Heather from The Autism Helper shows how to build a hybrid classroom schedule during COVID. She maps out learning centers, assigns each student a gross-motor location, and coordinates speech, OT, and PT pull-outs to minimize transitions. Two paraprofessionals support two students each to limit exposure.
Hello, this is Heather from The Autism Helper, and I'm going to show you how I create schedules that are manageable. Each day of the week needs a different schedule based on the needs of our learners and related service team members that are in the classroom for that day, functional routines that we're working on, alternate curriculum programs. So I'm going to share my screen and show just kind of the process on how I go about that. So first what I do is I type out activities that I have listed in our lesson plans for that week. Some centers that are open, some special activities. These are usually the centers that are more consistent. So I have listed just the centers that will be open, and this is whether we're in person or for hybrid. It just might look a little different. During hybrid, there might only be 1 child allowed in a center instead of 2 or 3. But we work out those details when we're working on the schedule. So iPad, water table, independent work, and then I also list in here speech, OT, PT, just so I don't forget to add those into our schedule. And then the gross motor ideas. So this is for our hybrid learning. We have 5-minute gross motor times built into our schedule. And this is because we can't go outside on the playground and we have one indoor space to use, which we can't use for hybrid learning because of the pandemic that's going on. So these are just some ideas to get our bodies up and moving and things that we can do within those 5-minute gross motor times. So I wrote down some of those ideas. And so So now we have ideas. So then I go and I've already filled this out. And I will walk you through what I did first. So this is for hybrid learning. And I can update this once we're fully in person. And I've given some examples of how that looks as well. I've taken out the students' names and put numbers in there for us to keep track of. And these gross motor assignments, these are going to be where this student is going to go during those 5-minute gross motor times. So Student 1 is going to go to our green area, which is our play area. Student 2 is going to go to the table. Student 3 is pink, where we work on some toys and other manipulatives. Student 4 is going to go to the circle time area. And then Student 5 is full remote. So this learner is going to do their gross motor times on our online classroom, which is Canvas. So now here's 1 gross motor time, 2, 3, and 4. So those are where our gross motor times are. And then as you can see, I've taken some of the activities from the documents that I had shown you before, and I filled those in. And these are also going to then match the lesson plan that I have outlined for the week. Some of the things that are the same for all of the children that come in are arrival and circle. Gross motor is the same at each time for them. Our ending circle, and then dismissal. And so I put those times in first because those are all of, all the same, and those are non-negotiable. So we are not allowed to change those per our district. Now our small group times and where I'm fitting in our rotations are going to be over here. So I filled those in last. Lori and Renee are my two paraprofessionals, And I have decided, we decided as a team to assign them 2 students per each day. This is then going to limit their exposure to the other students and the other families. And then it keeps them more organized and they can keep that student's bins organized. And then related service and I are going to pull during these times. So from 10:15 to 10:50, you can see Ms. Lori and Ms. Renee are assigned 2 of our students. And then this is an OT day, which is Thursday. So the occupational therapist and I will then pull during these times for the amount of minutes that we need. Same thing goes for here, 10:55, and same thing for 11:05. So it just makes it easier that we're going to pull so that the ro— there's less rotation, there's less transitions, and everybody's a little more safe. And then the teacher can control that. And then the activities that Miss Lori and Miss Renee are doing within here will be listed on my lesson plan sheet.
