Michelle, a primary autism teacher, shares how she moves students from self-contained to general education classrooms. She starts with short visits to low-pressure classes like PE, then scales to full inclusion once she understands each student's needs. Visual schedules, social skills instruction, and peer education about autism help the transition stick.
Let's talk about setting your students up for success for the transition from self-contained to general education. I'm Michelle with The Autism Helper. I'm a self-contained primary autism teacher, and this is my classroom. Today I'm going to show you the supports that I use when transitioning a student from my self-contained classroom into a general education classroom. The first step in transitioning a student into general education is to have that student visit that classroom just to get a feel for what their behavior will be like while they're in that classroom. I like to start my students small with a special, maybe PE or maybe math, and then students can start transitioning to full day. Once I'm able to understand what the student needs when they're in that general education classroom, then I hold an IEP meeting and I get the whole team together to discuss the student, how the student is doing in the general education classroom, and what supports I can provide to that teacher and that student that is going into general education.
Visual supports are so incredibly important when transitioning our students into general education. And here in my classroom, this is a student schedule that they will see. So I like to make sure that my students who are transitioning into general education are seeing familiar things.
So I will create a visual schedule for them pertains to their new schedule.
And as you can see, it's the same format, it's just a little different, and I'm using similar icons. So the student starts in his general education classroom. This is me, and I use this visual to make sure the student brings his backpack with his Chromebook into my classroom. And then you can see he goes to recess, back to my class, and then back to general education with his backpack and Chromebook.
The next step for me when transitioning my students into general education is to teach social skills and socially appropriate skills for my students.
And social skills for my students that are transitioning into general education, I like to read stories to identify their emotions, to how to start a conversation and continue a conversation, um, how to use nice words, and also what to do during listening time.
Transitioning a student into general education is also a great time to teach their peers about autism as well as autism acceptance.
When talking about peer inclusion and peer acceptance, I love to give the teacher books to read to her class so that students can start to understand autism a little bit better. This book is A Day with No Words by Tiffany Hammond. This is a wonderful parent of an autistic child who who wrote a story about her child that uses an AAC device. It's Okay to Be Different is a great story. This one is The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Temple Grandin. If you're not familiar with Temple Grandin, she is an actually autistic adult, and she provides some great insight into the mind of an autistic person. And then We Are All Wonders is a great story about a little boy with some disabilities.
It's also as equally important to communicate between the parent and the general education teacher on a daily basis to let me know how the student is doing and how I can continue to support them.
In my self-contained classroom, this is the parent and teacher communication book that I use, and it is a picture book that allows me to fill out and let the parents know how the student's day was going. And then it also allows the parent to fill out, um, this for me to let me know how their night went at home. Now this is a little bit much for a student that is transitioning into general education, so what I like to do is I like to do a daily behavior log, and this helps the student monitor how their behavior was in the general education classroom, and it also lets the teacher communicate with the parent or lets me see how the student did for each subject. This way I can tell, okay, maybe he needs a little bit more support for writing. Let's "Let me see what I can do to help support him during this time." For more tips and tricks on how to support your autistic students, like and subscribe to The Autism Helper on YouTube and check out our blog at theautismhelper.com.
