Make lesson planning a bit easier on yourself by including activities that you repeat every day.  At first this might sound boring for the students, but if you keep reading, I’ll explain how these activities are same in structure but different each day.  Not to mention – repeating similar lessons also provides students with much-needed structure in their schedules.

1. Life Skills Daily Warm Up

For students that I notice that settle in quickly on a regular basis, I might add in a little easy independent work for them to do during our morning routine.  For the independent work during a morning routine, I try to pick materials that are going to be related to the morning meeting, such as calendars, weather, or personal information.  The keyword here is “INDEPENDENT”.  Make sure you give them something they are able to complete independently or with very little help.

Here’s a differentiated (3 levels) Life Skills Daily Warm Up packet I have for each student.  Each day during independent work they can work on calendar skills (yesterday was, today is, tomorrow will be, month, day, weather), functional vocabulary, temperature, telling time, money/math, reading comprehension and community signs!  It’s a nice little warm up to hit each subject without overwhelming the student. Check it out here on Teachers Pay Teachers.  or here on Spedadulting.com.

2. Morning Meeting

You can review things like yesterday, today and tomorrow, today’s date, and important dates such as birthdays and field trips.  Depending on your students, it may suffice to just do a group power point presentation, while for others, it may be beneficial to include an adapted task or worksheet to go along with it! Check out these Morning Meeting worksheets HERE or on TPT.

This activity can be as simple as reviewing the season, if it is sunny, cloudy, raining, snowing…etc and stating if it is hold or cold temperature.  Take it up another level and use a website such as Weather.com to look at an actual weather forecast and review the high and low temp for the day, humidity, wind…etc.  This is a great opportunity to fill in a thermometer, discuss the type of clothing you would wear according to the weather, or the types of activities you can or can’t do according to the weather.

In my opinion, this is such an important activity for several reasons.  Students should learn to advocate for themselves by expressing how they feel, and it gives you & your staff a good gauge on how your student is feeling.  Whether they are tired, sick, hungry, frustrated…etc, it is times like these that your students will need your support!  When they express how the feel, it might also change how you structure their day.  This can be done as a group activity, but often times can be done as a private response, because some students may not feel comfortable sharing how they feel in front of the whole class – which is totally fine!

What I Did Yesterday, What I Ate for Breakfast, or What I ate for dinner.

This activity is all about getting students to work on their social skills as well as recalling information.  I also like asking the students what they ate for breakfast so that I can gauge if they ate breakfast and if they are hungry.  It may be a hard task for students to recall information accurately, so to help with this situation, it is a great idea to send “homework” that parents can help fill out what a student did or ate the day before or over the weekend.  The same goes with this activity as with the “How I Feel” activity.  Be aware of if it may be sensitive for some students to discuss what they did over the weekend.  Instead you can do activities that prompt students to think of what they would like to do over the weekend.

Read more about a full morning routine here.

3. National Day Comprehension

You can find out what national day it is on Nationaldaycalendar.com as well as some facts and history for this day.  Most celebrations are a recipe, type of job, holiday, or something silly. Expand on this activity by watching a short video on the celebration day (tons on YouTube).  After this activity, you can do a writing activity, discussion, or comprehension worksheet.

4. Recipe Comprehension

If you do National Day (as mentioned in the previous slide), there is usually a food celebration each day. Expand on this activity by watching a recipe video on the recipe (tons on YouTube) or you can look up a recipe through Google, then answer comprehension questions about the recipe.  Students can answer questions about utensils, appliances, measurements, ingredients, vote if they like the recipe and so on.  Many students love food so this is a highly motivating activity!

5. Poll/Question of the Day

Here’s a simple and fun activity that usually everyone enjoys participating in.  In its simplest form, you can put two images up on the board and ask students to vote for which one the like better (eg. MnM’s or Skittles), extend conversations about it.  If you put up a variety of images, you can ask students to pick their favorite option (eg. What do you want to cook for our cooking lesson this week).  Not only does this give you an opportunity to learn your students’ learning styles, you also get the opportunity to know their interests and promote socialization.

Check out my Vocation Question of the Day HERE or on TPT, and Independent Living Question of the Day HERE or on TPT for a whole years worth of visual questions!  Would you Rather questions are also a fun preference/discussion starter activity to do with students.  Check out the Would You Rather Indepedent Living & Vocational bundle HERE or on TPT.

6. Current Events Comprehension

This is a great way to cover a bit of social studies, history, geography, science and more! Keep students informed on what is happening in the world (especially now more than ever).   Watch a short segment or read a news article together then fill out a current events comprehension worksheet you can get HERE or on TPT!

• Click on the post below to see a list of great websites to use:

  

7. End of Day Reflection

Rather than the teacher filling out communication books each day, I have the students do it with me.  We fill out a portion of our end of day communication worksheet together as a group using Kami App, and then students fill out the remainder on a worksheet answering questions like what services they had, what they ate for lunch, how they felt that day…etc that goes home for parents to see. Parents enjoy sparking discussions with their child on recalling what happened during their day.

Thanks for reading!

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