
Resources are provided with this practice
Summary
Visual schedules show students the sequence of activities or events that will happen over a certain amount of time.
Students can see where these activities take place and when they will happen. Seeing the activities helps students to understand what they will be doing and reassures them about what will be coming next.
When creating a visual schedule:
- choose whether to use words, pictures, or a combination of both, depending on each student’s level of understanding and their reading ability
- consider the appropriate number of activities to include, e.g. if some of your students can only process two or three activities at a time, do not include a daily timetable showing all the activities for the day.
This practice will help students to
understand the routine
work independently
understand changes
This practice will help teachers to
provide positive feedback because the student is on task more often
keep the lesson on track
use fewer verbal prompts to have students transition between tasks
This practice is from the core research project
Reviews
This system works really well but it takes time and reflection to create and establish a system tailored to the needs of your students. My greatest difficulty was feeling overwhelmed by the need to constantly monitor class behaviour and application to assigned tasks at the same time as teaching small groups or conferencing with individual students. This occasionally distracted me from maintaining the visual schedule for the entire school year.
19 Jun 2020