Self-Contained Autism Classroom Tour

Hi Autism Helper community, I'm Michelle. I am a TK through 1st grade self-contained teacher in a dedicated autism program in Southern California. I'm here today to show you a tour of my classroom, and for starters, I'd love to show you our— the hub of our classroom. This is where we meet after every big transition, as well as in the morning for our morning meeting. During morning meeting, we go over our rules and expectations. I also keep those on the board for our students to to see. We talk about the weather, absences for the day, who's at school for the day. We also do days of the week, months of the year. We go over number of the week, letter of the week, and core word of the week. I keep all of my important documents or visuals in this cart here. Um, so the top rack is our student individual picture schedules. Then next we have anchor charts from both Made for Me Literacy and The Autism Helper. And third, we have extra schedules as well as social narratives for emergency drills. Now all of my schedules are color-coded just to increase independence in the classroom. So our students will have, um, this color for their schedule, for their independent work. This color will be on their Chromebook as well as on their desk. So now I'm going to walk you through one of my students' schedules and we'll talk about all of my centers. This is, um, the schedule that starts at our independent center, so we're going to head over there right now. In addition to color coding my schedules, I also color code my center. So if you can see on my schedule, this center says it's orange, and our table has some orange duct tape on it to help just increase that level of independence. Now my student knows that his independent schedule is his because of this color. If you look over here, he finds his color, he takes the first icon off of his schedule, matches it to our fine motor bins. He'll take the bin to the table, open it up, perform the activity, close the bin, and then put it in the all done box. He'll repeat the steps for each icon And if there's time when he's done, he will get some iPad time. My students know that it's time to check their schedule when I ring our doorbell. They move their arrow down and go to the next center. This is the purple center. This is our math center. We work on activities such as the Autism Helper level daily curriculum, some counting with manipulative objects. This popping activity is one that my students love. It's from Crafty in Kinder. I love to supplement with tactile activities. This is, um, some touch math. Then we have some Made for Me math activities that we use, as well as our easy matching weekly workbooks. Once our center's over, the students will hear the doorbell and check their schedule. His next schedule is computer, which is our Boom Cards. This is another independent center for our students. They come to their desk after getting their Chromebook. They check their Boomcard schedule, which indicates which day they're going to do, and they always start with an easy matching digital weekly workbook. Once he completes his first Boomcard, he gives himself a check. Then he'll move on to another Boomcard that is not a digital easy matching workbook. And give himself another check. Once he's completed 2 boom cards, he can do La Lilo or Teach Your Monster to Read, and then he's completed his independent schedule. Again, he'll check his schedule and he'll go to our play center, which is our blue center. After play center, he checks his schedule and he's going to go to the book center, which which is our green center. Here's our color code right here. Students have a choice of either our classroom library, which we alternate books every week, or they can choose an available iPad that is out for them. I love using the Epic app. So even if you have non-readers, the Epic app is amazing because you can use the Read to Me feature. When choosing this feature, the app automatically reads the book to the students. You also have the option of assigning students books within their reading level, and you can assess their comprehension after they take a quiz on a book. It's really great independent center for both non-readers and higher students. His next center after he checks his schedule is our yellow table. This is my paraprofessional-led table. It's an English language arts center. We always use our level daily curriculum here. We have reading comprehension as well as language arts, some tactile letter activities, some supplemental activities with manipulatives, and our easy matching weekly workbooks. Over here is our Square Panda. I love using this for a man down center when any of my paraprofessionals are out. What we do is we teach this at the beginning of the year so that by the time we need to use it independently our students are able to use it independently. It's a literacy app, teaches students letter sounds, how to spell words, and even rhyme. I have some great visuals on our door from the Autism Helper. This one indicates, um, if the bathroom is available or if the bathroom is occupied Teaching the students how to use this is a great skill. We're a family in here, but we don't always want to walk in on each other in the bathroom. So coming in, I also have some visuals in here. This is our bathroom that we use for our students who are working on toilet training, and we have a girl visual here and a boy visual. It's really important to represent both boys and girls in the restroom. These visuals are from Simply Special Ed. I'll walk you over to our independent bathroom now. We have the same visuals on this door, but within the bathroom the visuals are a little different. So this is for our students who are independent in the restroom and can use the restroom by themselves. They do have bathroom steps. Those visuals are so incredibly important. And then we also have hand washing steps here. Okay, this is our line order. This is an amazing behavioral strategy that we use in my classroom. It also helps increase independence in the classroom. So students see their color or their name and they look which number they're standing on today. And I have numbers lined up on my floor. And this also helps to decrease line leader behaviors. If you have any of those in your classroom, especially if you're a primary classroom, this is an amazing behavioral strategy to use. Thank you for joining me today on my classroom tour. I'm so excited to be here again. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about my centers or about my classroom. Until next time!