Hi! I am Allison. I am an Intervention Specialist and Certified Autism Specialist with nearly 20 years of experience working with students with autism and low-incidence disabilities.
I taught in an elementary special education classroom where I created countless individualized supports, organizational tools, and differentiated activities for my students before transitioning to my current position on an autism and low-incidence coaching team where I have had the pleasure of meeting and helping teachers in hundreds of classrooms in the Dayton, Ohio area. I am passionate about special education and helping teachers!
Do your students struggle to participate during Morning Meeting? 🌅🌅
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Hi Reader! For several years, I gathered all of my students on the carpet and had them help dictate while I wrote out our morning message during morning meeting. But, I finally realized that this was a waste of time for my classroom of mostly non-readers. Once I was finished with each daily message none of my kids could re-read what I had written and it really was not meaningful at all! Plus, many of them lost focus because they did not understand what I was writing or even what I was asking. So how did I fix this?
And here is the final result 🤩: This is my Interactive Morning Message where students put up picture cards to symbolize important information about our day (such as the month, lunch, theme, group activity, etc). This has been SO much more meaningful and the best part is that my students are now more engaged because they each get a turn to put up a part of the message and the picture format is much easier for them to understand. To accompany the morning message and our calendar time, I also created Differentiated Morning Meeting visual supports. For some students, I used books with different prompts that corresponded with our message on each page. For others, I included all of the prompts on a single worksheet. If you are interested in grabbing both of these wonderful interactive resources, you can bundle them and save 20%! Until next time! |
Hi! I am Allison. I am an Intervention Specialist and Certified Autism Specialist with nearly 20 years of experience working with students with autism and low-incidence disabilities.
I taught in an elementary special education classroom where I created countless individualized supports, organizational tools, and differentiated activities for my students before transitioning to my current position on an autism and low-incidence coaching team where I have had the pleasure of meeting and helping teachers in hundreds of classrooms in the Dayton, Ohio area. I am passionate about special education and helping teachers!
Hi Reader!! Do your students struggle to apply sensory strategies in order to calm down in the moment? Have you discovered there are certain times of day when everyone seems a bit dysregulated? Do you have students who struggle with engagement because they are overwhelmed? I have been there! In my blog post featured below, I highlight several resources that I used to help students proactively learn and practice strategies so they were more successful calming in the moment and give ideas for...
Hi Reader! One year my class did a hayride 🚜 on a farm field trip and the guide ready The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and acted it out with props. It was the BEST! 👏 If you have never read this spooky story, then now is the time! It is about a little old lady's journey through the forest where she encounters different articles of clothing that make different sounds that all come together in the end for a spooky surprise! My kids have SO MUCH FUN with all the sound effects...
Hi Reader! Can you believe it is already time to teach about Halloween? 🎃👻🧙♀️ I love getting my students ready for trick-or-treating during our social skills group. We even practice by visiting each of the staff members in our front office to trick-or-treat. It is so much fun! Want to see what else we do during this time of year in my classroom? Check out my blog post: Fall Activities in the Special Education Classroom Unsure where to start in your classroom? Grab my Halloween Thematic Unit!...