Blog Hop Week 5- First Week of School



         First Week of School






It finally here!
You have your schedules. You have your visuals you can make ahead ready to go. You have met with your Paraprofessionals. The students have come for meet the teacher time. Now what do you do?
      
The FIRST DAY! There are so many things to the first day of school. There is no way to cover them all, but lets cover a few together. 
Here are some ideas.
1. TRANSPORTATION HOME 
#1 on my list is make sure I have dismissal information for every student. If something went awry during orientation or arrival in the morning, and I didn't get that information then thats the first task I set a paraprofessional to do.
One way I do this is a transportation form ready for them to fill in.  You can GRAB one of  my transportation forms here.
The other thing I do ahead of time is make a bulletin board or magnet board with a transportation form on it for the kids to fill out. This is a good way to introduce one of our first components of Morning Meeting. I want to always make sure I have accurate information from the parents but this board is for the kids. You can Get these HERE.
To me that first day is the roughest. You must be well rested, with nerves of steel and the answers to at least 18,000 questions.
2. GETTING ACQUAINTED /RE-ACQUAINTED
In a special education classroom, many times you have the same students for repeated years so you know each other and the kids know each other, but they have grown up over the summer, done new things. Of course many times we have that new student so I plan a Get To Know You activity. This is a "game" where all the students (readers and non-readers) can participate because I make it
3. ESTABLISH ROUTINES FROM THE START
When teaching younger students and especially younger children with disabilities, it is very important that routine be establish as soon as possible. The first thing we work on is Arrival procedures. What do I want them to do when they arrive?
I use visuals and Social Narrative Stories  such as these to help with establishing arrival procedures.
We start reading and discussing them on the first day and continue working with them until they are learned and we have good implementation of the ideas. 
Another thing I do is taking a First Day Field Trip. This is where we walk around the school campus reminding previous students and introducing new students to the important places around the school. Even though my students do not usually go anywhere unescorted without an adult because of safety and IEP goals/objectives, I still make sure they know where these places are.
These places could be some of the following places: lunchroom, office music room, art room and how we travel from one place to another.
ESTABLISH SIMPLE RULES
I usually stick to 5 - 6 classroom rules. I want to make them easy to remember, have pictures on them that can be "read" by those who cannot read words yet. This is an example of one set I made in the last few years.

Don't forget to click below on Kinder Sped Adventures and Adventures in the ATC to see all the great things they have to share.



 

3 comments

  1. Hello, I really enjoyed reading your post. I am going to be a first year teacher in an autism room and this post helps immensely! I have been looking for good "Getting To Know You" activities. Your post doesn't go into much detail of the activity and was hoping you could share? Thanks so much!

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  2. Hi there, Id really like to get some of your posters that I see online from this site. The ones with the kids, either raising their hands, or sitting, or holding a friend. Where can I go

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