Imagine that you could change 5 simple things in your room design and have behavior problems disappear. Believe it or not, if you do it right, it can happen. Classroom design can have a very significant impact on whether students behave appropriately and are engaged in work (e.g., Nordquist, Twardiosz, & McEvoy, 1991). But how do you know what needs…
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Teachers frequently ask me about how to teach reading and build literacy, particularly about students with autism. So many of our students can read the words, particularly sight words, but have really no idea what they mean. Teaching literacy with interactive books can help engage students and expand their understanding of sight words. Multiple elements, of course, go into reading. Recognizing…
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Special education morning meeting is intimidating to many of us. Maybe you have tried it and felt like you couldn’t meet the needs of the different levels of your students. Or perhaps it was that your students didn’t stay engaged for the whole meeting. Or you just didn’t see it benefitting your students. For all of these reasons, I see lots…
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Often on Facebook or in the community of the Special Educator Academy, I get asked for ideas about planning lessons for situations like job interview demonstrations, principal evaluations, visiting administrators to the classroom etc. And really, these questions don’t ask specifically about lesson planning. They are usually put more like this:Unfortunately, like most things, the question isn’t simply answered as…
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For most of us working in life skills classrooms, finding engaging and useful ways to practice functional reading, particularly comprehension, can be tough. So, I’ve set out to create a set of tools that allow you to scaffold your instruction of functional sight words commonly encountered by our students in their community. I’m starting with food words. So far we…
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