Some IEP data sheets

Collecting data on the IEP goals...(even and especially the ones you didn't even write) can be annoying, difficult, a lot of work, is just what us special education teachers gotta do...

I recently had a question about what kinds of forms I keep on my clipboards so I snapped a couple of pictures. Mostly, I have data sheets to collect data on IEP goals. And also a few behavior data sheets.

This year I wanted to make my data sheets as easy to collect data as possible, so I tried to make it more specific than before and also circling instead of writing when possible. Make it easier for everyone, and also makes the data more reliable. Got that idea from one of my ABA enthusiastic colleagues.

Here's a couple examples:

They aren't perfect - but they are a start and I hope they turn out useful! How do you collect data on IEP goals?

One of my behavior data sheets is currently tracking swearing frequency of one of my students. So far the most PHRASES (not words) uttered was 70....in one class period. That will be a fun one :)

Also, I just updated my schedules on the post before for those of you who wanted to see better pictures and more details - hope that helps!

Update: My prompt levels key is listed below. (This was copy and pasted from some article I read - with just some minor changes I made. If you know where I got it, please let me know so I can give credit!)

Prompt Levels or Prompt Hierarchy

+ independent The student does the task or the step with no help or hints of any kind.

IV indirect verbal Ask a question that makes them think about it. “What do you need to do?” “What is next?” “What time is it?”

G gesture Point to the item they need. Point to the door if you should be leaving, point to the calculators if they need to get a calculator.

DV direct verbal The student does the task after being told exactly what to do. “You need to…”

M model The student does the task after you show them how to by doing the task yourself. For example, you wipe off the counter and then stand aside to let them try it.

PP physical prime The student does the task after you move them toward it. For example, you touch their elbow to get them to pick up a pencil.

FP full physical The student does the task while you hold onto their hand or wrist and do it with them.
Need a place to start? Make a copy of this generic goal sheet and edit away to meet the needs of your goals!

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Back-to-School & Organizing student schedules

Hey guys! 4 days of school in and I'm feeling like we're off to a good start. Not going to lie, after setting up my classroom the last couple of weeks, I was about ready to call it quits and find a new career :) but then the students came and I remembered I actually love my job!!

This year I'm teaching a language arts/math block for two and a half hours in the morning, two sections of fine arts, and then a resource with the same students I have in the morning. As I mentioned at the end of last year, the students I have in the morning are very different from the students I had last year, but, as far as I can see now, I think it will be a good change! Since I have so many 1:1 aides in my classroom, I decided not to do hardly any whole group instruction, but have my students rotate through centers. There is just one student without an aide, so I usually have him work in a pair, or have an aide multi-task if their student is doing independent work tasks. We do start with a "morning class" for the first 10 minutes of class where the students take turns greeting each other - but that's it!

Are you thinking, holy cow that's a lot to organize? :) Well, I'm trying to turn over a new organization leaf and here's what I came up with. You can see below my "master student schedules" - for myself and my aides, this is where I have the times listed and the name of the activity that each student should be doing. Then, I have a description of what each activity is, where it happens, and what they should be doing. Finally, the students schedules are made with symbols from board maker and ordered on a strip of Velcro on a folder.

 ~If you noticed my master schedule doesn't match my students folders - well, kudos to you! Reason being, tomorrow we have a "late start" (professional time in the morning which means I lose an hour of my morning block) plus we will be praticing for our file drill, so their schedules reflect that~

Updated 9/3: More pictures of schedules that were taken with a "real" camera

My "master" schedules - changes depending on the late of the week due to social communication group, school store, late starts, and other random events.

Extra schedule pieces kept here :) And below is the info I had typed up for my aides, especially for that first week - so everyone knew what the schedule pieces meant and what to do without me running around like a crazy trying to explain everything at once:
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As students come in they can choose a relaxing/sensory activity. I will try to play a video/music during this time. Then we will start with a class activity - saying good morning and things like that, short about 10 minutes

Next, everyone works on different things at different times. Follow your students schedule. It is important for the students to move around the classroom and do the activities in the correct locations because it will help them a) not get bored by being in the same area and b) understand what they need to do by doing the same types of activities in the same location

Class - at desks

Binder - at table - Look at the white board above binders to see what work to do for the day

Language - at green desk by window - work on flashcards in green bin in the area, get an idea of what your student knows / needs to work on. This will later become discrete trial training section/IEP goal.

Work Tasks - desks in corner - Teacch boxes. Instructions and data sheets on the white board

Calendar - at desks - Add the month and the year every day. Count the dates, add today’s date. discuss today/yesterday/tomorrow and have students velcro in the appropriate places. Check weather on the ipad, and match the symbol. Finished and have more time? Have student type/write today’s information, match symbols, count numbers, etc.

Reading - polkadot rug area, can sit at desk/chair or on the rug - have student choose a book in the green bin (simple readers/adapted books - NOT the Story Reader!) in the bookshelf to read (just give a couple choices). Encourage student reading, even if they have to repeat or only read occasional words.

Math - at desks - I have worksheets on the file cabinets. Practice money naming, counting, sorting. Will give more instruction as I have time.

Update: See some of my instructions for my aides on some of these activities here.

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I'll plan on sharing more pictures of my classroom and the activities that I have going on during this morning block hopefully soon as I better figure them out :) I spent a lot of time this summer on Sasha's blog, The Autism Helper - so quite a few of my ideas come from her!

How about the rest of you? Have you started yet? How did it go? Or are you still setting up your classroom? Can't wait to hear all about it. Be sure to leave your blog lovin' link in the comments so I can be sure to follow you!

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Classroom Update - 6 months into the year!

I have been teaching for almost six months now and I haven't posted a picture of how my classroom looks since August! So here's my desk area and the back counter/bulletin board area. Seriously, no matter how often I try to keep it organized, by the next day it's a disaster again!

If you remember my previous classroom post, I've moved some things around. My desk is now by my computer - which is wonderful. And I got a table just recently which inspired the desk move. I love having a table as a work space for students. Now I just need to figure out a better way to organize that back counter!

As you can see, my bulletin board has a lot of papers on it. That is where I store some of the work I have planned for the upcoming week, or something that we have started as a class and haven't had a chance to finish yet. It's functional, but not all that pretty! Hopefully by posting this mess I will motivate myself to think of a better way to organize it all!

So enough for classroom organization. Here's something fun that I created after seeing the idea on pinterest: an All About Number... poster. Here's the original:

I loved the idea so I created my own version on Word and had it printed poster sized and laminated.

Sometimes we do this as a class activity, and other times, like the one you see here, I have two students work together to complete the poster (See the color marks on the side - that shows students which ones to do). I really like making this a small group activity, because I've noticed the students helping each other out with the more difficult aspects like spelling the name or tallying!

The number we use is usually the date, or a countdown to some special event.

If you would like to use this in your classroom, you can download it here.

Happy Monday!

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My Special Education Classroom

*Coming from Pinterest? So glad you're here! Follow Breezy Special Ed on Facebook for more special education ideas and updates plus check out my store at Teachers Pay Teachers*

I just finished my first full week of teaching!!! Woo Hoo!!

I'm so excited to share my classroom experience with all of you! I currently have 7 students, but will be getting another student soon (he had to prove residency first). Most of my students have autism as their primary disability and are pretty high functioning. On average my students are at about a first grade level just to give you an idea.

So, welcome to my classroom! I just (finally) added the student "mailboxes" (the orange boxes - yes, the free ones from Wal-mart). These are ESSENTIAL because otherwise I have student folders and communication notebooks all over the back counter... and I know one of my students will really appreciate this, as he was always going to the back of the room and straightening up the mess back there! :) Students can also keep their binders and "thunderbucks" (our school money - reward system) in their mailboxes. I love it. Also, you might notice that my bulletin boards are kind of empty - that is not because I'm lazy! I wanted to leave space so we can put up things that we are working on and so that students can display their work. I am also collaborating with our school's speech path for social language and we discussed putting conversation starters and the like up on that bulletin board!

I like feeling organized. Next, you will see all my lovely clipboards, one for each student, nicely tabbed (color coded, yes) for each one of their IEP goals. I feel so much better now knowing how I will collect data on their progress. And yes, there are only 6 clipboards...we have a MIA IEP from a student who transferred from CPS...(that was a lot of acronyms, haha, sorry!)

Want to see what some of my IEP sheets look like? 

Check out IEP goal sheet examples HERE.

Next, my sensory toys, or fidgets. These are SO popular! They are great for students who need to do something (positive) with their hands. It can be very relaxing and calming for many students.

My calendar! I put the Zebra border up before I even found the Zebra numbers! I wasn't looking for Zebra numbers either, just typed "calendar numbers" into Google, and they popped right up! You can get Zebra numbers too thanks to Doodle Bugs Teaching! I have a student who faithfully updates the calendar for me each morning when he comes in...and if a number is ever crooked, he'll get up and fix that too. :)

All students have IDs to buy lunch and what not, and after some students kept forgetting their IDs at home, I decided to keep them at school. So here they are with the hooks from the dollar store and a sign explaining what to do. I have found if I put signs up, students are so much more likely to remember what to do than if I just tell them verbally.

Here's my classroom rules if you would be curious in that. I know they are nothing pretty. I quickly wrote them in about 5 minutes before the first day of school. They seem to cover all of the bases so far!

And...my desk. See my easy button? :) It's so fun! It was given to me from my college supervisor after my student teaching experience. And over on the left, the wooden box thing (it has a nice little apple decoration on the front) is from my very first teaching aiding experience when I was a sophomore!

Let's get a close up of my pen holder! It's my favorite. I have a wonderful mentor who made both the holder and the flower pens for me on my first day of school. LOVE!!!

Here's the book corner I showed you when I first started it out. I added some pictures to the boxes (I know some of them still need pictures...I'm working on it!) and also moved around the cubes. I like it better this way. Next to the cubes are puzzles and games that students play during homeroom and resource. I think everyone should organize their books this way! It's awesome because students first choose their category and then their book. They don't have to do as much looking around to find what they want. Arthur and Disney are currently the most popular, with Dr. Seuss coming up at a close second!

I hope you enjoyed my little classroom tour! :) I'll leave you with a white board drawing done by one of my students during resource. I was not expecting to have such a talented artist in the classroom! :)

See my 2014 classroom here and details of my 2013 classroom here!

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Organizing my Classrom

So this morning I went on a mission to buy crates, ect. to help organize my books and other materials in my classroom. I hit the JACKPOT at Wal-mart!

They have tons of cardboard boxes from the school supplies that are PERFECT for what I was looking for! I talked to an employee, and she said yes, I could take any of the empty boxes, so I quickly set on filling up my cart! Then a manager walked by, I totally pretended like it was totally normal that I was filling my cart with all these empty boxes...and then he stopped to talk to me. Uh, I didn't quite know what he was going to say, but just started chatting with him and he told me that if I wanted any other boxes, I could empty anything that was in them! WHAT? What a nice man! I was very excited and it helped organize a lot of things...and the best part, I paid nothing! And if you wanted to, you could make these super cute with spray paint, scrapbook paper and other fun supplies but I'm just currently going for functional.

Here's them in my classroom so far. I was really excited to use them to organize my books...check it out!

I have just labeled them with a sharpie, and later added pictures. In case you're curious and can't see from the picture labels include "fables, Disney, science, plants and animals, arthur & more, seasons & holidays, Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, and Other Good Ones" :)

Here's a view from the side. I like how you can pull out the box and flip through to see all the covers easily.

These similar cardboard file boxes at Discount Office would have cost $16 for 12!

 

Here you can see a little bit of my classroom and how I used a few more boxes to organize! You can see some of the orange/yellow ones up in the shelves and two more holding all my books for Language Arts and Math. It makes it look a lot cleaner. (And yes, I know, it's still messy looking now, but I'm just starting)

What do you think? Will you be heading to Wal-mart for your own super easy DIY organizers? Can you even call it DIY when you really don't have to "do" much?! :)

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