Back to School Theme for Special Education Teachers

Whether you are a new special education teacher or an experienced teacher new to special education, preparing for back to school as a special education teacher can be CHALLENGING.  You spend hours, most likely days, organizing your classroom. You review IEP’s, behavior plans, and health information for each of your students. You work tirelessly trying to create a schedule that is best for your students while trying to accommodate the schedule preferences of the many support staff assigned to your students.

As the first day of school quickly approaches, the anxiety of lesson planning begins to set in. If you are like most special educators teaching students with intensive learning needs, you soon realize that although you have grade-level curriculum available, you may have little to no access to an adapted curriculum that is differentiated to meet the diverse learning needs of each of your students.

In my 20+ years supporting pre-service and new special education teachers, the most frequently asked questions year, after year are “Where do I start?” “How do I know what to teach?” “Where do I get the adapted curriculum I need for my students?”  Since most special educators teach in multi-grade classrooms, I recommend developing lesson plans based on a thematic unit of study. Skills and activities within a theme can be vertically aligned to meet diverse learning needs and multiple grade levels with a common focus.

Fortunately, there is a growing number of adapted curriculum resources available online, created by some amazing special education teacher-authors, who like us, found themselves with a similar need for differentiated resources to meet the diverse learning needs of their students.

This is the first of many blog posts where I plan to share some of my favorite curriculum resources and planning strategies I use to teach beginning teachers how to gather resources to create thematic units that are standards-based and integrate IEP goal priorities. It is so rewarding to watch new teachers build confidence and knowledge in selecting and adapting the curriculum for their students as the school year progresses.

Creating a Back to School Theme

Kick-off the school year with this simple Back to School theme literacy unit for PreK and elementary special educators. A Back to School theme is a theme that can include familiar vocabulary and routines as well as more rigorous levels of theme-specific literature across interests and grade levels. A back to school theme is also a topic most students will have some background knowledge in to apply to the classroom activities and procedures.

The first couple of weeks I suggest you select a theme that has a lower academic demand and somewhat familiar content for your students. Your focus will be on completing assessments, taking data, teaching routines and procedures, and most importantly, developing relationships with each of your students.

You want your students to be engaged, feel successful, and provide an opportunity for you to get a better understanding of your students strengths and needs. If the content and expectations are too difficult your students will become frustrated and you will not get a true picture of your students’ abilities or the types of adapted curriculum and instructional supports they need.

Learning Objectives and Student Outcomes

After reading your students’ IEP’s and most current progress notes, you should now have a general idea of the type of adapted resources you will need to support your students’ goals and learning needs. I’ve included an example of a simple overview of selected examples of“I Can Statements” that may support both IEP goals and the skills, concepts, and vocabulary within the back to school thematic resources shared in this post.

Back to School Literacy Activities

Shared Reading: If You Take a Mouse to School 

If You Take a Mouse to School by Laura Numeroff, is a perfect book for a back to school theme. This fun little book chronicles Mouse’s adventures on his first day of school and is rich with school-related vocabulary and action words. To make the book an engaging activity for your beginning readers, I highly recommend the “Back to School Storytime Pack from Teaching Special Thinkers” by Gabrielle Dixen Her Story Time Packs are packed full of visual supports for a story map, sequencing, vocabulary, and comprehension checks both printable and interactive PDF.

Adapted Books: Mouse Goes to School

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of adapted books. Adapted books are such a great way to engage all students in the reading process. I created the following adapted books as a fun differentiated extension to the book If You Take a Mouse to School.

This first set of adapted books begins with Mouse Goes to School and Mouse Sees Colors at School-2 Levels.  Each book has simple repetitive text and pictures of places and things Mouse sees at school.  The remaining four books each addresses a specific school routine that Mouse will learn at school and includes: Mouse Shops for School Supplies, Mouse Learns Class Jobs, Snack Time for Mouse, and Mouse Goes to Recess. Books include identical and non-identical interactive picture banks.

Adapted books can be differentiated to meet the diverse literacy needs of your students and are perfect for guided reading groups to reinforce sight words and unit vocabulary. A Backpack for Mouse is a great example of how the same topic can be modified multiple ways and includes books with picture matching, single sight/core word “in,” picture-supported sentence, and matching an item with the function/action.

File Folder: Backpack Checklist

This free interactive file folder set can be used as a companion activity with the “A Backpack for Mouse” adapted book set discussed above or as a supplemental activity to any back to school unit. Students check school supplies off a list as each item is placed in the backpack. I recommend gathering actual school supplies from the list and placing the items into a backpack while reading the checklist. Actual items are great support for your beginning readers and English-learners. This FREE resource includes four levels of visual checklists: picture only, picture-word, the word only, and blank for a student-produced list.

Interactive Books-Reading Comprehension

Students need to comprehend what they are reading to make meaning from the text. It can be difficult to find materials that support students beginning literacy skills with content that is interesting and relevant to their lives and includes background knowledge. Luckily, Mrs. P’s Specialties has created an amazing resource that does just that. Her year-long bundle of “Reading Comprehension Books with Visuals and Picture Choices” provides eight accessible books each month that include engaging topics, picture responses, and build prior knowledge around common themes. The August set of interactive adapted books is perfect for any back to school theme.

Back to School Vocabulary Activities

Object Word Wall

There are so many interactive ways to reinforce unit-specific vocabulary. One of my favorite ways to liven up a typical word wall is to create an object word wall using a clear shoe bag holder. This format is easy to switch out for each new unit.  One simple way to use the object word wall is to place theme-related picture/word cards in each pocket.  Collect a set of corresponding objects and place in a container.  Students identify the objects and place the objects into the pocket with the matching picture. This back to school themed object word wall cards have been added to the Creatively Adapted FREE Resource Library.

Vocabulary Task Boxes

Task boxes are a must-have for many special educators. Task boxes can be used across subject areas, are easily differentiated, and a great instructional tool for building independence. I’m pretty sure I own all of Especially Education’s task boxes. She creates AMAZING task boxes for many content areas and includes activities to support a wide range of diverse learning needs.  I’ve selected a few task boxes from both her “September Task Box Set” and her “Back to School Basic Skills Task Box Set” that support the vocabulary and concepts within the back to school activities shared in this post.

Sentence Builders

Interactive sentence builders are a fun way to integrate and reinforce the text and vocabulary from other literacy activities within a unit of study. Sight words in isolation have little meaning, therefore, using strategically selected sight words within the context of a picture/symbol-supported sentence reduces frustration and helps build reading confidence with beginning and reluctant readers. I created several sentence builder sets to make sure all students have a way to participate in word work activities.

“Back to School Sentence Frame Builders” help beginning readers build sentences by adding a picture to complete a repetitive sentence frame containing 2-4 sight words/picture supported text. The picture bank sets include the sets of vocabulary words from each of the adapted books within the “Mouse Goes to School Bundle of Books.” Categories of picture vocabulary include snack foods, recess activities, recess equipment, class jobs, school supplies, and things we see at school.

Students who have a stronger grasp of sight words can move on to the “Back to School Sight Word Sentence Builders” to build a sentence using sets of sight words to form the phrase and add a picture to complete the sentence. The pictures also correspond to the adapted books and the overall theme of Mouse Goes to School.

Fine Motor Activities

Developing fine motor skills are important to build independence across so many daily routines both in and out of school. Students need repetition and ongoing practice to master the fine motor requirements of many school-related tasks. Fine motor skills involving using scissors, pencils, crayons, markers, glue bottles/sticks, to name a few, are critical components of every special education classroom.  Integrating fun theme related fine motor activities provide the ongoing practice students need to successfully build fine motor skills.

 Scissor Skills

Erin Hagey from You AUT-a Know has created a year-long bundle of “Grab and Go Scissors Skills Boxes” that provide a variety of colorful and engaging fine motor activities specific to a monthly theme. The August edition includes eight grab-and-go scissors skills boxes that fit perfectly in plastic pencil boxes. Each box comes with a cover and an instruction card. Bonus sorting mats are included for additional categorization and sorting skill work.

Another fun back to school thematic activity that builds scissors skills is “The September Cut and Paste Fine Motor Sheets” by Alyssa Shanahan from Simply Special Ed. This resource has four levels of differentiation for 18+ back to school vocabulary pictures. Each picture has cutting lines with and without highlights for both color and black and white versions with variations in the type and number of lines to increase difficulty based on student needs.  I have also made the colored versions into an interactive puzzle by laminating and attaching Velcro for students who are not yet using scissors, to facilitate participation from all students.

Art Activities

Theme related art activities are an engaging way to work on vocabulary, fine motor, and following directions.  Gabrielle Dixon of Teaching Special Thinkers has created the “Back to School Easy Art Pack: Adapted Art and Writing Tasks” that include prep plans, picture direction cards, and writing pages for nine back to school art projects. Gabrielle has created each art project with clear teacher directions for prepping and organization options.

Each back to school art project also includes an adapted writing activity with 3 levels of differentiation as well as an editable version. Since writing requires that students be able to read what they are expected to write, meaningful writing tasks can be more challenging to find for students with more extensive learning needs. The “Back to School Easy Art Pack” provides the tools for an interactive and engaging writing task for all beginning writers.

Increase student engagement during adapted art activities with this cute “Bus Craft and Communicate Activity” from Structured Fun Teaching. This simple bus craft activity includes communication boards to support students’ identifying, requesting, and commenting skills e.g. colors, shapes, supplies, all done, I did it.  Patterns are included with shapes to make a school bus.  The art activity can be differentiated by pre-cutting shapes, providing cutting lines, or laminating and adding Velcro to the pieces to create an interactive bus puzzle.  Assessment forms are also included for a quick and easy way to gather student performance data.

Interactive Snacks

Students love to cook in the classroom. Making simple snacks provides the opportunity to work on so many important skills within a highly engaging activity.  Simply Visual has created “Simple Snack Activities with Visual Directions” that are sure to be a hit with your students all year long.  This School Bus Snack Activity is perfect for back to school.

The adorable school bus snack activity includes multiple formats of step by step visual directions, vocabulary cards, sequencing activity, a cut and paste, and written snack review, and more.

I hope you found this back to school post helpful and provides some time-saving resources as you continue to plan for the first few weeks of school. For your convenience, I have included a printable PDF unit overview with the direct link to each resource shared in this post. Happy back to school planning…