I love my independent work task station! I think it's so important for our students to be able to complete a task independently!!! Disclaimer: I call my station TEACCH tasks, although I haven't been officially trained on the TEACCH program (it's on my bucket list 😊). If you are unfamiliar with TEACCH, you can read more about it here.
This is my independent work task station. I am extremely limited on space in my classroom so I have been unable to use the traditional plastic shoe box storage system that you see in a lot of SPED classrooms. Instead, I use a cube shelf, cube bins and pencil pouches.
I have labeled each of my bins with the tasks that are inside. All tasks in bin 1 are simple motor tasks, bin 2 is sorting and matching tasks, bin 3 is language arts and bin 4 is math. On top of my shelf are functional/ life skills tasks. I have taped the symbol on each task along with visual directions, so students can easily find the task and know exactly what to do.
Student schedules are set up daily by one of my paras. When it's time for a student to complete the independent task, the student checks his schedule, finds the task that matches the icon on his schedule and completes the task at the work station. When finished, students put the task in the "finished" bin. It's extremely important that students do not take apart the task that they finished for a couple of reasons. First, you want to be able to check that they did it correctly, and second, we want them to see a purpose in completing a task. I don't do work just to immediately undo/redo it and we shouldn't make our students either. After completing the task, students take the icon off of their schedule and place it in a finished pouch. At the end of the day, one of my paras resets all the completed tasks and puts them away.
Here are some of my the independent tasks that I use in my classroom.
Most of my tasks are ones that I have found for free online or created from items at Dollar Tree. If you are looking for task ideas, I highly recommend the "Tasks Galore" books (affiliate link). For more ideas, check out my Work Task board on Pinterest and the Independent Work Tasks in my store. Where do you find ideas for your tasks?
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