Gina tours her 1st-to-3rd-grade classroom for autistic learners, showing visual schedules with matching tags, a calming corner with cushions, workstations for reading and math, and a system using purple boards and file folders to track goals. She explains how these structures reduce behavior problems and build independence.
Hi everyone, this is Gina from theautismhelper.com and this is a tour of my classroom. Right now I'm servicing kids from 1st grade to 3rd grade and they come in and out of the classroom. So come on in. First I have my picture schedules that all of my kiddos use. They're a little bit beyond it, but it just helps with organization so they know to take their tags and they match them with the bigger pictures around the room. Over here is my cozy corner where kids can come if they need to calm down or take a timeout and just kind of breathe, and they can use the cushions and our Tucker the Turtle story. And then over here is my main work with teacher area. I have two. This is where I like to work with kiddos in the afternoon for reading. I have a basket where they match their tag, and then all my supplies are right behind me, right where I can grab them. I have matching folders. I have my materials for my reading lessons up here, and math upcoming lessons. It's a little messy right now because we're closing up for the end of the school year. Um, more supplies because we know if we've got enough things for kiddos to do, we have less behavior problems. Calendar, core board that's removable, and again extra materials like adapted books for early finishers. And then over here is another section for work with teacher. And here is where another assistant can work. And while I work with a few students here, um, we have another couple students going to independent areas. They've got fine motor boxes, language arts, and math. And then we have some file folders over here that match. And they simply just get their boards, put them up on the wall, And then they take the number and they come over and they match it to— it might be a box which they would take to their desk, or it could be a file folder, and they'll go over and complete that at their desk. And they know that when they're all finished, they put their purple board back up and then they go check their schedule. Um, over here at this Work with Teachers table, I have tons of materials that the kids could use. I have Extra matching activities for early finishers. Again, um, I put in all my work and my anchor charts for the day just in here so we can easily pull them out so the kiddos can work on them. I have some data sheets right here with all my kids' goals, level curriculum, extra anchor charts all ready to go and just pull them out as we need them. And marker boards. And again, lots of extra material to work on. Whenever our kiddos are done all of their work with teacher and independent work, then they come back over here and they can get their shoes tag. And they know that it comes over here, and this is our play area. They put their tag in the basket and then they can play with whatever they'd like to play. My only rule is that they clean up first before they go to a different activity. They can play with any of this stuff, or we have a nice little Play-Doh area over here and some sensory boxes. So that's the quick tour of my classroom. If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below. Thanks for visiting!
