A Peek at Our Day

I frequently get asked about my daily classroom schedule, so today I'm here to share my daily schedule with you. The schedule you see above is a general overview of what our day looks like. Let me walk you through it!

9:00 - 9:15
Our district requires 30 minutes of physical activity every day, so I go ahead and knock 15 minutes of this out first thing in the morning. It gets their morning wiggles out and is also a chance to get restroom breaks out of the way. It also gives me that much needed extra time in the mornings to get activities prepped and ready to go, especially if I had meetings all morning.

9:15 - 9:30 
My students arrive in my class at 9:15. They come in and place their homework and daily behavior reports in the appropriate trays. Once everyone is seated and beginning on their morning work, our flag leader leads us in the pledge and we sing our school song, our pet keeper feeds the fish, and we view our Daily Fun Fact. Then, we complete our morning work which may look different for everyone.  

9:30 - 10:50
At 9:30 we break off into literacy rotations/centers. We have 4 groups/4 centers and each rotation/center is 20 minutes long and differentiated to meet the needs of each student. You can read more about my centers here.

10:50 - 11:20
This is when we do our "morning meeting," whole group. Our whole group consists of stating rules and goals, calendar, weather, number sense, money, and time. 

11:25 -12:15
My students go to their specials. My students have humanities/music, art, PE, and Library. This is my prep time and my aides take my students to specials. I have grades 3-5 and all of my students go to specials with 3rd graders. 

12:15 - 12:45
My students go to lunch and then get their other 15 minutes of recess. I meet them for lunch after my prep at 12:15 and have lunch with them from 12:15 - 12:30 and then take my lunch from 12:30 - 1:00. This allows me to see how my students are functioning at lunch time, work on any eating goals a student may have, and see whether or not they need more support! 

12:45 - 1:00
My students return from lunch. One of my aides reads a picture book to them and then they do one song from gonoodle.com.  

1:00 - 2:00
At 1:00, we break off into math rotations/centers. For math, I only have 3 groups/3 centers this year and each center is 20 minutes long.  

2:00 - 2:30
This is my life skills block where I also incorporate social studies, science, health, and craft time. 

2:30 - 3:10
This is classroom jobs and social time. My students complete their classroom jobs and then if they don't have any missing work (work they refused to do earlier in the day) they get to have social time. During social time, they get to play games, play with the classroom toys, do puzzles, or whatever they'd like to play.

And that's a peek at a day in The Bender Bunch classroom!

See you back on Sunday for SPEDtacular Sunday Freebies!!

SPED Summer Blog Hop Kick Off {Scheduling}

 Today a group of special education bloggers and I are kicking off a five week long summer blog hop to share our expertise with you! Thank you "Kinder Sped Adventures" for organizing and hosting this hop!! Here is the weekly schedule that you can look forward to! 

So this week, we'll talk about scheduling! In case you're wondering what type of class this is, I teach 1st-5th, have 9 students, and students with Autism, Downs, ED, OHI, and SLD. 

This is posted to your left as soon as you enter my room. We are required in my district to have our schedule posted by our doors. So I have my class schedule and a breakdown of my center rotations.

Here is a closer look at my schedule. 

D.E.A.R. is Drop Everything And Read. Board review is our whole group instruction and is just like what most know as morning meeting. Life skills is where I also incorporate science, health, social studies, and crafts.

My scheduling is all done through my lesson plans. It's where my para's schedules are as well. The page below is the first page of my lesson plan and an overview of our entire day. If you'll look at the last two columns, they are for the two paras I have in my room. They can look at the lesson plan at any time and see exactly what they are supposed to be doing. It is always printed and laying by my projector.

I prefer this method over charts on the wall for a couple of reasons. For one, I think it is more professional. Putting visual charts/schedules up on the wall for my para's like my students, makes me feel like I'm treating them like a child. Plus, it's just not necessary. Their schedule rarely changes and they're so awesome, they know what to do. It's also cleaner and doesn't clutter my walls. It's also very easy for me to edit, right at home when I'm doing my planning. Plus, I have to turn in a lesson plan anyway, why do twice the work. 

Here is how I schedule our day. I don't want to get too much into paras as that is our week 4 topic for this hop, but you will see that each para has their own page so they know what to do with each color coded group. This year I had four groups and four rotations. There is a teacher/para in three of the four and the fourth center is independent...computer/iPad or reading/book center. You can read more about how I run my centers {here}. I try to keep these pages fairly generic so that I'm not killing myself and spending ridiculous hours lesson planning every weekend!

This is my ELA schedule. This schedule is used all week.

Para 1 ELA Schedule

Para 2 ELA Schedule

My Math Schedule

Para 1 Math Schedule

Para 2 Math Schedule

This is the schedule for the rest of our day. Since the remainder of the day is whole group, I have one page like this for each day of the week. My paras can refer to page one again if they need to know what they are to do during this time. 

If you're wondering about the standards I have on each page....they are our teaching professional standards and I use these weekly plans as part of my evidence for my teacher evaluations.

This is the visual schedule my student's use for  rotations. 

I've never been a fan of Boardmaker pictures, so a couple of years ago I began using real life photos with my students. The last couple of years, all of my students have been high functioning so I have not needed visual schedules for other aspects of their day. I have used many types of individualized visual schedules in the past, but this year didn't need them. Routines alone work and after the first few days of school, they've learned the routine. I also like to change up the routine occasionally and unexpectedly for my students that don't desire it in an effort to teach them how to deal with sudden changes that they are going to have to deal with for the rest of their lives. We don't live in a predictable environment and they need to be taught strategies for dealing with change. I believe it is crucial that when you do use visual schedules they should be used only when necessary and eliminated as soon as the child no longer shows a need for it. Don't just feel like because you're teaching in a self-contained class that everyone must have a visual schedule up.

Since our topic this week is "scheduling," one last thing I'd like to talk about is scheduling conflicts with IEP meetings and team meetings. I know this is a question that is frequently asked, especially about finding the time to meet with your team.

My biggest scheduling conflict with IEPs is the challenge of scheduling around the general Ed teacher's schedule. For this reason, I make an attempt to schedule my meetings before school. After school does not work very well at my school, because most of the teachers I work with do not want to stay after their contracted hours and we can not require them to. Before school always works for the GE teacher, but if it doesn't work for the parent, I make an attempt to schedule it during my prep, 2:20 this year, and our instructional coach goes into the GE teacher's classroom so he/she can attend. Our LEA is our facilitator and is always available unless in another meeting. My sped team uses a digital master calendar in our Interact to note our meetings, so we all know when/if who is available.

As for scheduling time to for team meetings....our team meets the last Wednesday of every month before school. IEPs are not to be used as an excuse not to attend, because we simply aren't allowed to schedule any IEPs on that day. It has worked out well. Our principal has worked with us to ensure that no one on the Sped team is scheduled for morning duties on this Wednesday.

I'm going into my eighth year of teaching and have experienced much trial and error, but these scheduling methods have been very successful for me. I hope sharing my scheduling with you will assist you as you begin to schedule for your new year. 

Enter my giveaway and then hop over to "My Special Learners"  by clicking on her button below for some more scheduling tips! 
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Take A Peek At My Day In SPED

Today is my last day of Spring Break (sigh). It's been fun, but VERY UNproductive. We spent the last half camping on the Colorado River...our favorite place to be...and the first half, well, I just don't know where it went!!! Nothing got done! Now, I'm trying to cram all of those school projects that came home in my bag and lesson  plans into this last day!!! Sound familiar?? 

We'll before I show what some of those last minute projects I've been working on in a crunch this evening, I must take a little break and link up with Angie and Ashley, as I did this same linky on my blog last year and only had 3 bloggers link up. :( You can see it here. I love this idea and love seeing everyone else's schedules. 

Here is what an average day looks like this year in the Bender Bunch Classroom.

Our morning procedures consist of jobs that are done in the morning such as watering our flowers and feeding our fish. We listen to the morning announcements and then do the pledge. Each student then begins the work provided in their "yellow" writing folder that they got out as soon as they entered the classroom and hung their backpacks up. Depending upon the student, this may consist of address/phone number practice, number/letter practice, name practice, sentence practice, or journaling for more advanced students. 

We actually stop our writing about 9:22 and do a Go Noodle song before beginning our rotations. 

Our rotations consist of 4 groups and 4 rotations for ELA and Math. You can read more about the set up of my rotations {here}. I have tweaked a few things since that post, but not much. Tweaks happen quite frequently in my classroom, as I'm always finding things that work better, things that don't work, or needing to differentiate more for a particular student. My room is forever changing! Each Friday, my "Teacher Table" center is replaced with iPad or computer...and this is when I assess for progress and IEP goals or work 1:1 with my students. This gives me 2 hours to do this. I just recently started doing this a couple months ago to reach a goal for the new teacher evaluation system and it is working well. 

Morning break is "recess." Then lunch and one of my aides reads to them following lunch while I come back from my lunch and do afternoon attendance. 

Board review is like our morning circle. It is our whole group instruction for the day where we review many concepts including calendar. With 4-5 levels included during this part of our day, student questions are differentiated and fast-paced. 

Our life skills block is open for health, social studies, science, or other developmental skills; and I change it up. We also practice listening and speaking skills during this time. 

Our last hour of the day before specials is jobs and social time. Students that have end of the day jobs complete those such as table washer, floor cleaner, and librarian. Work not completed during the day is placed in the "Missing Work" box and this is also completed at this time. Students that have no missing work and have completed their job, get free choice. One of my aides also goes around at this time and does assigned sight word lists with each student. 

Students go to specials at the end of the day, which is my favorite time to have specials. I've been lucky to have it at the end of the day for the last two years! However, I do choose when my students go to specials since I have multiple grade levels. Other than a couple that are mainstreamed, the rest go at the same time and with the group they have been traveling with since 1st grade, so they are currently going with 5th graders. 

Once they come back from specials, they grab their backpacks that were placed outside the room prior, and my aides and I walk them to the bus. 

Thank you Angie and Ashley for hosting this link up with the vision of "Together, We Are Better." Each month on the 2nd they will be hosting a linky to bring teachers closer together through collaboration. If you'd like to link up your schedule, click on either of their names above to link up. 

Stay tuned this evening for a post on my last minute projects I've been cramming in and a couple of freebies for home interaction, appropriate play skills, and a classroom checkout system. 

Sunday Tidbits of Scheduling

Hi! I'm linking up today with a sweet teacher friend I just met, Tasha from "A Tender Teacher For Special Needs." Every Sunday she is hosting a Special Tid-bits Linky where teachers link up a special tid-bit of information that may be helpful to other teachers. Her tid-bit today was about scheduling so I'm going to piggyback on that and share how I did my scheduling last year! We still have a little over 3 weeks of summer vaca here so I haven't even began to work on scheduling for this year yet! But here's a look at last year!

This changed a few times throughout the year, but this is how it looked at the end of the year! Our lunch times and specials worked so well last year and I really LOVED having specials at the end of the day!!! I hope it works out this well again this year!

This is an example of the rotation charts I used for most of my class! Three of my students (my little ones) followed a different system that involved a velcroed picture/shape/symbol system that they would match for each rotation. This system worked very well, but I'm planning to give it a little makeover! I will also have to revamp it a little to accommodate a couple students I lost and a couple new studen 

And last, here is a sample of my actual lesson plans (for one day) that were followed by my aides and turned into to my principal each week! With these plans, my aides can easily see exactly what they are supposed to be doing at all times! I like this system! I did lose one of my aides last year though, so I will be tweaking this a little and adjusting it to fit our new times. 

Our principal and office staff are off the whole month of July. Once they return next week, I'm sure our principal will be emailing out the new lunch and special schedules. Once I get that from her, I will be able to get my new schedules made for this year!

One last thing....
Have you heard about my new SPED discussion forum on Facebook?? Finally, a discussion forum just for SPECIAL Educators!!! Every Thursday I'll post the button above on my FB page and open it up for sped related questions! I'll then post your questions throughout the week and try to get answers for you!!! So start jotting down your questions, so you can post them on Thursday! You can get to my page and check out the questions being posted and answered this week {here}. 

"Show Us Your Day" Linky Party

Guess What?? I'm hosting a linky party! Does your school require you to post a daily schedule? My district requires us to post our daily schedule by our front or back door, and they have a special form. However, our principal is very flexible and she likes "cutesy." As long as we have it posted somewhere in our class, she is fine with that! I know many of us post schedule cards in our rooms for our students, but our district is looking for something like this. 

I still have two weeks of summer left, but our principal sent us the schedules last week. When typing up my schedule, I thought how fun it would be to see everyone else's schedule and how they allocate their day!! And  so this linky party was born!! Fun, right?? 

I hate to rub it in, but my schedule is very flexible, as I teach a self-contained and very diverse special education class for grades 1 - 5 ! Our general ed teachers have all of their times and subjects allocated out for them. I just need to know the lunch times and specials and then plan my day around that! Since the largest majority of my students are in 4th grade, we attend  their lunch and specials. I do usually have a couple of students that are on an individualized schedule; my mainstreamed students, but this is the schedule for students that remain with me all day!! 

I'm super excited to begin using my "Rise n shine" binders this year from Regan Tunstall for morning work. No more copying worksheets every morning! Check it out {here}. I'll also be going full on with my reading and math rotations this year! I tried it out last the last couple weeks of school to see how my students would respond and it went very Well! I'm thinking of calling it the "Daily 4" as they'll be doing 4 centers every day in math and reading. Still working on this! Stay tuned for more info!

I also wanted to make sure I made some time this year for Science and Social Studies as last year there was very little for this in our curriculum and I felt like I deprived a couple of my students that have a love for this subject area. 

And of course, self-help and social skills are also an important part of our day!!

I'm very excited that our specials are the last hour of the day! This is a first! I don't know about you, but this is the ultimate time for specials and prep! 

I'd love to see YOUR DAY!! Link up your schedule below! Be sure to spread the word and add the linky party photo above to your post so others can link up as well or at least visit and read how others are managing their day!