Sasha from theautismhelper.com walks through a 7-step checklist for setting up an autism classroom, covering organization, structure, schedules, visuals, data tracking, academic work, and communication with therapists. The checklist helps special-education teachers reduce stress and ensure nothing gets forgotten during setup.
Hi, this is Sasha from theautismhelper.com, and this is a product preview of 7 Steps for Setting Up a Stellar Autism Room Checklist. So I'm a huge to-do list person. Like, I'm one of those people that will write something after I finished it on my to-do list just so I can check it off. And I was thinking how great it would be to have for both new and veteran teachers— I'm honestly gonna use this myself— have a checklist for guiding you through that setup process. Setting up can be so overwhelming. There's so many things to do and think about, and there's a million things you can forget. So to have a checklist to actually go through each each step and get yourself organized is literally priceless because this is going to keep you organized, make sure you're not forgetting anything, and also relieve that stress a little that you'll get to it because you have it on your list. I'm going to briefly go through. There's 7 different checklists. Some are 1 page, some are 2 pages for the 7 steps of setting up your classroom. The first one is organization and planning. This will have things like deciding if you're going to have a student desk or creating your list of classroom centers. Further down, things like figure out how you're going to collaborate with therapists. So it's going to have every little detail included in here that will guide the setup process of organizing and planning. Next is classroom structure. So literally the exact steps of make sure to label all bins and materials, make sure to leave space where students are going to wait in line, or where students putting their backpacks. So simple things like that. Next is schedules, which is hugely important. So this details the exact steps of how to create your staff and student schedule as well as your visual student schedules, um, down to the details of even assigning a staff member to reset the picture schedules at the end of each day. Um, next is visuals. So what visuals do you need in your room and where are you putting them and kind of ensuring that you're attending to all of those little things. Data and behavior, this is huge. How are you organizing your, you know, data? How are you organizing your behavior management plans? Where— what is this going to look like? So a step for each of those. And then the meat and potatoes of your class: work tasks, academic goals, IEP goals. So really planning out how you're organizing your actual work. And then last, communication. This is a big piece of the puzzle. How are you collaborating with your speech therapist? How are you incorporating speech into the daily routine of your classroom. Um, and that's it. I don't want to go over too much because I want to give it all away, but, um, I think this is going to really guide your— or guide your setup and keep you organized in a way that's really essential. Because like I said, we're so overwhelmed. You're thinking of, oh, I have to go do this, and I go do this. I know when I'm setting up my classroom, I'll walk across the room to pick up something, I'll start on a whole different activity or task to set up, and then soon I forgot what I was doing in the first place. So this will really keep you organized. I think this is great for both newer teachers and veteran teachers because sometimes it's just good to refresh, rethink, why did I do this this way? Like, why did I put this desk here? I'm always trying to rework things, so I think this will be really valuable in this way. So again, this is a product preview of a classroom setup checklist by theautismhelper.com.
