Sometimes it can be easy to get carried away in doing things for our students.  The important thing to remember with life skill or older students is that every moment is a teachable moment!  Rather than doing it for them, teach them how to do it so that they can be as independent as possible!

 

I used to keep a desktop tray at the front of the classroom to have students turn in their finished worksheets.  I then found myself spending precious time separating and filing away the piles of worksheets to keep as work samples.  Since I have an adult transition classroom, I’m always trying to find ways to turn each moment into a teachable moment, after all, filing is a common workplace skills to have.   It is also important to have organizational skills at home in order to be independent!

 

Now when I have my students turn in their work, they file the paper by themselves, doing all of the work for me!  For my lower functioning students, identifying the correct name and putting the worksheet in the correct spot can be a great task to practice daily.  For my higher functioning students, I have extra manila folders filed within their name folder that identifies a subject or a specific IEP goal.  Now that’s killing two birds with one stone!  Come IEP or progress report time, you have all of your work samples organized and filed away, or at the end of the year you can easily put together a student portfolio.