Video Tutorial of a Direct Instruction Area in an Autism Classroom

Hi, this is Sasha from theautismhelper.com, and this is a video tour of my morning group, direct instruction, and teacher desk. So that's all in one. I talked about this on my blog this year. I got rid of my teacher desk, which is a decision that I've loved and never looked back. So really, this is the main hub of my classroom. I now do morning group, which is combined into direct instruction. This is something I started a few years ago, which I really love. I already have my kids attending and ready to go. And at junior high, I think fading out some of that morning meeting traditional calendar time is important because it's not as traditional in junior high classroom. So I do my morning meeting, and while I have my kids ready and in attention, I go right to direct instruction. So this is really where all of my main teaching happens. And like I said, I combine that with the teacher desk. I had a lot of— I felt disorganized last year because running between my teacher desk and my morning meeting area It was a lot of back and forth, so I decided to maximize space in my classroom to get rid of my teacher desk and store everything here, and it's honestly made my life a lot easier. So I'm going to take you on a quick tutorial of everything that's kind of included in this area. So this really has everything over here, all the way to my schedules that I will need to run my classroom. So all my schedules are here, my student, my daily student and adult schedules are all here along with any inclusion schedules, special schedules, anything like that. So anything I need to know is really close by. Starting off with my morning meeting. So we run things the same way every, every, every day the same routine happens. So students during their AM routine, which they do by themselves, complete some independent questions and a journal topic. I have two because I have a lot of levels of students. So my mid-group does the white version and my higher group does the yellow. I store the questions right here and this is a daily job that students do each afternoon as they switch out the questions. Questions. This is a great way to make sure it gets done every day because our students are probably the most consistent workers of all of us. So that's part of our AM routine. Included also in this area are different things we do at morning group. So we do a daily math problem, we have a poem, we usually try to target one poem a week, and then I have a bunch of all my visuals here. These are as close as can be to my chair because I want to grab them easily because the second I get up to walk away, one of my kids is gone. So I want to make sure everything's exactly at my fingertips. So for our morning meeting, we do some visual calendar and weather things, a temperature, visual temperature chart to have my lower functioning students work on graphing as well. And then I have some visual questions, personal information questions, greetings that have photos of the students. So different ways to involve my nonverbal students in social and morning skill activities. Also here I also have some of my behavior visuals. Again, everything's at my fingertips so I don't have to go anywhere. Um, this is kind of the hub where all my supplies are, so I need a lot to run this area because we're doing a lot here. Because I don't have a lot of space, it's really forced me to be really organized. I feel like my teacher desk sometimes became a hiding pile for everything I'm not ready to deal with. I can't really do that so much anymore, so it really forces me to deal with things right away, which has been really great. So I have all of my supplies— pens, pencils, highlighters, everything here. Our token board. Any weekly vocabulary, idioms, things like that are right here. Um, all supplies go in this thing. So I have any supplies we need, behavior visuals, token boards, gum, any sensory items, all right here. Instead of having a bunch of files, I made one master teacher binder. It's super big, but I have enough categories that I can categorize things instantly. So when I get a paper, I can just throw it in the right in the right heading right away. So I'm not, again, having a pile that I need to now deal with. I also teach math here in the afternoon, so I have 2 binders for data. I have a math planning and data binder for the afternoon and a morning group data binder for the morning. How this is organized, each— I have 3 levels. I see 3 groups that are leveled, so I have a calendar of activities for each group. Here's the low group, the mid group, and the high group. And then I have individual data for each of my students in the low group and reading data for my 2 reading groups. So in here is all of my reading data for each of the reading groups, so it's all ready to go, paperclip to the next page and everything. So any pre-post tests, all of this is in one spot, so everything's really ready to go. The one-on-one data is all right here as well, so I keep a quick note so I know which goals I'm working on. Since I incorporate some of the goals after our morning meeting activities. Any extra paperwork and curriculum maps are all included in the back here so I can find them quickly. If my principal or an administrator comes in and wants to see, I have everything at my fingertips. Um, math is pretty similar setup. These are— this is what I run in the afternoon. I have their planning calendar, their curriculum map, and then any extra activities go right in here. Um, to keep everything else organized, each month we have different books, different games, all of that, that all goes in here. So any Christmas themes, we're doing a lot of that stuff right now, is all here. Any special adapted books, any Christmas ones, all go in here as well. So everything is really nearby. For the paperwork, I have one file for each of the groups. So here's my low group, all of their paperwork, which I copy once a month. Group 2, the mid group, and the high group. So everything that I plan, I photocopy at the start of the month and it's all ready to go. Um, any— we do reading milestones with my mid-level group, so all the reading milestones books are here. And that's, that's pretty much it. Under the desk I have all of our dry erase boards, our no cheating folders, which are just folders we use during quizzes, clipboards, their reading data binder, any extra visuals, and anything we're switching out, like our idioms and our vocabulary words that we do each week. Um, and then this is our kind of our master supply thing. I love this because it's in the middle of the room. but we can easily grab it all here. So this is where all art supplies, arts and crafts, crayons, pencils, all that. Um, so yeah, this was a Bidoo tutorial of— it's really the main center of my classroom. It's where I do all of my teaching, so it's kind of a direct instruction, morning meeting, and teacher desk all in one. But it really works so well and forces me and my students to stay really organized, and it's really successful. So if you have any other questions, please come to theautismhelper.com.