working on is a huge piece to successfully modifying activities on the fly. Modifications are meant to be meaningful, therefore we want to take advantage of every learning opportunity and hit as many skills as possible. My paraprofessionals travel to each setting with a clipboard that has simple IEP data sheets on them. This way, no matter what setting they are in, they can scan through the goals and realize that Timmy is still working on number correspondence skills, therefore the addition facts worksheet that his first-grade teacher just passed out isn’t going to be the best fit for him. So his paraprofessional can pull out his white board and number cards instead and work on correspondence skills at his desk AND they can collect data on his IEP goal (winner!).
Leave Ready Work in the Classroom
No matter how much you prepare and collaborate with the general education teacher, things will change. Whether it be that they are running behind schedule, or they ended up scrapping the original lesson all together, we must enter the environment expecting the unexpected. Keeping familiar and flexible materials in the general education classroom is a must. This may be a set of Easy Matching Workbooks, an adapted book, or a simple white board and dry erase marker. If your paraprofessional does not feel equipped to modify the assignment being worked on by their classmates in that short amount of time, at least they can make the student’s time in their class as meaningful as possible by allowing some independent work in a space that they have every right to access.
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