Morning Routines for High School SPED
Staying organized as a Special Education High School (life skills or transition) teacher can be overwhelming!
But one of the BEST tips I’ve learned is to create a consistent Morning Routine that you AND your students can rely on.
Believe me when I say, having a morning meeting routine will help ground both YOU AND your students. This is because having consistency will mean your students are more independent first thing, leaving you (more) free to plan out the rest of the day.
But the key to greater independence is practicing a routine!
Be Consistent
Being consistent is the number one rule. I like to print out or project an image on the whiteboard every morning, before students arrive, so that they know exactly what they should do when they enter the classroom.
Consistency can look like having the same routine every day of the week, or having a set routine that occurs on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. How you set up your routine will depend on the needs of your students!
While your students will need guidance during their first few days/weeks of school, they will soon learn the routine, and require a lot less prompting to follow the directions on the board.
For example, a very basic example of a morning routine that could be projected or individually printed, could look like this:
If the student has mastered these steps, thats when you can add on even more steps to their routine!
Make it Visual
You are probably aware of why having visual supports is so important in a Special Education Classroom, but check out my recent blog post on using Visuals here if not.
Since all of your students are likely at different levels, you will need to have multiple versions so that all of your students can understand the directions.
Below is an example of a morning routine used with a mix of students, from those who can read to those needing more support.
The students requiring more support have the clickable version of this image on their tablets, and they can simply touch the Email/Calendar/Weather icon to open up a direct link to the source of information!
Now that we have the basics down . . . what exact activities should your morning routine include?
Warm up Activity
The answer to this question will depend on what students you have, what level(s) they are, and how large a class you have.
But generally, I like to have students complete a “Morning Check-In” every single morning, where they answer some basic questions (and perhaps get a head start on a few of their IEP goals, in the process).
I like to do these using individualized Google forms so that I can see a student’s answers for the quarter in one place & differentiate for each student . . .
. . . but you could also do a daily check-in using a printable, like these calendar skills printables!
Some other options for a warm up activity could include:
And since your students will be both arriving at different times and completing their warm-up activity at different speeds, you should also have an extended activity ready to go!
Extended Activity
After students complete their warm-up, they may take a break or move straight on to their extended activity, which I like to call the “Do Now.”
I personally like to have a different “Do Now” activity for each day of the week, but it is up to you how you set this up!
The “DO NOW” is typically some form of independent work that the students do in order to prepare for our first class of the day.
If it’s Tuesday & our first class of the day is going to be preparing for our grocery shopping trip, then that day’s “DO NOW” will be an independent activity for the students to complete before group class.
What’s neat about these type of templates, is that they can be done prior to REAL or MOCK scenarios. Can’t go out grocery shopping this week? No worries, students can still complete the Do Now using a pretend recipe, so they work on their functional reading & math skills.
Don’t actually have time for a community trip? That’s okay – the students can still research a destination & work on their money math skills!
This mock schedule gives an example of how to structure your classroom so that your students learn how to be more independent AND you are running familiar classes first thing in the morning!
All of these activities are reusable templates, which require only a few minutes of time to set up each morning. Again, the key is to give you back TIME while providing your students with valuable practice that is not simply busywork.
You can either share a link to the Do Now folder, print all the activities out/have copies ready, or (lowest prep option) assign on Google Classroom each morning.
Other Ideas
A final tip is to include in your Morning Routine a way for your students to be INVOLVED in the IEP process! And yes – EVERY student can be involved in some way.
I like to have my students look at their IEP goal checklist each morning, choose a specific objective to work on, and then type, write, stamp, say, or point to their “goal” for the day. (Note, the goal isn’t to master that objective, it is simply to work on it sometime during the day.) This daily reminder that the IEP goals exist helps you, the students, and the support staff in the classroom!
Below is an example of a student friendly IEP Goal checklist, for a student who reads but benefits from visuals to aid in fluency:
Students should be aware of their own IEP goals, whether it be in picture form, a checklist, buttons on their device, or an accessible document on their computer. Click either image if you want to get the templates to these IEP goal resources!
And if you’ve never introduced the concept of IEP goals before, you can start by first going over what an IEP & Vision are, with this freebie:
I hope these tips help you out as you structure your mornings in your classroom!
Click here for a free 15 day PDF guide to how to structure your first few weeks back.
If you are wondering how to set up your physical classroom, check out my recent blog post or head to one of the classroom tour videos below!
