All About Me with Picture Icons
With the school year in full effect and it being a day away from November, new students are always on the back of my mind. I want students who start in the middle of the school year to feel as welcomed into my classroom as the students did that I started the school year with. Yet, that means I need to be prepared and ready to go with resources and tools for students who move into my classroom too.
That’s why I decided to create this picture icon All About Me worksheet. When it comes to extensive support need students, they may not be able to verbally tell me all of the things they want to, so picture icons can save the day while we are still learning about each other.
Available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here: link
Going into my 6th year teaching special education, I’ve also learned that sign language may not be needed for a lot of nonverbal students but it sure does help with buy-in when they get to do fun hand movements to connect the meanings of words. So I decided to change up how I use some of my pecs by including sign language for a lot of my students. As you can see on the worksheet above instead of using the typical eyeballs for “I” or a person pointing to themselves I changed it to include the ASL sign for I. I actually have started to like this better because it clearly connects to the letter I instead of eyeballs which can be confusing for some students.
Then there’s of course the picture icons, which are always my favorite part!
Available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here: link
For this picture icon All About Me I wanted to offer a variety of topics for students to choose from like: drinks, sports, vehicles, animals, and foods. This can also be super helpful to the teacher/staff too by seeing if the student is only gravitating towards one or two categories or knows what all of the items are.
This All About Me is great for the beginning of the year but also to have printed/laminated and ready to go on hand for new students that may pop in without your knowledge. I have been there when a brand new student with language needs starts and I had no idea they were even coming so having a few things on hand to keep the day on track can be super helpful.
You can find all of these resources on my teachers pay teachers by using this link.
I hope this gave you some ideas of how to work with brand new students in the middle of the year and until next time,
Happy Learning :)