Special Needs Grades 3/4/5

During my elementary student teaching I had the opportunity to work with several self-contained special needs classes. For most of my placement I observed these classes, however, once I became more comfortable with the students and their 1 on 1’s, my cooperating teacher decided it was time for me to take over some of these classes as well. 

We talked a lot about different ideas, but eventually settled on doing something tactile. What I wound up doing was a “Texture Box”. Essentially it is an egg carton with objects that have different textures inside of it. My cooperating teacher has worked extensively with these students and has done this lesson in the past with other classes, so she was able to give me a lot of great advice on this.

I had each student identify the texture of the object: “bumpy, fluffy, rough” and then glue the object into the box. After the object was glued, an accompanying slip of paper was then put into the box with the texture written on it. Students then used those slips of paper to locate the textures within the box. Once they were done, the students could then take their boxes back to their regular classrooms with them to use as a texture game later on. 

Overall this was an extremely successful lesson. We even had a breakthrough with one student in particular who has very limited speech - he was able to verbally identify every texture in his box! It was such a rewarding moment, both for him and myself. He was so proud of himself! I am looking forward to working more with special needs students in the future!