Visual Schedules to Support Classroom Management

As a Tool for the Whole Class or Individuals,

      a Visual Schedule Supports Success

Visual schedules are one of the most effective tools to facilitate transitioning from one activity to the next. Often, young children with severe enough disabilities that they have little expressive language will have difficulty with transitions, because they don't actually understand them. Certainly, all children, when they are young, struggle with understanding the temporal, specifically the lapse of time, but for children with little language time is an abstraction they have absolutely not way to understand. Visual schedules can introduce children to the notion of "First this, and then this . . . , " the notion that activities come in sequences and that you can know what events occur in those sequences.

Prior Knowledge

It helps if you start pairing pictures to events or objects in the classroom. If you are using a picture communication system, your children will already have an understanding of the symbols. If not, there are two fronts to attack the symbols:

1. Use picture symbols around the classroom to identify objects that are in common use. Place the picture symbol for scissors on the container where the scissors are kept, or place the symbol for pencil near the pencil sharpener.
2. Teach the children who are the least familiar or most challenged with the use of symbols to communicate, how to use the picture symbols. This will require a discrete trial program that teaches your students to discriminate between pictures symbols, or to match a symbol to a three dimensional object. (i.e. "Put the picture with the pencil, Johnny.")

Picture Symbols

The first step of Picture Exchange training is to teach your student to match a picture to the object itself, or two dimensional to three dimensional matching. Two sets of pictures symbols that you may have access to are Pogo Boards, or Board Maker. Pogo Boards is a web based program that you can access from your home. (I did in for the illustration above.) Board Maker requires that you purchase a program (rather than a subscription as in Pogo Boards) from Mayer-Johnson, the publisher. You need to have a disk with the artwork on it in order to create your picture symbols.
For children with language, who don't need the picture symbols in order to understand language, the picture symbols can serve the same purpose as a "rebus ." Poor readers will still understand that the symbol stands for something, in the case of picture schedules, that is about to happen next.

Create Your Picture Schedule.

Create the picture schedules you will use either to serve the needs of individual students (if you have students who could read a list, and don't require pictures,) or that will be understandable by the student with the weakest receptive communication. For students who are not quite getting the whole "symbol" thing, you might want to start them with a schedule created from photographs of the things, photographs you can either take with a smart phone or digital camera and quickly print on cardstock and make up as laminated picture symbols. A great source for these pictures would be Google Images, which snag images from the web and provide them for free to end users like teachers, who will not be selling the images for a profit.
Pairing Putting words on the cards (as I did with my sample) will start students with receptive language to begin to associate the words with the pictures. Some students on the autism spectrum will actually begin to read words before they are creating independent language (expressive language.)  

Schedules for the Whole Class:

Picture schedules can become part of your whole class routine, especially if you have several students with lower function who stress over transitions. Knowing that "first you do . . .then you do" is part of daily routines, it will give students a sense of safety and help them understand. You could create your schedule in several ways:

• In a pocket chart. If you are introducing reading skills, a pocket chart will support left to right ordering. Make the cards for your schedule for the day and keep them in a card file. Pull the cards for a particular day, and place them with your students in the pocket chart together, and talk about what you do on Wednesday, or Thursday, etc.
• Schedule Strip This may mimic what your students have on their desks. On a long, narrow piece of poster board, place a strip of velco, male or female-but be sure that your create all the places this will rest in the same way. Place the schedule on the strip, top to bottom, and have students remove the pictures as you complete each activity.
• Clear plastic food storage bags Mount the storage bags on a board, with a row for the morning and a row for the afternoon. Glue a clock face under the spot where you will place each activity card, where you can use a dry erase marker to put the hands on your clocks. Laminate the board before you mount the bags. Put a card for each activity in the bags, and have students remove them as you complete the schedule.

Schedules for Individual Students

Some students have more difficulty than others with transitions, especially students with Autism Spectrum Disorders, and need to feel some control over time. Creating a schedule just for them will give them a sense of control. You may also add in some "choice" spots on individual schedules to make them work with your reinforcement system, either a visual schedule or a token board. There are several ways to make this schedule

• A Schedule Folder: This works well for individual children who need to have something in hand in order to be successful. Place Velcro on the pictures as well as on the outside of the folder. Either place Velcro, or attach a quart zippered storage bag to the back of the folder. Place with the child the schedule for the morning, and have the child remove and move the pictures for each event.
• A Schedule Strip: This would work well if you are modeling the schedule strip for the whole class. Then you can call attention to your students and model removing the activity from the strip. Be sure your students have a zippered bag or pencil box to place them in when they finish.
• A Flip Book: Laminate and punch a hole in the top left corner of each picture card. Place them in the order. You want a "cover card" that is different or bigger, perhaps with a picture of the students and the title "Jonathon's Schedule." Place this where the student can see it, and have him or her flip each activity they complete to the back. It also makes it possible for you to review the schedule with the student, one page at a time.

Use Your Schedules!

Use the schedule consistently and model for your staff how you want the schedule used. If you have an easy going group, you may not need to be so much a stickler, but for students who get anxious, it provides consistent structure. It is even an effective method for teaching students to be more flexible. If you have a special event like an assembly, you can talk about how you need to take an activity out of your schedule to make room for the "something special" that you will be doing with the other students at your school!