A special ed teacher shows how to run three daily learning centers (ELA, math, fine motor) in a K-2 autism classroom. She keeps materials simple and cheap, uses the same space each day to build routine, and manages transitions with timers starting at 4 minutes. Most students work on basic letter, number, and color identification with AAC support.
When I first started teaching, the idea of running centers in my self-contained autism classroom seemed impossible, but I'm here to tell you it's not. I wanna show you my tips and tricks for setting up centers in your classroom. Every day we run 3 different centers, an ELA center, a math center, and a fine motor center. My first tip is don't overcomplicate centers. They don't have to be fancy. They don't have to be amazing or special. Just start with familiar fun things. My second tip has to do with space. Make sure that your centers are done in the same space every day if possible. That sets the expectation for your students in time and in environment. They know that when they come to that table what the expectations are because you've taught them. My third tip is Have a plan for transitions. Make sure you have a timer going so everyone in the room knows when you are switching centers. My centers are also super short. My K-2 students don't have a long attention span. I start centers at 4 minutes and I extend them to between 7 and 10 minutes at the end of the year. Slowly add time and have a plan for how students are going to rotate. Most of the learners in my classroom are emerging learners. They're learning basic number skills, basic matching, color identification, letter identification. A lot of it's receptive language. We support with core language boards and AACs, and I wanna show you some of the tasks that we're doing in centers, so maybe you'll be inspired to try. At this center today, we're doing building imitation. I build an object and then students imitate that with their blocks. I'm using Magna-Tiles here. And supporting with our classroom AAC. So here I have some sorting trays. These are from Dollar Tree. I use a dry erase marker and I write, write on them, and if I want them to come off, I just wipe them. They're so easy to use again and again, and then I have all of these letter erasers. I think I got these from Target. So easy to use, but I'm going to have students sort their letters. I love these alphabet, number, and tracing books too. We take turns between this and our matching book. So students just pull these off and then match. Next, we're gonna do some adaptive books. I love these because they're interactive and the kids have so much fun with them. Here we're looking for circles. I've got all of my fields over here so students can just pull pull it over and Velcro them on as they find them. See, not fancy, not amazing, not super cute. Functional, yes. Easy to set up, also yes. At my kids' level because they're emerging learners, also yes. That's how you make successful centers. If you are interested in seeing more of my classroom, make sure you check out our other videos. I've got a full classroom tour that'll walk you step by step on all of the things that you've seen in my room. And I hope that you have the best time implementing centers because your students can do it.
