Task Boxes

I can't believe it has been about two years since I last posted about my journey in education. I started this blog as I was starting my student teaching in Jamaica. Check out the explanation of the name here: https://outofmanyoneeducation.blogspot.com/2018/01/out-of-many-one-education-explained.html

Life has been busy, crazy, and wonderful. I am now at Butler Middle School in Waukesha as a special education teacher. I primarily work with students with autism and ID, which has really shaped my journey in education.

I have the opportunity to work with some amazing students who challenge me every day and I want to share new ideas/projects/thoughts I have on what I am doing with my students and the 'why' behind what I do.

Most recently I am super excited about task boxes. I have been struggling with new and different ways to engage my students in completing tasks related to life skills, fine motor, and sorting. When I was at GLS in college for a field experience the teacher I worked with had a whole wall dedicated to these types of boxes.

This weekend, my mom and I took on the dollar store to start to build my own library of task boxes. Some of the items we found included:

Plastic tupperware with lids (different sizes- some clip-on tops others with screw-on tops)
Small open baskets
Laundry baskets
Small plastic dinosaurs
Small plastic horses
Glass beads
Cotton balls
Rubber balls
Silverware and a silverware tray
Serving spoons
Tongs

I then took to building the boxes with different tasks in mind like sorting by colors or objects, scooping or picking up objects, sorting different items.

Once they were built, I started thinking about how I was going to show staff and kids how to use these in the most efficient and consistent way. I thought the best way to model for both would be to video the task being done that way everyone can reference it.

I then uploaded them to YouTube and made a QR code for them (we are 1:1 with iPads) so they could scan the code, see how to do it, and then do it! I also was able to show how to use the same materials in the box to increase or decrease difficulty.

I also purposely limited my language to the description of the box and "all done" as a lot of language is usually not helpful for my students who do better with non-verbal cues.

I tried to add extra supports in for tasks that I thought would be very difficult including the bean measuring box by adding in visual cues on the index card and the measuring card itself for the kids to match. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkkqiC0Ox-c&list=PLKC6uLtgmu0sSmOEQ1k7tTyD3pEtnqgFW

I took pictures of everything so it was easily visible (see more pictures at the end) and TA-DA-- a few hours later my library was started.

I am more than happy to share what I have with anyone who wants to start their own! I have the pictures for the different boxes as well as the document I used with the QR codes to the videos below!