As a classroom teacher I started using The Autism Helper’s Leveled Curriculum before 2016 and I have never looked back.  I’ll never forget this epiphany I had working as a brand-new teacher with one of our second-grade students.  I was being asked to implement grade level standards and questioning my student when I asked, “who was in the story” and she replied with “sled”.  Then as I pointed to the page and said “touch queen” she did not respond.  I quickly realized this student did not yet have the vocabulary for queen let alone, woman or the difference between a girl and a baby.  The gap was jarring, and I knew there had to be more out there. We had to start scaffolding back to the basics or how was this student ever going to be able to hang with grade level standards?  Enter in the leveled curriculums.  I have had success with EVERY SINGLE student I have ever implemented these amazing curriculums with.  They are not just for students with IEPs either.  I use them with all students and just change the level depending on the need.  Let’s take a look!

The Proof is in the Pudding, err the Data Sheet

I am just going to just jump right into it.  Look at this amazing progress.  And this is just one student.  He went on to copying words, and then sentences, and then writing his own words and sentences.  How incredible is that? I started him on leveled curriculums in kindergarten but think about what these skills are doing for him as now a middle school student. He can copy notes from a SmartBoard and write his own responses.  It started here.  These curriculums are all based on the Assessment of Basic Language & Learner Skills so you can rest assured that you are always working on the necessary skills both foundational and academic.  Sasha took the rubrics from the ABLLS and literally turned it into curriculums and other resources.  If your child or student is working on these curriculums, they will have the basic learner skills needed to proceed to more academic based skills. 

Set up & Implementation

For each of my students I had a Data Binder which house all of the pre and posttests as well as the overall curriculum scoring sheet. I could easily and quickly pull it out anytime to show progress for each of my students.  They also had another binder which housed any leveled curriculums they were currently utilizing so again, anyone, could easily take it off the shelf and work on APPROPRIATE work. If I was sick? No problem.  It was all there.  Do you love looking at a summary data sheet as much as I do? It is so incredible to see pre and post test scores and look back on where your students started.  This summer I have the privilege of working with a student (non-IEP student) preparing for Kindergarten and you better believe I pulled out my leveled 0.5 for him to work on (the picture schedule seen in the photo along with the matching visual number ocean cards are by Made for Me Literacy). 

Depending on the student, I will either start with a concrete activity before completing 1-2 pages of the curriculums or vice versa.  With this student we would complete a page and then follow up with a counting activity since the page was working on tracing and identifying numbers.  I also love how the structure of the pages stay the same and slowly build.  No more relearning the outlay of a page, we need to get down to learning the concept! Another favorite about these curriculums are the data and analyzing errors page.  It clearly pinpoints what the student needs to work on as well as suggest activities to support that area of the need.  Check out my short video below on this part.  Happy learning!

You can find leveled language arts curriculums here

You can find leveled math curriculums here.