Gina tours her Pre-K 3 inclusive classroom, showing how she organizes the entrance with schedule tags, sets up minimal centers that expand gradually, and stocks key areas like the writing center with alphabet pegboards and adaptive books. She emphasizes teaching students to use each space and keeping the environment simple until they're ready for more.
Hey everyone, this is Gina from The Autism Helper. I just wanted to give you a little classroom tour of my room this year. I have a new wall, first of all, which is really exciting, and a door. I service Pre-K 3. I have an inclusive classroom in the morning, and then I go into Pre-K 4 in the afternoons and service my students there. So let's take a little tour. On the outside of those doors, there's a cubby area, and obviously I have my rules listed right near the door, so every time we line up, they're right there. We review them. I have the walking rope right here. Um, this is one of my favorite parts. It's my schedule board. I'll try to scan down so you can't see any, uh, kids' pictures, but this is our schedule for tomorrow. I actually was able to start off with a pretty, uh, large schedule. We did start this on first day, and we just showed them how to take their tag off like this, and then match it to the basket. And they do that for each little round. This is my one work with teacher table, and then this area doubles as a lot of things right now. There is a— another work with teacher table right here. In the morning, I put out 2 bins of toys that the kids can play with for choose time. Um, right now everything's pretty bare because I'm just not quite there yet with all the resources that I want to put out until they learn how to use them and how to transition throughout the room. But this will be a science and social studies little area. Um, I have some extra materials in here, so some adapted books, math materials. This eventually will be a math and science exploration— or sorry, just math. And over here we'll have some art supplies, but right now it's just holding some boxes. In my opinion, it's totally fine to leave out stuff until your kids are ready. And then of course I have student mailboxes over there. Um, this is a new center. I have the writing center this year. It's really cool because I can actually leave out materials without them kind kind of being tossed around so far. So we have some alphabet pegboards, and they can just put in the peg in the letter and complete those. We have magnetic letters, dry erase tracing papers, awesome adaptive books, of course core language boards, reading books, and over here we have a dollhouse and a few puzzles. Again, very bare right now. Over here is my cozy corner, so kids can come here if they need to take a break or calm down. It's just a safe little area to feel safe in and take deep breaths and return to the class when they're ready. And of course, we have to teach them how to use this area. Uh, right now I've opened up the centers for you to see, but I do close them during the day. This is our kitchen and dramatic play. They love this. This is our favorite area, especially that phone. They really didn't know what that was at first. And then over here we have blocks. I have some Lego blocks in there, a couple trucks and blocks on the shelves. This is more than I had out last year at this time, but again, these kiddos can kind of handle a little bit more. And we did go around on the first day of school and show them how to use everything. And then over here is my circle time area. I have the cube chairs. We have what we're learning about this week, our core word vocabulary, the number of the week. I do Foundations letter cards, and those are amazing. Circle time rules, we go over those every day. And then our calendar and our large core board. This year, I love this, I've incorporated in a circle time calendar. It really keeps us on track. That way the kids, you know, when they're like, "Oh, are we finished?" I can say, "Oh look, no, we have dance," and they love taking off the pieces and putting them in this little finished box over here. And then over here we have a whole group schedule, and you may be thinking this is way too many schedules because they all have their individual one, but it's nice to kind of go over during group time and say, "Well, let's look what we did. Have, you know, we had breakfast already. Oh, now we're in circle time. What do we have next?" And so they can just kind of see a bigger version of it, and they really enjoy that. Over here is my new teacher cart that I got. I absolutely love it. I did a little tutorial on my blog about it, and this is just all set up for tomorrow. So I have a lot of math games that we're gonna do tomorrow and some Play-Doh, and we've got some counting cubes and a little match math board for tomorrow. Back here, if I want to get into here, I I have some binders, my ABLES, and some upcoming lessons and things to prep, and just some overall supplies. I tried to keep it really minimum this year of what I had out in my room. So I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you have any questions.
