Special Ed. Summer Blog Hop: Week 1 Scheduling

I am honored to be a part of the Special Ed. Summer Blog Hop hosted by KinderSpedAdventures.  My blogging buddies and I will be sharing posts with all of you wonderful readers for the next five weeks.  You can find the schedule below:

This week's post is all about SCHEDULING!

 Ok...I've got to come out right here and tell you that scheduling is my nemesis...and it becomes even more difficult when you are a Type B kind of person!  I am Kim Hinton and I do not love making schedules!  Whew!  Now with that off my chest, I can get on with it! :)

No matter how hard it is for me to make a schedule, it must get accomplished.  So, to begin making my schedule and my paraprofessional's schedule, I gather together the essentials:
1.  School Master Schedule (You gotta know when specials, lunch, recess, and all of the academics are taught)
2.  Grade Level Schedules
3.  Student IEPs to ensure all minutes are met

First, I begin making my schedule by checking the IEP minutes for all of my students.  I write down the student's name, resource minutes and subject for resource, coteaching minutes and subject for coteaching.

Next, I ensure that I am able to get in the regular ed classroom for coteaching during (at least part of) reading and math.  *Note: I teach special education for 3 grade levels.  Thankfully, my colleagues have been good about staggering start times of math and reading so that I can get to each grade level. Be a team player, people, it will make your life easier!!*  In my school district, it is considered best practice that if a student has resource  (reading, for example) that they also receive coteaching minutes in the regular classroom.  Makes sense, right?  How can we expect a student that needs additional support (resource support) in an academic area to be able to "survive" in the classroom without supports?  Also, in my district, the students must have access to the general curriculum.  The students must attend general ed. reading/math/writing and resource has to be at a different time and "extra" instruction on top of the general instruction.

Then, I begin fitting my schedule around the master schedule and teacher's daily schedules.  This is the hardest part!  It's like a 1000 piece puzzle and at times I am trying to "bang" one piece of the puzzle into the next, but at the end it all just fits so perfectly.  (Well, until someone moves in and I have to redo the whole darn thing!)

Here is what my schedule looks like (with student names removed of course):

I like to have the time, place/teacher, and student's needs listed on my schedule. On my paraprofessional's schedule I like to include the same 3 columns in addition to a final column outlining the task I expect the to be completed during this time.  I keep this very general so that the schedule can be used throughout the year and not changed every week.

This is an example of my paraprofessional's schedule from last year:

Finally, everyone's schedules are complete and ready to put into use.  Flexibility is the key word, however, because there is always going to be something that needs to be tweaked a little or changed.

Next week, I will be back with this Summer Sped Blog Hop with all you need to know about Classroom Setup!

Hop on over to Ms. P's Specialties for some more advice about scheduling!