I teach preschool students ages 3-5 with special needs. Every day my students come to school with minds ready to learn. They are eager with questions about the world around them and they love hands-on projects that help them explore.
They come from a variety of cultures and have a variety of needs ranging from social-emotional to speech or cognitive delays.
I teach students with Down syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, vision or hearing impairment, speech delays, cerebral palsy, social-emotional delays, and other disabilities. They are happy and excited about being in school for the first time and love to make new friends and learn new things.
My Project
In our preschool classroom, we break our day into 15-minute increments. We are building stamina to sit for longer periods of time to attend to lessons in kindergarten. Whole group activities are done with the whole class, and then we break off into smaller groups for learning centers that are teacher or student-led.
Timers help us manage our time more effectively and help students plan for transitions.
Many students with Autism and other disabilities have a difficult time transitioning, especially between preferred and non-preferred activities. We use a visual schedule within the classroom to show what we are doing that day and what activity will be next. Having a time tracker with visual and auditory cues as an activity is wrapping up will help students transition more effectively between small and large group activities.
The time timers and sand timers can also be used when individual students are feeling sad, frustrated, or just need to take a break from an activity to move around. Being able to turn the sand timer or set a short time for a break will assist students with visualizing when the break is done and it is time to return to the activity.
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