Visual Schedules in an Autism Classroom

Let me show you how I create, set up, and differentiate my individual visual schedules in my self-contained classroom. I'm Michelle with The Autism Helper. I'm a TK through 2nd grade self-contained teacher, and this is my classroom. Today I'm gonna show you what schedules my students use and how I set them up every school year. Here are all of my 13 individual picture schedules for my students in my classroom, and these are not all the same. I will show you how I differentiate my schedules in, in just a minute, but I wanna show you that I color code every single one of my students. So every student is assigned a color. So here is an example of how I differentiate my schedules for some of my students. This is a student that does very well with a picture schedule and just a removable icon to move it down when it's time to change centers. Now this schedule has removable icons where students are going to take their schedule, remove the icon, and match the icon to the corresponding center. This schedule template I purchased from Teachers Pay Teachers from a creator named Amy Grosbeck, and what I do is I go in, I put my icons onto the schedule, I print that out, then I laminate the schedule, I add Velcro, and I also take a blank piece of Astro Brights paper and laminate that as well. So let me show you. Every schedule is laminated, and we put Velcro on the back of every schedule and then again on the back of the blank Astro Brights paper so that when it is time to change a student's center rotation or a center group, all we have to do is remove the schedule and place the new rotation schedule on here, and that saves a ton of prep time and a ton of materials as well. Now here, Velcroed on our icons of a pencil box, and that is so that my students have that visual reminder to bring their pencil box to their Direct Instruction Center. This has been really helpful when decreasing those verbal prompts in the classroom. When color coding my schedules, I make sure every student also has a corresponding color for their independent center schedule, and then their desks also have their same color on here so it's easier for them to find their desks. And then we also use anywhere in the classroom that might have their name on something, that color will be corresponding to their name so that they can start identifying their name and their color, and it just helps. It's one of those visual prompts that helps decrease the verbal, the gesture, and all the prompts. In addition to color coding my schedules, I also color code my centers so that students know that this is where their center is. It's just an additional visual prompt for students to to help them become more independent. So as you can see, this is my orange center over here, and I have the icon that I have created. I printed and laminated and added Velcro pieces so that students can see that this is where their orange table is. And also on the table itself, there is tape, so students— it's just an additional visual prompt for students. When you come over to my play center, I have this visual here and colored tape on a bookshelf. And here is one of my Direct Instruction centers, and here again I have the color-coded tape, the visual, and then a basket. That's where students place their schedules when they're at their centers. Here we have my reading center. So as you can see, I have tape on one of the bookshelves with my icon here. Okay, now I'm going to show you how I prepare the schedules using PowerPoint at the beginning of each school year. Here I am in a brand new downloaded Mini Schedule file that I just downloaded, and I've found out the schedule template that I want. You can see it comes with 36 different schedule templates, but I personally like this one. And then I need to add icons here, so let me show you what I do. And this scheduled, um, pack comes with icons, so all I have to do is open the icons, and these are all copy and paste icons. And now one of my favorite icons to use is this table icon right here, so I'm going to copy that and paste it into my template. And now to get this colored to reflect the color of my center that I need, I'm going to go over here to Picture Format, and then I'm going to pick this right here. This shows that I want an outline, and I can pick any colors for the outline. And for this particular one, I'm going to do yellow. But you can see, you can't really see the yellow over there, so I'm going to go back over here, go to weight, and I'm going to increase the weight of that to 4.5 or 6. And then as you can see, here is the colored icon. These are my actual classroom schedules, and as you can see, I've put 6 or 7 different icons on. And if the icon isn't in the downloads folder that I've downloaded from this creator, I've gone to Google to find my images, or even Teachers Pay Teachers in a clipart image, um, download. And so when I am ready to print my schedules, sometimes I will just move my icons and the words over and then move all of my icons up so that I can print as many schedules as I need for my students. And because these come 2 to a sheet, I'm able to make 2 schedules at a time, and I will usually print 2 copies so that I have 4 schedules total. Just in case schedules get ruined or damaged, I always have extras on hand. This is another sheet that I've created within the same document. I like to keep my schedules and my icons all in the same document so that I know exactly where to find them. But this is a speech icon, and what I do is I put a piece of Velcro on students' schedules, and when they go to speech, I either put the icon on their schedule, or I hand this icon to them and they know that they're going to our speech table. And the speech table is black, so that's why this one has been color-coded black. For more tips and tricks on how to help you help children with autism, like and subscribe to The Autism Helper on YouTube, and check out the blog and resources at theautismhelper.com.