Color Coded Calendar Visuals

Do you have a calendar set up that you love and that is functional for your students? Do your students have a hard time understand concepts such as weekends vs. school days, yesterday/today/tomorrow or struggle with changes in their schedule?

Enter: Color coded calendar visuals!! This calendar color code system helps students
  • understand what to expect for the month
  • reduce anxiety about upcoming and new events
  • learn time skills
Color coded calendars for special education classrooms

This was a total game changer for my students. It helped reduce anxiety about upcoming events, weekends, and special days. And it started with four simple colors.

I keep the calendar color code simple for a reason. Even without visuals, students are able to quickly pick up the colors and their meanings. Yellow means it's a regular school day. Green - a special school day, such as an assembly, field trip, half day, etc. Red means it's a day when you should have school, but you don't. And then blue is for weekends, weekends are special because we never have school on weekends.


Classroom Calendar Visuals 


The classroom calendar visuals have a few options available, you can print them with out without the additional visual symbol cues. The cards fit perfectly on a calendar you would find at the Target dollar spot or Dollar Tree, or in a pocket calendar like seen below.

Visual color coded calendars with visuals for the special education classroom


Student Calendars

It's one thing for students to see a calendar on the wall. But it's another level for a student to have their own calendar that they can take ownership over. These calendars come with multiple different levels, including full tracing, partial tracing/partial writing, or blank so students fill in the calendar on their own.

Students can color in the calendar as you review the calendar on the board, and then keep it in their morning binders and cross off the days as they go, which helps them see the time pass and see what events are coming up.

Student Calendars on the Smart Board

I was excited to hear how Susie, a mod-severe special education teacher, uses these resources in her classroom, and also used them on her smart board! Susie has the classroom visuals in the pocket chart as seen above, but also displays the students calendars on her smart board. I had to ask her how she did it, and thankfully she was willing to share with everyone!



"I download the PDf file of the month we are working on and use the edit tab to take a snapshot of the calendar pdf.  I then paste it to a blank page on my smart notebook file.  I use the smart board pen feature to do the colors for the calendar, I usually use the highlighter colors so that the numbers show through."

Check that out! It looks awesome! So, if you have a smart board, definitely try this out!



See the calendar visuals in action


See how I use all of these visuals to help students with special needs in this video below:

What are teachers saying?

Teachers love the Student Color Coded Calendars:


Amanda says: "Your calendar system has really changed my morning meeting time. It is so much more life skill centered now than it was when I used the cute teacher calendar with the numbers you add each day. Thanks for helping this vet teacher out."

Mary loves the student calendars and says: "I love these calendars!  The fact that they are differentiated for the diverse needs of my students is a huge time saver when planning for my morning meetings."

Learning through Love says: "I have so many different calendar products I've purchased but this is the only one that I feel really helps students understand the purpose of a calendar beyond school."



And teachers are LOVING the Classroom Calendar Visuals:


Rainbow of Possibilities says: "Where has this been my entire teaching career? Seriously, I never thought of this so thank you from the bottom of my heart. I couldn't stand when the students would lose pieces to our calendar  books and I would have to scramble to put them back together. This has helped my class so much! Thank you for making this activity so successful for my students and easy for staff to maintain. You are a genius!

Stephanie B. says: "I am so excited to start using this resource along with the color coded student calendars that I have been using for years.  This seriously makes my job so much easier and provides exactly what my high school life skills students need.  Many of my students refer back to their color coded calendar in their binder regularly to check their calendar for special activities and changes to the regular school week.  This will be a great visual for the whole class (and staff) to use!"

Megan says: "This is amazing! I am using this with my ABA class. I love how, neat, clean and organized it is!"


Color code your classroom calendar to help your students understand what to expect for the month, reduce anxiety, and teach time skills! #specialeducation

Now it's your turn to start color coding!

Color code your calendar to help your students understand what to expect for the month, reduce anxiety, and teach time skills!
Grab these visual calendar resources below:
Classroom Calendar Large Visuals
Student Color Coded Personal Calendars

2 comments

  1. Hi there! Just wondering if you will be rereleasing a 2020 personal calendar please?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 2020 monthly calendars have been released up through July in the 2019-20 update! Calendars for the next school year will typically come out in May.

      Delete

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