How I Create Time for Direct Instruction in my Special Education Classroom
Jen, a K-1/2 autism teacher, shares four strategies for finding direct instruction time in a busy classroom. She uses color-coded bins with ready-made lessons, pairs students on the same skill and alternates teaching them, sets five-minute timers before transitions, and groups students by shared reinforcers like iPads to maximize one-on-one time.
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Let's talk direct instruction. I am Jen and I am a K-1, 2 self-contained autism teacher, and my classroom feels like a revolving door. I am sure like so many of you, I was short-staffed this school year, which means I had a number of subs in my classroom at any given point in time. And when you have that kind of setup, just nothing feels consistent. And one of the things that I was really struggling with was direct instruction and meeting those minutes with my students. So let me share some tips and tricks on on how I squeeze in direct instruction with my kids. In my other videos, I talk about how my classroom system is that everyone is color-coded. Normally there are colored labels on these bins right here, but for confidentiality, I have turned them around so you can't see whose is whose. Every student in my classroom has a big giant black file crate or milk crate. In fact, I I would steal these out of the lunchroom my first couple years teaching because these can be expensive. And it wasn't until later on down the road that I had a supply budget that I could buy my very own and I could give the ones that were owned by Pevly Milk back. But don't hesitate. These are often in the break room at the end of the school year. Teachers get rid of them all the time. Grab these because these are great for individual supplies. Let me show you. I've grabbed just one bin so I can quickly show you all of the goodies inside of it. Basically, one of these bins, one of these giant milk crates, holds everything that the child is working on individually that I need to measure for IEP goals. So this child is working on letter identification, we've got letter cards in here. They are working on cutting, so we've got some paper here. They're working on tracing shapes, I've got some of that here. Here. Anything that I might possibly need paper-wise is in this binder, and then I've got supports in here. This child uses TouchChat, and so I have a spare board here in case their device isn't working. They are working on counting manipulatives, and so I have a big bin of counting bears in here, and they are sensitive to noise, I've even got their noise-canceling headphones. We have a supply box, we have a couple blocks, and this child is working on twisting, and so these are really cool. These twist on and twist off, and so this is an activity that they do to build hand strength. All of these things live inside this bin, and that's a real time saver because when I need to work with a student, I have maybe 5 minutes to get one task done. I don't have a massive chunk of time throughout the day, so I can very easily grab this bin, walk to a table, sit down, and do one activity with a child. Everything I need for data collection happens to live in that binder, and so everything that I need is at my fingertips to be able to work on that goal and measure that goal. And what I love is that it's all set up and ready to go. It's just simply grab and go, and that's what makes it a time savings for me. I don't have to sit, I don't have to find the materials, everything is literally at my fingertips. And the benefit of this is I can do it anywhere in my classroom. I grab the bin, I find an open space, and I get to work. My second big tip is to maximize your time by finding a pair. And I know this seems really strange because we're talking about direct one-to-one instruction, and you should still have one-to-one instruction, but let's find a way that we can buddy kids up who are working on similar skills. So for example, I have a bunch of students who are working on WH questions, specifically where questions. And so I've got the WH bundle from the Autism Helper. I have it all ready to go right here, and I have it separate separated by which question. So I've got who, what, when, where, why, and how, and those are all ready to go behind me. When I start working on this skill, I pull the 2 students who are working on a specific question type. I grab those students and I sit down. I work one-on-one with Student A for about 2 minutes, then I stop, then I work one-on-one with Student B for about 2 minutes. Essentially what happens here is that Student A listens to what Student B is doing, and Student B listens to what Student A is doing, and the skill is even more reinforced. In fact, they have a model showing them how to move forward with that skill, which is honestly really cool. So let me show you how I would do that with some where questions. So these bundles come with adaptive books and task cards. So one idea is that I could just use these task cards, and I could have one student do a few, and then I could have another student do another couple. Another idea is that I could ask one student, "Hey, where do you go when you're sick?" Let one student ask and then have the other student agree or disagree. Or if they're super advanced, I could have one student ask the questions to another student and help them grade yes, that's right, or no, that's not. These adaptive books are also perfect for turn-taking. You can have students do page by page, Or you could have one student do one book, one student do another book, and then switch. I love this idea because it's individualized, but at the same time students are working on a similar skill together and we're reinforcing those ideas. My third tip is very simple. Set a timer. You don't need a lot of time to be impactful when it comes to direct instruction. In fact, 5 minutes gets you really far. I timed myself today, and in 5 minutes I practiced 3 skills with a student. It just proves that a little bit of effort and a little bit of time goes a really long way. And so you don't have to have a massive chunk of time to squeeze in direct instruction. And I think that that's where I've always gone wrong in my planning in the past. I've always wanted at minimum a 15 to 20 minute block, but in reality, that 5 minutes before we go to music or 5 minutes before we go to lunch, it's the perfect opportunity to squeeze in some practice. My fourth and final tip for you is if you don't have students that are working on similar skills, and I know that that can happen, it happens in here too, find students who have a similar reinforcer. So for example, if a student's working for the iPad, find Find another student who the iPad is highly reinforcing for. Have the students trade off and take turns using the iPad while you work with the other student. Once one student's complete, the other student gets the iPad. It makes a natural passing of that iPad back and forth. We're working on turn-taking, and additionally, we're working on skills. In fact, I'm working on a lot in that moment, and one person, definitely manage that. With just a little bit of time and a little bit of creativity, you can squeeze in direct instruction into your day. I would love to know if you have any tips on how you are squeezing in direct instruction within your classroom. Working one-on-one on those skills is so important, especially in the self-contained classroom, and it offers so much to our students. If it's not something that you're doing, I would challenge you to try to find 5 minutes every day where you can even work one-on-one with one student to see if you can make a big change.
