Have you worked in a Special Education classroom? If you have, you know visual schedules are a staple in the classroom. Students and staff refer to them throughout the day and they really help set the structure in the classroom. Cues are essential when working with a visual schedule. Students need to know when to check their schedule and transition to a new activity. But I want to let you in on a little secret. I never use the cue “Check schedule” in my classroom. Say what?
Why I don’t use the cue “Check Schedule”
I have 2 HUGE reasons I don’t use this visual schedule cue in my classroom. It’s not naturalistic and it doesn’t encourage problem solving.
First, when I’m telling students to check schedules, it’s not something that would cue them in the natural environment. I don’t know about you, but when I’m out and about, I don’t hear people telling one another to check their schedule throughout the day. On the other hand, I do hear people using language to terminate activities and transition between activities.
Second, it doesn’t promote problem solving. When we terminate or transition between activities, if we tell a student to check their schedule we’re telling them exactly what to do. When we use alternative cues, we provide our students a chance to solve problems and figure out the next activity throughout their day. This is a great building block when we’re talking about independence, too.
What visual schedule cues do I use instead?
Ok, so even if I don’t use the cue “check schedule”, my students still need a cue to transition between activities in the classroom. Here are some of the alternative cues we use and why:
- “All done (activity).” – This is a natural cue. We state that we’re all done or finished with activities all the time. Had enough dinner? I don’t hear people saying they need to check their schedule. I do hear them saying “I’m finished”.
- Timers – Are you really a special education teacher if you don’t have a deep love of timers? Timers are a great cue for transitioning in the classroom. When the timer sounds, students transition. Easy peasy.
What if those verbal cues aren’t enough? I’ll pair them with a transition item. Providing the extra support with prompting is a great way to cue students. Once we start to generalize the language we’re using in the classroom, we can fade out the transition icons and rely on verbal cues.
