In this instructional video, Michelle from The Autism Helper tours her self‑contained primary autism classroom and demonstrates concrete, visual‑based strategies to increase structure, foster student independence, and reduce negative behaviors and anxiety. She explains how she uses color‑coded schedules that align student desks, wall schedules, and activity centers so each child can easily identify their own routine. She introduces a rotating line‑order system where students’ names and colors are displayed on the floor and swapped weekly, giving every child a chance to be first or last and preventing dependence on a fixed position. Michelle also details a quiet‑time routine that includes a visual expectation chart and a timer, helping students understand how long they must sit quietly and minimizing prompts. After quiet time, she runs a structured leisure rotation where students alternate between iPad/Chromebook and play center, using a visual board to show where each child starts, thereby reducing conflicts and encouraging independence. Throughout, she emphasizes that these visual, predictable structures support both students and staff, decreasing the need for constant prompting and behavioral interventions. The video concludes with a call to view more resources on The Autism Helper’s YouTube channel and blog.
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As self-contained teachers, it's our job to create the structure in our classroom to not only make our students more independent but decrease a lot of those negative behaviors that we see in our classroom. But structure goes so much more beyond setting up the physical classroom environment. I'm Michelle with The Autism Helper, and today I'm going to show you a few tips to increase that structure within your classroom so you can decrease any any negative behaviors or anxiety from your students. Here we are in my self-contained primary autism classroom. I'm going to give you a little tour. You can see that everything is very structured within the environment, so you can see that my centers are not only clearly defined, but my whole group area is also clearly defined. The first step to structuring your classroom is creating schedules. And many of us are familiar with schedules for our students, but I like to take it up a notch to really increase that independence and lessen the anxiety in the classroom. So all of my students are color-coded. You can see this student's schedule is this yellow color, and then his desk is also this yellow color. And this is his name, however I've turned it over for privacy purposes. When you look at all of the centers on my schedule here, you can see that they're all color-coded. So when you are going here to this table, you're going to come over and see that my teacher table right here is color-coded. So students— color— color-coding my schedules really takes the guesswork out for my students. You can see I have my play center over here is color-coded blue, my teacher table over here is purple, then my independent table over here is orange. My book center green, and then this teacher table over here is yellow. Okay, so more on my color coding. All of my student schedules are color coded. Not only does this help the students know whose schedule is whose, but it helps the staff as well. Um, structuring your classroom to help support the staff is also incredibly important so that you're not working as hard as a teacher. And you can see that at my independent task box center, my students' schedules match their schedule on the wall here. So students are really learning how to be very independent here in the classroom. All right, so going back to negative behaviors, we want to decrease those in the classroom. And how many of you have student behaviors surrounding lining up or walking in line? Raise your hand, because we all do, especially for primary teachers. My next tip is going to help decrease any line order behaviors or anxiety. Okay, so let's talk about lining up. You can see I have these numbers here on my floor, and we are going to walk all the way over to this amazing visual that I have. This right here we call line order. This is something that I made, very simple. Each student's color with their name is here in our line order, and we switch these out every week so that students kids don't become dependent on this number. And everybody gets a chance to be number 1. Some kids prefer to be number 14, but this helps students know that they're going to always get a chance to rotate through the numbers. This being non-negotiable is an amazing behavior strategy that is structured and decreases any negative behaviors in the classroom. Another structured part of my day that I do in my classroom is called quiet time. Once we're done with lunch recess, We just have a few extra moments that I need to complete student notes for their parents, and students just need to wind down before we get into our afternoon, um, activities. So what my students do is they come in and they sit at their desk and we do 15 minutes of quiet time. But what does that look like? How do students know what they're expected to do? Over here I have a visual that I've created for my students that allows them to see what is expected of them during quiet time. I've also added a visual timer so students know what time it is, how much longer they have to wait, and this just really helps decrease any prompting that we may have to do during this time. It also decreases negative behaviors because students see that this is what is expected of them. Following quiet time, my students do leisure time where they're allowed to play on an iPad or Chromebook, or they can go to Playcenter. Now they will do both, and then we switch. So students will do 15 minutes at Playcenter or iPad. When the timer goes off, we switch and they go to their next, um, leisure activity. Now a lot of students love Playcenter and may not love iPad, or students love iPad and they don't love Playcenter. So how do I handle that? With structure. I've created this visual over here. So very similar to my line order, if their name is here at Chromebook or iPad, that is where they start. If their name is at Play Center, that is where they start. And this just helps again decrease any negative behavior. It also helps decrease prompting and increase that independence within the classroom. To see more videos and tips and tricks on structuring your self-contained classroom, like and subscribe to The Autism Helper on YouTube. You can also check out our blog at theautismhelper.com.
