Show Before You Go

One of the things our classroom is working very hard on is integrating use of our visual schedules or calendar boxes. We are trying to adopt the motto of, "Show Before You Go." Since all of our students are dependent, on some level, for mobility within and outside the classroom, we decided that the adult who physically assists the student in moving from one activity to the next is the person who is responsible for carrying out the use of the visual schedule or calendar box.

This seems like a minor point, which adult should demonstrate the visual schedule/calendar box during the transition, but it is not. Our classroom staff works well as a team and we are generally able to move from one activity to the next and incorporate all of the little "between activity" things that need to happen (like removing leg braces, reclining a wheelchair or toileting) without much discussion; yet that was creating as one staff put it a, "too many cooks spoils the soup" situation. We never knew if, when or who had enacted the system. Now that we are clear that who ever physically assists the student to the next area is in charge this is simplified.

What small, but infinitely important things have you and your staff implemented to help in making the day go more smoothly?

The Staff Bulletin Board

Each year I think carefully about the materials I hang on the bulletin board, wall or door I designate for staff.

• The Prompt Hierarchy (link is to Adapted Learning - log in first) is an essential tool for all of those who work with learners with any kind of special need, but especially those with multiple disabilities, in my previous position I trained all new paraprofessionals agency-wide in positive behavior supports and interventions and spent quite a bit of time on the prompt hierarchy, in my new job all classroom have a weekly one hour classroom and I hope to spend one of the first meetings reviewing this
• "All Behavior is Communication" - this is a banner that hangs across the top of the bulletin board
  
• Positive Behavior Support Reminders (another Adapted Learning link) is a little sign to remind adults when to praise, ignore, redirect and to always teach appropriate behavior
• Instruct, Model, Practice, Praise - this is my mantra (well, one of many), it is how all great teaching from the littlest newborn learning to babble to a six year old learning to tie his shoes to pre-algebra in seventh grade to a college level seminar in the disturbed child and adolescent (best class I ever took, by the way, props to Dr. Ellen Wright, way to use that Bloom's) is done; I hang this to remind adults that no matter what we are teaching, from cause and effect to using a spoon to row/column scanning we instruct, model, practice and praise over and over again
  
• The Beatitudes for Friends of the Exceptional Child this is a poster version (preview below) I made a few years ago, more recently I've seen a different version of this poem credited to the writer Andre Masse
  

Beatitude for Teachers of the Exceptional Child