Grace from The Autism Helper shares five classroom strategies for kindergarten autism students. Use transition songs to signal routine changes, set up one-on-one workstations with blue dividers and labeled supplies, give each student a personalized morning-work pouch, create a turn-in bin for independent work submission, and place early-finisher activities at each center to keep students on-task.
Hey y'all, my name is Grace here with The Autism Helper, and I'm gonna share with you my top 5 tips that help my kindergarten autism classroom run smoothly throughout the day. Number 1 is transition songs. I use the same song every time we transition, um, either to the carpet or the table for a whole group activity, and then also when we line up. So the students hear those same 2 songs a lot throughout the day And this helps build routine memory, reduce behaviors, and promotes independence. And then it gives students an allotted amount of time to be able to clean up— it is what they are currently doing— and then get to the place that they are supposed to be next. And to take this one step further, just something that makes it a little bit easier on my end as the teacher, is I actually bookmarked both these songs on my desktop And so I'm gonna show you what that looks like. It makes it just super quick. You can run over to my computer, click on the bookmark, and then hit the song. At the top of my screen, I have all of my bookmarks. This one right here is morning tabs to open, and that is where I store them both. So I just click it, and then in my dropdown, the top one is the cleanup song that I use for anytime we're going to circle or to the table, and then my lineup song for when we are about to transition out of the room. So I just click it. And then the song pops right up. That last little piece is just a little thing that I like to do just to make my life a little bit easier and reduce unstructured times. It doesn't take me, um, those, you know, few seconds that I'd have to type in YouTube, search the song, and then find it. It's right there, so it's an easy click and students are kept on task and in their structured routine. Number 2 is designated workspaces to work one-on-one with students. Here is a quick little overview of what one of our stations look like that myself or a para will work one-on-one with the student. As you can see, we have a blue divider here that helps create a barrier so that there's less distractions. We can close the blinds to also reduce distractions, and I keep everything over here that myself or one of my paras would possibly need during instruction. So that it reduces the amount of times that we would have to get up and stop instruction. So first up here, I have this little bin that we call a Tidy Tub, and it acts as a mini trash can. Up, I have our math level daily curriculum folders for each student, and then also our language arts level daily curriculum folders for each student. I have this 3-drawer bin. In the top, I have all of our markers and crayons. Pencil, glue stick, some erasers. In this top drawer, I have our anchor charts for math, and then in the second drawer, I have our anchor charts for language arts. And then in this extra drawers, I have scissors. And also on each desk, I have a response scoring sheet. That's just a little cheat sheet for myself and my paras when we are doing our data in our ABA. Number 3 is morning work. I'm going to turn you all around and show you how I have my morning work stored and then what we do each morning for morning work. Every morning after students have put their things away and ate breakfast, they come over to this cart and they find their pouch with their morning work in it. And each pouch has their name on the front, so this also works on name recognition. And then they bring this to their table and has all the supplies that they would need every morning to complete their morning work. Okay, I brought one of my students' morning work pouches over and I'm going to show you what we keep inside. So first up in here, we just have their actual morning work, and we use the Leveled Daily Work by The Autism Helper. And I actually stapled the entire unit together, just saves myself time and prep. And then each day when the student pulls out their morning work, they just rip the top page off. So this is their morning work that they complete every morning. And then along with this, in their morning work pouch, they have an entire set of markers, and this is all they need to complete their morning work each day. Um, this is super nice because it keeps the room structured and students busy as we are getting ready for the day, taking kids to the bathroom, making sure that everyone has breakfast, um, and it's a nice easy transition into our full school day. My fourth tip is actually right next to our morning work pouches, and that is to have a designated turn-in bin. So I'm going to flip you all around and show you that. So here is where I have my turn-in bin, and then also my bin where students put their folders every morning. So anytime a student finishes a worksheet or a craft, they they will go ahead and turn it into this bin right here. This is one of my personal favorite independent skills that my kiddos learn in my classroom. I always get so proud of them when they're able to turn in their work independently because it's working on those executive function skills, it's building independence, and it's also generalizing those life skills. Tip number 5: always have an early finisher or an independent work task at each center so that students have something to do either if they've finished the activity and the timer hasn't gone off, or if you are needed somewhere else to help out and a student that you're working with needs something to keep them busy and on task, but something that they are able to do without an adult next to them. So I'm going to turn y'all around and show you an example of something that I would keep at my centers. Here is an example of something that I currently have as an early finisher at one of my centers. Is a matching workbook. This theme is animals, and this is also from the Autism Helper. So students can just go through and complete each task, and this is nice because it is still building some of those foundational skills but is also something that students can complete if needed independently. Are my top 5 tips to what helps my kindergarten autism classroom run smoothly throughout the day. Leave a comment down below letting me know what is the number one tip that helps your classroom run smoothly.
