Special education teachers have a case load of students for whom they are responsible for teaching, modifying assignments, collecting data and meeting Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals for. This involves the typical teacher jobs of lesson planning, grading and creating assignments as well as the additional jobs of modifying work and data collection. Keeping everything organized is important and can be done easily.
Organizing Lesson Plans and Modified Work
Special educators write their own specialized lesson plans for individual instruction with students, as well as modify assignments for other teachers that the student sees throughout the day. Keeping everything in order and easily accessible is important. One method of organization for lesson plans is a pocket folder. One folder for each subject will keep all the lessons, modified worksheets and plain scrap paper easily accessible for use throughout the day. Any work that the students completes during the day can also be filed right back in the same pocket folder for easy finding when the teacher gets a moment to grade and record data.
The special educator can also create a folder for each teacher that she modifies work for. This is an easy way to communicate back and forth with every teacher that the student has. The regular education teacher can place any worksheets, tests or other assignments that need to be modified into the folder to give to the special education teacher, who can then return the folder with the modified work. This same folder can include any completed work that the special education teacher needs back for data collection purposes.
Organization for Data Collection
At the beginning of the year and after each IEP meeting, the special educator needs to review the goals and objectives that the student's IEP lists and create a data sheet. Each student should get his own data collection sheet, and if the student has goals in more than one subject area, each subject should get its own data sheet.
Having these data sheets collected together in a three ring binder with tabs for each student can be a helpful way to stay organized. In this same binder, a pocket folder behind each student tab can provide an easy way to save samples of student work to back up the data collected. The teacher should take a few minutes to update the data sheets each day, so that it is easy to see what objectives need to be addressed and prevent a build up of data to be entered.
Because the special education teacher has a lot of her plate to keep her busy each day, she must have an effective means of organization. Coming up with a strategy that keeps lessons, modified assignments and data collection organized will help her planning time be more effective.
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