Jen, a kindergarten-second grade autism teacher, shares a color-coded system for organizing classroom visuals: green for reinforcers, yellow for reminders, red for non-negotiables. Labeled drawers keep schedules and supports instantly accessible, cutting down interruptions and helping students navigate their day.
If you are like me, you love using visuals in your classroom. The only problem is they end up everywhere. I'm Jen. I am a self-contained autism teacher. I teach K, 1, and 2, and I am going to show you how I organize my visuals so they are always at my fingertips and can easily be found. Visuals are what make my classroom function. Every student has their very own set of visuals that they use on a daily basis, from visual schedule pieces to reminder pieces to even reinforcement pieces to just remind them of what good thing is is coming. Now, when you have those pieces, they literally go everywhere. They go missing when you need them, you can't find them, and frankly, I was fed up with it in my classroom. So I created this system. Let me show it to you. My classroom literally runs on visuals. Every student has their very own set of visuals. They have visual schedule pieces, they have reminder pieces, and they even have reinforcement pieces to help them have a choice board, of choose what they want to work for, or reminding them of what good thing is coming. Hey, recess is going to be here in 5 minutes, kind of thing. So with that, visuals were all over my classroom. I could never find what I needed, so I created this. Now our visuals are at our fingertips, and anyone who walks in my classroom knows instantly where to find them. And I'm going to show you how I did it. If you have seen my other videos, you know I love a good color coding system. This is no different. Here, green are things that make us go. So these are reinforcements— putty, sand, sensory toys, things that students absolutely love. Yellow, those are reminders, things that I might need to remind my student while they're working or while they're in gen ed. And then red, non-negotiable. Sometimes we really don't have a choice. We have to go to music, we have to go to OT, we have to go to PT, PE, whatever it might be. So that's how I decided to split these up. Then I made labels for each of these little drawers and they Velcro right inside. So with that, I know right where to look based on the color for the type of visual. Is it a reminder? Is it a non-negotiable? Or is it a reinforcer? Now let's just say that I have a visual and I need to find where it needs to go. I want to get rid of that bag, so raise hand, I'm gonna go over here. Raise hand is a reminder. Look at that, my assistants are so great, they even alphabetized it. Raise hand, I'm gonna put it right inside. So, let's say that I have to remind a student that it is music time, I'll open up music, boom, right here. So, when my assistants are getting ready for the day, if they are missing any visual schedule pieces, they come right over here, grab it, and go. We have about 5 extra in each of these drawers at any given time, so we never are without visuals. My assistants love this system because they know where things are and they don't have to interrupt me to ask where a schedule piece is, and they don't also don't have to pour out an entire bag of visuals to find the one that they need. So this has been a game changer for us. We put it together in an afternoon. We had a teacher work day, and this is what we focused our time on. This has become a resource not only for my classroom but for the entire school. If we've got a teacher who's struggling and says, hey, I need some visuals, I know right where to send them because I keep those extra pieces prepped, this is really a great tool for my entire school to use. So it has been a huge hit in my classroom. If you are interested in making your own, you are in luck because I have a link for these containers, and I made a Google Document to where I've got the labels all sized and ready to go. My tip for you there: print on colored paper. Find some red paper and print on it. You don't have to print in color. Such a simple thing, but such a big impact, and that's what I love about it. I love to color code. It does make such a big impact in the classroom, not only for you as the teacher because it frees your time, not only for your assistants because they know where to find things, but for your students too. I've got some videos coming out on how I use color coding to help with classroom management, and I can't wait to share that with you.
