Know Your Role!

Not exactly accurate for the speducator type but alas, there is no "what I think I do" meme out there for us! Who wants to take the lead on that?

A co-worker passed on a document today with job descriptions of the most involved people in your preschool autism classroom. At least for our school system, this is the list of people who are in direct contact with the students on a very regular basis and what their roles are. The list is short and very simple but gives an overview of who does what in the classroom. There are many other things I would like to add to the list but those are specific to my classroom and I think that anyone could take this list and adapt it to what best meets their needs.

I also think it's important to note that the responsibilities of the instructional assistant are also 100% the teacher's responsibilities. For example discrete trial teaching, data taking, ...and toilet training/diapering (because we don't want them to have all the fun, now do we! :-).

Make sure you go over these responsibilities with the staff that work directly with your students so that everyone is on the same page about what is expected of one another. You should also note particular things that you want to see happen in your classroom that they might not know otherwise. This will facilitate a smoother working environment!

DOWNLOAD HERE!

A Zoo Book!

I decided to do a zoo theme for the first month of school this year and am really excited about all the fun animal things we have been doing (mainly because I participated in a life changing experience on vacation this summer where I HAND-FED A GIRAFFE which only confirmed my obsession for the awkwardly beautiful creatures).

I wanted to share a book that I made and give you some ideas on how to use this book. I saw a cutesy little song about going to the zoo where you sing "I went to the zoo one day, zoo one day, zoo one day... I went to the zoo one day and I saw a ____" and you fill in the blank with a zoo animal. What I did was print each page, laminate them, and then hole punch each at the top and bind them using a metal book ring. 

IDEAS:

- Print extra pictures of each animal, laminate them, and use adhesive Velcro on the back of each picture to have them match and attach the pictures to each page. You can do an activity where you hold up a page from the book and put out 3-5 photos in front of the student. Tell them to match the correct animal.

- Sing the song while showing the page and have the student fill in the blank by saying what the animal is

- Have them identify the animals (expressively - "What animal is this?" and receptively - "Show me the panda")

- Sing the song, filling in the animal and then have them find the correct page (or photo if you want to place the photos in an array in front of the student during a table activity)

- Have them match plastic animal toys to the pages

- Have them match non-identical pictures to the photos of the animals (you can use google images/Boardmaker and print off various pictures of the animals, including cartoon pictures, etc)

- Have them identify the colors of the animals (and even match the environment that they live in, the stripes or spots on their fur, etc. depending on the cognitive level of your student)

This is a preview page from the book... which you can download for free HERE!!!

*Just a note... I did get these images from the good ol' interwebs and saw the song idea on a site that I cannot remember the name of. If you see something included in my book that deserves to be tagged with a link to where it originated from, please leave a cordial comment or email and I will give it the rightful props!