Classroom Setup: Early Childhood Self-Contained Special Education

Back to school classroom setup is always a stressful time for special education teachers, but it doesn't have to be. I'm Michelle with The Autism Helper. I'm a self-contained primary autism teacher, and I'm going to show you my classroom setup that really takes away all of my stress at the beginning of the school year and works perfect for anywhere between 10 to 15 students as well as 2 to 3 paraprofessionals. Taking a look at my classroom, you can see that I have a lot going on in here. But every area has a purpose. Every area has a meaning, and we really work hard to teach the students the structure and the routine of the classroom at the beginning of the school year. When setting up my classroom, it is super important that I make sure I'm prepared for the first day of school with visuals to let my students know exactly what is expected of them on day one. So we start our routine on day one. When my students come in the classroom, they enter through this door over here. They come in, they put their things in their basket, they get their communication books out. We call it their rainbow book. And if you see here, I have a visual here. It's just a piece of paper taped to a bookshelf, and I have an area for them to put their communication books here. Then they come over and they sit at circle time where we begin our day, and we go over our rules for the day, and we start our activities. How do my students know that this is their basket and this is their desk? Well, I have two words: color coding. So all of my students are assigned a color at the beginning of the school year. You can see the student is in lime green, and that's the color that everything that is theirs will be labeled with for the school year. So his desk has that same color, his schedule has that same color, and when you come over here to my independent center His mini schedule over here is also the same color. So let's talk about setting up the classroom for centers. So I have 6 centers in my classroom, and that's because I have a lot of students, so I need to break them up into smaller groups to be able to get some small group instruction for my students. So 6 centers are what work for me. Here is my English Language Arts center, and you can see here I have the majority of the center is against a wall, I have bookshelves that enclose the center, and then I have down here this color— this is yellow. I have that on the center, and so this center is called Yellow Center. If you look at my student schedule, you can see that this is Yellow Center. So this is how we teach the students what center they're going to go to. Moving on, my students rotate in a circular formation And you can see here I have this green center. So coming over here again, I have it blocked off, clearly defined. We have this mobile partition here that we can move, um, so that we can block off the center even more to just to make it more clearly defined for the students. I have visuals here. This is one of my independent centers. So yes, I have 6 centers, but that doesn't mean that all of my centers are teacher-led. A lot of them have to be independent because I just don't have enough staff in here. I'm lucky this year I have 3 paraprofessionals. However, I use 2 to help me float around for my independent centers because really one of the most important goals to give my students or skills to give my students is independence. Okay, so moving along over to this center. Again, clearly defined spaces here. This is my independent task box center, and this is the Autism Helpers work task system. So my students, they come over and they find their schedule, they pull off their visual, and they come over and they match to the task box. They bring it to the table and they perform the task that's inside. This one is putting objects into a coffee creamer bottle. Once they're done, they put it in the all done box and then check their schedule again. They do 3 tasks, then they're allowed some iPad time, or I have a built-in reinforcer in this center. If they do not want iPad, they are allowed to go to their next center early, which is my play center. And this is also very clearly defined. I have my visuals here if I need it. This basket is for their schedules to go into, so we have a space for them to use their schedules. And students are allowed to play in here. I have a staff supervising. Again, this is primary grades, so play is very appropriate for them. It's actually needed. We need that play in this classroom. This is another one of my teacher-led centers. Please excuse the mess, it's the beginning of the school year, we're still setting up. Um, but this one is a teacher-led center. This is actually my center here, and this one isn't as clearly defined because I need to be able to see what's going on in the classroom. I need to be able to get up quickly, help with behaviors if I can. And here is my color coordination on the legs here. It's purple, and students come over here from the play center. You can see that there's a clear exit and enter point to my center. Okay, from my center, students come over and they work on their Chromebooks. They do Boom Cards. This is another independent center for the students. So if you're counting, I have 4 independent centers and 2 teacher-led centers. I can't stress the importance of these independent centers. But just to be clear, we have to explicitly teach my students how to sit at an independent center, how to stay at an independent center, and how to perform the tasks at an independent center. I also have this table over here. This is my red table. And it is super important to give service providers a space to work in the classroom because not all service providers have a designated space within the school to work. So this is my service provider table. This is where students will do speech therapy or occupational therapy. And when it is their time to do speech or occupational therapy, I have a red visual that I Velcro onto their schedules, and this lets the students know it's time for red table. Giving my students a quiet space to go to when they're feeling upset or tired was very, very important to me. So here is my calm down corner, and this is in an area of my classroom that is not heavily trafficked. However, we can still see the students, but they also get some privacy. So inside I have an area rug, a beanbag chair, a blanket, and some sensory pillows for the students. And I allow these students to spend as much time in here as they need, as long as it's not becoming like a task-avoidant area for them. And because I don't have a lot of things in there, it doesn't usually become a task-avoidant area for them. It's simple, it's not fun looking, so I don't get a lot of students eloping to this area because of that. Alright, so here I am at my classroom hub, what I like to call circle time or morning meeting time. And after every big transition, this is where my students and I meet. We come in, we sit down, we go over our rules, and we go over any whole group instruction that we're going to do for the day. Are my bathroom areas— these I always make sure that I have prepped. I have girl and boy restroom. I have a first then I have a visual to show students if they— if we need them to use the bathroom. This way we don't have to verbally tell them so much. And then this is my toileting. This is for students who are working on potty training. So we have these visuals here. I have a girl visual and a boy visual. Super important to represent your girls in your classroom as well. And these toileting visuals are from Simply Special Ed. Here I have my toileting visuals. For the students that are already potty trained. And I have my bathroom steps here. Visuals are so important in the bathroom. And then we have our hand washing steps here. All right, so that is my classroom setup. Classroom setup can be incredibly stressful, but it doesn't have to be. I've kept this system for years and it's like muscle memory for me. I come in and I set up this classroom so fast. So I highly recommend implementing this type of setup in your classroom. If you're interested in more videos of my classroom and more in-depth videos of my centers, give us a like and follow on YouTube, and I will see you soon.