In this instructional video, Jen, a K‑1/2 self‑contained autism classroom teacher and blogger for The Autism Helper, walks viewers through a detailed, step‑by‑step morning routine designed to create calm, predictable starts for students and streamline staff workflow. The routine begins the moment students arrive, using clear visual arrival cues and individualized real‑photo schedules that are color‑coded and magnet‑mounted for easy access. Students then retrieve a color‑coded morning‑work binder containing Autism Helper’s leveled daily work (e.g., multi‑color letter tracing, number circles, line drawing) and complete the tasks before filing their papers. Next, the class gathers for a 25‑minute morning meeting on the carpet that includes social greetings, an emotional check‑in, academic practice (counting, letters, phonics, calendar, weather), a “follow the rules” song, and a group breathing exercise. Songs are pulled from YouTube and displayed via Google Slides to maintain engagement. The entire sequence lasts about 45 minutes, balancing seated work with movement and transitions. Jen emphasizes the importance of clear expectations, modeling, and staff collaboration: assistants are assigned specific morning jobs (folder checks, homework stuffing, attendance, lunch count, backpack checks) and staff rotate leading the morning meeting to balance power and provide on‑the‑job training. Flexibility is encouraged—if the full routine can’t happen immediately, it can be shifted to later in the day. The video concludes with encouragement for teachers to adapt the routine, noting its impact on student calmness, staff satisfaction, and overall classroom success.
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Are you a classroom teacher looking to make your mornings a little bit smoother? I'm here to share my classroom routine. I am Jen. I am one of the bloggers here at The Autism Helper, and this is my K-1/2 self-contained autism classroom, and I'm going to walk you through my morning routine from the minute my students get here to the minute we split up for independent work. Let me show you. This summer I took you on a tour of my classroom while I set it up, and one of the number one questions that we got was, What do your mornings look like? So I wanted to share our morning routine. When you get a good morning routine, your entire day goes smoother because your students have started off calm, your staff know what to do, everybody just kind of falls in routine and everyone knows what to expect. So the first thing that we do, we set routines. You know I love a good visual, and so we have visuals everywhere to help our students along the way. This one is about arriving to the classroom, so it tells the students step by step what I expect. My expectations in the morning are pretty simple. We come in the classroom, we greet whoever's in here, we take time to greet the child back. Then I expect students to put their things away in their cubbies behind me. Then they go and check their schedule. That's where the magic begins. Just like so many things in special ed, my schedules are individualized. Some students have a list, some students have icons, some students have an object schedule. It just depends on their needs. The number one schedule that I use are these Real Photo Schedules. I think they're fantastic. I color code my schedules so that way it's easy. Everyone in my classroom is color coded, plus I can use these year after year. It doesn't have to say the student's name. If I wanted to, I could put the student's name right there, just replace that little strip every year. But I put magnets on the back of these so they travel throughout the classroom. I have magnetic surfaces literally everywhere, so They check their schedule. The first thing that it says is morning work. So let's look and see what that looks like. Like I said, everybody is color-coded. I have covered up names here just for privacy, but I'm gonna show you what this looks like. Every student has a color. Every student has a box that correlates to that color. So they come here and they grab their binder, and this is where their morning work is located. They have a pencil box, So they grab this and they grab their morning work binder, they come to the table, they have a seat, and they get started. I'm sure you're curious what is in the binder, so I am going to show you. This is the Autism Helpers Leveled Daily Work, and this is level 0.5. So this page pretty much stays the same for the entire unit, and this picture on the board changes. So the students are going to copy the letter A in purple, then green, then blue, then red on their sheet. So see how this page correlates to this? They're going to color the circles, draw the numbers, and create the lines. It's really simple, it's very effective, and every day this page changes. And so I just put this up on the Promethean board, and from my table, my students are able to copy. Once students are done with their paper, they're going to take their paper, they're going to come over, they're going to put it in the paper, paper filer. This is where students just put their papers throughout the day. Then they're going to check their schedule below. They're going to see that morning meeting is next, and they are going to come to the carpet. My morning meeting includes social greetings to each other, an emotional check-in, um, just to see where everybody is. We practice counting skills, we practice letter skills, phonics skills. We practice calendar and we do weather, and then we do a follow the rules song, and that's it. We are wrapped up and done within about 25 minutes, and it is the perfect start to the day. To support our learning, I have pulled songs from YouTube and I've just put them into a Google Slide or PowerPoint, and then I use that as we go. So we've got a song to sing together, plus we've got some actions on the TV, and it just helps keep engagement. So we'll sing a song, then I will do a skill, then we'll sing a song that supports that skill, and then we repeat that all the way through. When you wrap everything together, from the time students walk in to their morning work to their morning meeting, we're probably at about 45 minutes. That's a really good length of time for kindergarten, first, and second grade, and not all of it has been spent doing a task or sitting. We get up, we dance, we do all kinds of things in that time frame, plus there's a bunch of transitions in there too. So it's a really good length of time. What makes this work is that everyone knows the expectations. From my staff to my students, those have been very, very clear. This is the first thing that I work on with new students because if I can set the tone for the morning, everything else falls into place. Before we leave morning meeting, together as a group, we do some breathing exercises so we can calm our bodies and get ready for the day. It's really important to practice that all together. I wanna model my expectations because I can't ask a child to do something that I haven't modeled and I haven't taught. So we model those strategies in our morning meeting and that's how we close before we split up and everybody goes their every which direction. Now, a couple of things. You don't have to do this right away in the morning. I love to do it right away, but you might not have time. Maybe your kids are pushing in right away and you need to do it another time. That's okay, it's still valuable. It doesn't have to be morning meeting, it can be afternoon meeting. Anytime you can squeeze in whole group, this is a great way to kind of set the tone. Another tip to make your mornings go smoothly: have a job for every assistant that you have in your classroom in the morning. I can't do everything on my own and I can't expect my assistants to do everything either. So we split the roles and we all talk about it and who wants to do each. I have somebody who checks folders. I have somebody who stuffs homework. I have someone who calls if there's absent students and reports them. I have somebody who does bus attendance. I have somebody who does lunch count. Oh my gosh, lunch count always gets us. I have somebody who checks backpacks. We take a role in all of that and as the morning is going. Also, another tip: have your staff run morning meeting. You don't always have to be the one sitting up front leading morning meeting. In fact, I love to rotate my staff through the day. It balances the power in the classroom, and additionally, that's a great time that you can grab another staff member and squeeze in some staff training. With a little bit of planning and a whole lot of routine, your students will be calm, they will know their expectations, and they will be super successful stressful in the morning. Your staff will love it too because they will have time to connect with the students before the school day starts. I absolutely love this part of my day. It is my favorite part, and I am always sad if I have to miss it because of a meeting. So I always try to schedule my meetings after my morning meeting. If you've got questions on how I run morning meeting or what my morning routine looks like— maybe I missed something or you want to know more about something— definitely let us know in the comments and I'll be happy to answer.
