Organizing your Special Education Library

Books, books, books! What does your special education library look like? How do you keep your books organized? I asked these questions on instagram this week and these awesome special education teachers showed us their libraries and I absolutely love all of their great ideas and organization!!

Check out how many purposes this area serves! I love how the bookshelves on the left have pictures to organize the books too!

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Career Exploration: Vocational Daily Questions, Job Posters, Interest Inventories and more!

As a life skill teacher, one of our responsibilities is to expose our students to different jobs and try to help them figure out what they are interested in doing after they complete school. Career exploration is especially important in secondary education, but is an important part (and becoming mandatory in some states) of elementary life skills too!

These fun job posters and daily questions will help you do just that!

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God's Love - Adapted and Interactive Books for Special Needs Ministry

If you follow me on Instagram, you know one of my new adventures is leading the special needs ministry at my church! For the month of February, we are talking about God's love for us.

Love can be such a tricky concept to grasp because it is so abstract but SUCH an important thing to learn about! See this post over HERE at Special Sunday School!

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13 Things Every Special Education Teacher Needs in their Classroom

As a special education teacher, what gets you through the day? We all love our jobs, but will admit it can be challenging at times. We all have different essentials for our classrooms and things that get us through each day. So, special education teachers, what could you not live without in your classroom?

25+ teachers chimed in on Facebook and Instagram and we came up with this list. (Not in order of importance!) What would you add?

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5 Tips for Writing IEP Transition Plans and Outcomes

Are you lucky enough to be teaching teens? Then you are lucky enough to write a transition plan! In Illinois, all students must have a transition plan in their IEP by the time they are 14 and a half. So, unless you want to hold another meeting at the student's 14 and a 1/2 birthday, you will want to include the transition plan anytime in that year before it is required.

For all transition plans, a student needs to have an education OR training goal (and they can have both), an employment goal, and an independent living goal. Also, we need to be thinking and writing about what this student will be doing AFTER high school (even if that's still 8 years away). Here's a few tips to make sure your transition plan is compliant.

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5+ Valentine's Day Activities for Special Education

I can't believe it is almost Valentine's Day already! Are you celebrating Valentine's Day in your classroom this week? Here's a few of my favorite Valentine's Day activities that you can easily include in your activities all throughout this week or for your Valentine's Day parties! 

Valentine's Day Cards

Of course, you can't have a Valentine's Day party without cards! I love these cards because students are able to personalize their card, not only by coloring it, but by including their own words and thoughts, making it a really meaningful card.

 

These cards include symbol support and choices for your symbol readers, tracing options with visual choices for your beginning writers, and mix and match sentence starters for your students who might be able to write, but sometimes need some help thinking of what to say!

You could have students write to everyone in their class, their parents, siblings, grandparents, and the list goes on! Have fun with it! 

You can grab these differentiated Valentines cards here.

Math using Conversation Hearts   

I loved doing this estimating lesson. This is great for your students who need a bit of a challenge. This activity is a freebie from Miss Britnee on TpT, read more about it and grab the freebie here!

We also did conversation hearts with my lower students! 

We practiced color sorting, counting, and graphing. There are like 50 freebies for activities like these on TpT! I thought these free worksheets looked great, and check out even more candy heart math lessons here. This is such a fun and classic activity. If your students love candy, they will love doing these math lessons! 

Valentine's Day Errorless Journals

 

Try out this free Valentine's Day journal in my TpT store. 

I absolutely love how these journals allow for my students to write using their own thoughts errorlessly and that there is an appropriate level for all of my students. Grab this FREE journal here or check out all of the Valentine's Day journals here!

Valentine's Day Reading Comprehension (with symbol support)

Designed for non-to-beginning writers, symbol picture support helps students be more successful at reading in this Valentine's Day comprehension set! This is a mini set with 5 stories instead of the typical 10, perfect to use the week of Valentine's Day!

These five reading passages are all about Valentine's Day including: February, valentine's cards, candy hearts, chocolates and Valentine's Day. There are five different stories along with reading comprehension activities including: a cut and paste cloze (fill in the blank) activity and a quiz. Grab these reading activities here!

Valentine Would You Rather Questions

These Valentine's Day would you rather questions are great for teaching students how to have a sense of humor, imagination, and fun! All questions have two visual options for answers to help all students answer and are focused on a Valentine's Day / February theme.

10 visual questions: Variety of funny, opinion, and thought-provoking questions.

Leveled journal pages: Levels including drawing, writing, or extended writing

You can use these questions as a question of the day activity, a journal lesson, or a fun social activity!

These questions are perfect for special education or preschool classrooms because:

• there is no right answer

• students can answer errorlessly

• each question include visuals to support non-readers and readers

• there is a consistent answer structure

• communication is encouraged through AAC, verbal, and/or written

• corresponding journals come in a variety of levels

 Symbol Supported Candy Heart T-shirt 

How cute is this Valentine's Day shirt made especially for special education teachers (and speech therapists too!) The widgit symbol cards in the middle of the hearts is EVERYTHING!

Grab your Valentine's day teacher shirt or sweatshirt on the BSE shop!

Valentine's Day Crafts - Inspiration from Instagram!

This past week we were sharing crafts on Instagram and I was loving the heart themed crafts! Any and all of these would be great to do for a fun Valentine's day craft. Thanks for the inspiration ladies! :) 

Be sure to click on the links and follow these awesome teachers! 

Kara from @teachingdifferently used the easy art pack from Teaching Special Thinkers that you can find here!

Aren't these love monsters from @positivelyprek adorable!? Check out the Love Monster book here! (amazon affiliate link)

How cute are these polka-dot hearts from @youautaknow! You can paint them with a variety of items, including pencil erasers and q-tips. It's fun to switch it up sometimes! :)

Be sure to check out more of this past week's crafts by searching #bseinspiration and #spedcrafts!

Still looking for more Valentine's Day ideas? 

Check out my Pinterest board full of ideas below!

Shop all BSE Valentine's Day resources HERE!

What are you doing for Valentine's Day? Leave a comment, I'd love to hear about it! 

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