Tour Our Classroom's Independent Work Area

Building from last week's post that detailed our Direct Instruction area, this week we are going to look at our Independent Work area. Students transition to the Independent Work area directly following their time at the Direct Instruction center.

Independent Work is another area in the classroom that was created after I attended a Structure Teaching training based on the TEACCH concept.  The goal of the Independent Work area is to individually teach each child how to sit and attend to activities at his/her level.  This video demonstrates how the Independent Work area is set up in our classroom. 

Please ignore my less than professional, soccer mom attire! The only time I could schedule the video this week was right after Saturday morning soccer ... said this working mom! :).

In the video, I shared that each student has a drawer and contained in his/her drawer there is a task or activity specific to that child's development.  To promote true independent work, the activity in each child’s drawer requires skills already mastered at either Direct Instruction or elsewhere. The work in each drawer always has a clear beginning and end as we want the student to know how much work must be completed and when he/she will be finished.  Some students have work as simple as putting items into a container.  Others have sorting, matching or writing activities.  As the school year advances, the student's work increases based on his/her individual progress.  

Here is a peek into every child’s drawer for next week. I am sharing them in order of lowest to highest skill level.

Drawer One: A simple errorless put-in activity where the student puts the pegs into the same color container and then closes the container by placing on its lid.

Drawer One

Drawer Two: A simple money slot where the student puts pennies in.  This is a great one for hand strengthening as the slot gives little resistance and the student has to push to add the pennies.

Drawer Two

Drawer Three: An errorless sorting activity where the student has to put tokens and bears into the correct holes.  Note: If you flip this task over, there is an option to simply put all the tokens and bears in the same large hole which is an easier skill. It's been a nice feature so I can use the same box for two skills!

Drawer Three

Drawer Four: Another errorless sorting task where the student has to sort circle and square blocks by putting them in the correct holes.

Drawer Four

Drawer Five: A sorting task where the student has to put the bears in the correctly colored bucket.  Notice: I hot glued foam to the top of the buckets so that the items would not fall out when the student puts them in "All Done".

Drawer Five

Drawer Six: Another sorting task where the student puts the pom-poms in the slit in the middle and sorts the pipe cleaners by the correct color around the outside of the slit.  This task is from Second Story Window. 

Drawer Six

Drawer Seven: Is a silverware sorting task provided by Kimberly A Henry’s "How Do I Teach this Kid?"

Drawer Seven

Drawer Eight: The student must use the mini tongs and fine-motor control to place the pom-poms into the ice cube tray.  

Drawer Eight

Drawer Nine: A task from Christine Reeve and Susan S. Kabot’s book "Building Independence: How to Create and Use Structured Work Systems."  (If you are struggling with the concept of how to build independence, take a look at this book. It is a phenomenal resource!) In the task, the student has to simply put a colored eraser top on the correspondingly colored pencil and put them in the "All Done" portion of the pencil box. 

Drawer Nine

Drawer Ten: A size sorting task where the student matches the circles to the correct circles on the Velcro board.

Drawer Ten

Drawer Eleven: This is a task that takes a little more time and effort. The student has to put the correctly colored beads into the approriately marked canister.  You can read more about this one by clicking here as it was featured in my Top 10 Task Box Countdown last winter.

Drawer Eleven

Drawer Twelve: A task that came from my errorless learning worksheets that were shared in last week’s Direct Instruction post.  The task I simply filling each bug in with color. 

Drawer Twelve

Note:  Each drawer is assigned to a morning and afternoon student. Between classes, my staff undoes all the tasks and puts them back into the drawer for the next class.  Which leads me to a really good point....NEVER EVER undo a child’s task in front of the student!! As promoted by the TEACCH model, undoing a task in front of the child leaves an impression that his/her work does not matter.  It would be like your administrator coming into your classroom and deleting an IEP you just completed because your work was not meaningful.  (Maddening thought...but it really drives home the point, huh?)

On the note, I'll share my "Dos & Don’ts for the Independent Work" area. We have this list posted along-side the center to help staff remember how to support students.  

The most important tip is to prompt from behind and use as few cues as possible especially verbal cues as they are hardest to fade.  These tips were given to me by a colleague of mine, Peggy Lawrence.  Thanks Peggy!!

Also as we do at all centers, I have a list of rules for the students to follow at independent work.  

Beside the rules, I also have a Velcro strip that shows which students work at that desk as we have a two work areas. Here to see a video model of my sons using the Independent Work area.  NOTE: In the video, I am the camera lady and the teacher so it is little different but I think you will get the idea. 



This video clip was shared with my students last week to show them how the process should look as some of them were struggling to figure out how to use their time wisely after the task was completed.   

As you noticed in the video, my boys did their work and then sat and did one of the choices for two minutes.  The two minutes was noted by a large sand timer.  We have a 10, 5, and 2 minute large sand timers. They are a favorite in our classroom!!  We use them for a variety of things.  I honestly don’t know what we would do without them!  You can purchase them from Watch Time Pass.  

After the two minutes were up, the boys transitioned to the iPad table.  The iPad table and independent work area are a joint center. Together, they run 10 minutes for my morning students who have shorter attention spans and 15 minutes for my afternoon students.  

From Direct Instruction, some students transition to the iPad, followed by the Independent Work while other students transition from Direct Instruction to the Independent Work then to the iPads.  I know this sounds a little confusing but with all students using an individual schedule, everyone knows where & when they need to be.  I promise to show you how individual schedules work in my classroom in a future post.

Finally, I did want to share a little "extra credit" with you.  On occasion I will have a student who can’t attend all of large group but is very successful with independent work. In these cases, I will have a set of three drawers that that student transitions to in the middle of large group.  The student will then get some much needed downtime from large group by completing the three independent tasks.  When the child is finished, they come back to group with the rest of the class.  This helps to give the student a functional, engaging break from group in a while offering the rest of the class the opportunity to attend to group in a much more relaxed, calm environment.  Here is a pic of what the drawers look like for this process.  

I know this post may seem like a lot of "Independent Work" for the teacher but I promise the success you will see in your students makes it well worth it!  You don't have to do it "independently", feel free to reach out for support or guidance.  It may take some time, but I eventually respond to all your emails.  (In fact, it makes my day to hear from y'all!) 

Wishing you lots of success with your own Independent Work areas! 

7 Day Work Task Challenge - Day 7: Counting, Sorting, & Pincer Grasp

Day 7 of the week-long work task challenge and I am taking it easy!  A wonderful friend, Vickie Unruh, gave me this medicine tower. Here it is on amazon, but I believe she said she found it at a dollar store.

I simply added sticker dots with numbers to each section. Then, the students can screw them together in numerical order. 

Or they can count out that many pony beads, put them in the section and screw the section to the next color. 

This can be done with a single color bead to demonstrate the one-to-one correspondence counting skill.  

Or you could use beads that correspond to the color of each container to make it an errorless learning activity.  

I also added an all done tube. The students will put the colored tower inside the tube prior to putting it in the finished hamper.  

Instructor's Insight: In my experience, students tend to toss their tasks into the all done hamper, in which case I foresee the medicine tower shattering as it lands.  As much as we train students to sit things in carefully, it doesn’t always happen so the tube will insure the tower’s safety.

One more side note, I used the clear container of the tower to hold the beads, this forces students to use a pincer grasp to grab each bead from the container as it's small and they can’t drag the beads to the side of it and pull them out as easy.  It also makes the task store itself which is a nice feature. 

Love the medicine tower!  Vickie, thank you for donating it for the final task number of the 7 Day Work Task Challenge.

7 Day Work Task Challenge - Day 6: Put in, Sorting & Fine Motor Task

Today’s task is one I have been wanting to create for a long time. It is a little more involved and costs a bit more than the others (mostly because I don’t have any little girls at home to steal hair clips from!). In this task, students have to use fine motor skills to pinch off hair clips and place them in a correctly colored hole.  This task goes beyond sorting by the basic colors and moves on to black, brown and clear.  

 All I did to make the task was cover a box with contact paper and trace the tips of the dowel rods on to the top of the box.  Then, I used an exacto knife to cut out the holes.  I put Velcro on the bottom of each dowel and the inside of the box to make the dowels more sturdy and to make them removable for storage purposes.  

Notice I also velcroed a paint stir stick to the top of each dowel.  This makes it so the students can’t simply slide the clips off the dowel.  They must pinch them off using fine motor skills. 

I then cut three squares on the top of the box and outlined them with white, black, and brown For black and brown outline, I used permanent marker and for white outline I used an Elmer’s Paint Pen.   Next, I taped two pieces of cardstock as dividers for inside of the box so it could be self checking. 

Just add the hair clips and Ta-Da, you have a fine motor sorting task.  To make it an easier task, I can remove two of the dowels and just have the student put in one size clip.  The large clips can be easiest for little hands or sometimes even the medium sized clips are easiest depending on the student.   

Another variation is covering two of the square wholes and having the student work on taking off and putting in, rather than taking off and sorting to put in.  

Or yet another variation that is a little trickier is taking all the clips off and having students pinch to open them and put them on the right sized dowel. 

So there you have it a hair clip task that works on fine motor and can work on put in, sorting by color or sorting by size!  What do you think?  What tasks can you make from hair clips?  I see lots of potential with them.  

7 Day Work Task Challenge - Day 5: A "Put In" & Fine Motor Task

It's Day 5 of my Work Task Challenge and I'm learning it is very difficult to keep a challenge going mid-summer.  Lucky for me, I found inspiration on page 50 of the book, Visual Support for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Materials for Visual Learners by Vera Bernard-Opitz and Anne Haubler.

I am always looking for variations of "put in" and fine motor tasks.  We actually have these links in the classroom, but the students never use them appropriately.  They usually dump all the links out, throw them around until the links are tangled, and then leave the area to find something else to play.  This task is a perfect variation on the old colored links. 

That said, my only problem with this activity are my commitments to storing task boxes in condensed containers and establishing multi skill levels for each task. Here's my creative solution to that dilemma.  

I took an old Velveeta cheese box, turned it over, and cut two slits in the bottom. The bottom then became the top of the box as it is much sturdier than the top. Next, I cut two paint sticks down so they would measure the length of my storage shoe boxes.  I added Velcro to the inside of the box and the bottom of the paint sticks. This makes the paint sticks sturdy and removable for storage purposes. 

Then, I screwed a hook into the top of each paint stick. I used an exacto knife to cut out four holes on top the Velveeta box for each of the different colored links.  Notice two holes are vertical and the other two are horizontal. This increases the fine motor skills needed to complete the task  because students must twist their fingers to put the links in the correct holes. 



And yes, I met my goal, the task fits into a shoe box with a little extra storage for even one more task!  



It also has three levels of difficulty by: Level 1. Taking off and putting in, Level 2. Taking off and sort by two, or Level 3. Taking off and sorting by four.

Level 1:  Taking Off & Putting In 

Level 2:  Taking Off & Sorting by Two

Level 3:  Taking Off & Sorting by Four

And one for last feature, I taped cardstock to the inside of the box's bottom for a  self checking component!

7 Day Work Task Challenge - Day 4: Counting & Color Matching Support

As I read through the disassembling and assembling section of the book entitled Visual Support for Children with Autism SpectrumDisorders: Materials for Visual Learners by Vera Bernard-Opitz and Anne Haubler, I found a way to put my husband’s golf obsession to good use!  When you buy a dozen golf balls, they often come in 4 sleeves of three balls each. This packaging makes for an excellent assembly task without much work at all. 

I purchased a bucket of colored practice balls and made one assembly task where my students have to fill all the golf ball sleeves with the same color balls. I added sticker dot numbers to the side of each sleeve so the student can count the number of balls. 

By adding marks to the bottom of the large box, the student can see how to pack the golf ball sleeves when they are finished.

To add a color sorting skill to the task, purchase multi-colored balls and add a piece of colored tape around the outside of each golf sleeve.  Ask the students to match the ball to the corresponding  golf ball sleeve. 

Big thanks to my husband and a family friend of ours for "lending" me your golf ball boxes!! What hobbies or items does your household have that could pay off in the work task department?
  

7 Day Work Task Challenge - Day 3: Developing the Non-Dominant Hand

Today's inspiration comes from page 52 in the Visual Support for Children withAutism Spectrum Disorders: Materials for Visual Learners book by Vera Bernard-Opitz and Anne Haubler, "Pulling scarves through the holes in a ball and stuffing them into a container". 

While replicating this task, I developed a more advanced version of the same skill. I cut 1½ by 8 inch felt strips and added a wiffle ball.  The goal is to have the students stuff the wiffle ball with the felt strips. It may be a difficult task because the student has to push the felt into the holes using his/her fingertips.  However, it's a great activity for students who neglect to use their less dominant hand as the guiding hand (i.e. the students who you have to remind to hold their paper down with the left hand as they write with the right hand).

I tried this task with my 5-year-old and he loved the challenge so much that it made me think...let's add an academic piece to it.  I took a white wiffle ball and outlined several of the holes with various colors. Then, I got strips of felt in those colors and had him match the felt to corresponding wiffle ball holes.  

Worried about getting the felt out of the ball once it's stuffed?  Actually, the strips come out quite easily.  The trick is not having too many pieces of felt shoved into the ball.  I went with five felt strips. However if you want to increase the number of strips to make the task longer, a good friend of mine, Angela Moxter, suggested that you could use a crochet hook to get the felt out.  I haven’t tried it but it sounds like a great idea!  It could even lead to another task in problem solving and fine motor as a student works to get the felt out.  

Thanks Angela, love your restructuring idea!  See how fun and easy it is to restructure, think outside the box, and come up with new ways to make and create this task.  

Until tomorrow, Happy Task Building!