My Middle School Autism Classroom Schedule
I am so excited to be able to talk about my middle school autism classroom schedule. I am in a love/hate relationship with schedules, but most days I love them. Over time, I create a bunch of schedules that I use in my classroom and I think it is necessary to have them to keep my classroom running smoothly and keeping everyone (both students and staff) sane!
In this post, I will be sharing a few different autism classroom schedule examples. These are the schedules I use in my middle school classroom. Even if you don’t teach at the middle school level, I know there are some things that you can adapt for your classroom. Some of these you may already use in your classroom and others may help set off a lightbulb telling you that something like that would work in your room too!
My Autism Classroom Schedule for Students
The first schedule for my kiddos with autism I make is my hard core instructional schedule. This has every minute planned for every student. I know you’re thinking, “Wait, she plans out every minute for all these kids? That’s a lot of work!” It is a lot of work but, in my eyes it is totally worth it because when Johnny starts to act up all the the staff has to say to him is you shouldn’t you be working at life skills, point to their schedule, and most of the time they will go right back to what they should be doing. The reason this works so well is because, as we know, students with autism love and rely on schedules and routines. There is no excuse to be off task when they have it right there in front of them showing them what to do.
Normally, students’ names would be at the top of each column. Then, along the side, I have the period times. I teach middle school and some of our day runs in coordination with the bell schedule, like lunch and specials. The schedule is also real time broken into 15-minute increments. I have found 15 minutes works well because most students can at least work for that long. If they can’t, you can build them up to that. If I had fewer students like in past years, I would have worked with some for 30 minutes because they could handle longer instructional time.
This schedule has lots of different components to our day. There is direct instruction time, para work time, and independent work time. I plan to get in more depth about each of these parts in a later post.
My Autism Classroom Schedule for Paras and Teachers
Another schedule I make is the paraprofessional and teacher schedule. Just like the student schedule, there is no question about where each staff member should be at any given time in the day. I even put in breaks for everyone. We all need breaks and down time so this schedule makes sure it happens. We all get what we need and I don’t have to worry about my paras stressing out or missing their downtime. 
Schedule for Independent Work Tasks
Here is the middle school schedule for my kiddos with autism to know which work tasks each student is to complete. This is a lifesaver for the staff. I make this in advance. We train one of the students to learn how to read it, find the velcroed numbers and letters, and place them on the student desk Velcro strips for the student to use during their specified work task time. It is a great reference tool if we want to check what work they might have completed already. We can check to see if anyone skipped work, and see if any kid is assigned the wrong task.
I hope I gave you some things to think about when you are looking into making your autism classroom schedule for your students and staff. It is not a quick task. I think I sat at my computer for 3 hours one day last trying to get them all done. And unfortunately, they will probably change 6 more times before it works for everyone. But when it comes to the classroom functioning efficiently, the schedules make all the difference. If you’d like to learn more about how to begin creating all the autism classroom schedules, checkout Creating a Special Education Classroom Schedule. Just remember that schedules are essential to decreasing problems with both staff and students in the classroom.
