Neurodiversity Affirming Practices

A highly visual, structured summer safety lesson designed for students with special needs and lower cognitive abilities, focusing on outdoor play and water safety rules through interactive sorting and clear visual cues.

A sensory-friendly class rotation framework containing visual schedules and portable schedule cards to help students navigate activity transitions with confidence.

An IEP progress assessment bundle designed for a 3rd-grade student working on literal comprehension and complete-sentence responses using sentence frames. Includes three 15-question worksheets across literary and informational passages, along with a comprehensive teacher tracking guide.

Students practice making independent choices, expressing preferences, and setting boundaries (saying "yes" or "no") using structured choice boards, tactile sorting mats, and interactive role-play.

Students practice identifying when they need help, who to ask (teachers, peers, or helpers), and how to communicate that need using visual phrase cards and guided collaborative practice.

Students learn to recognize and communicate physical and emotional states (like tired, hungry, overwhelmed, or ready to learn) using simple gestures, vocalizations, or visual symbol cards.

A 4-week space explorer themed morning meeting series for middle school ESY scholars with disabilities. Led by Commander Sosnoff, it covers Mars Rover, Asteroid Navigation, Saturn Rings, and Nebula sectors with calendar ship logs, cosmic energy checks, stellar affirmations, and turn-and-talk communication prompts.

Introduces early 3-digit numbers (100-120), visual skip-counting (2s, 5s, 10s) using constellation maps, and ordering cosmic objects to build sequential logic.

Focuses on identifying double-digit numbers (10-99), representing them using ten-frames and printable base-ten icons, and writing numbers in expanded place value charts (tens and ones) with clear physical boundaries.

Covers single-digit subtraction (1-9) with cosmic countdowns, crossing-out stars or rocket fuel cells, embedded touch-points for backwards counting, and structured workspace templates.

Focuses on single-digit addition (1-9) using embedded touch-point numbers, pictorial representations of spaceships and stars, a persistent 1-20 number path, and large guided workspace boxes for physical alignment.

Week 2 focuses on mastering whole-number regrouping and multi-column carrying in the context of starship cargo inventories. Students use base-10 blocks to bundle ones into tens and tens into hundreds, bridging visual modeling directly to standard vertical algorithms.

Week 3 of the Kitchen Math Masters unit. Focuses on kitchen timers, elapsed time, adjusting cook times, understanding food label servings, and conducting a mock cafe simulation.

Week 2 of the Kitchen Math Masters unit. Focuses on money identification, estimation via the Dollar Up method, ingredient budgeting, and simple subtraction for calculating change.

Week 1 of the Kitchen Math Masters unit. Focuses on physical measurement tools, identifying whole and fractional volumes, and simple doubling/halving using visual cooking supports.

Week 4 focuses on standard algorithm decimal addition and subtraction, multi-step problem consolidation, and direct assessment of skills to confirm crew flight readiness.

Week 3 focuses on multi-step additive reasoning, decimal subtraction, and aligning coordinates using star charts and compass tools to plan flight vectors for the fleet.

Week 2 focuses on decimal addition and subtraction with and without regrouping, using visual decimal grids and standard plastic base-10 blocks to represent tenths and hundredths in solar charging grid scenarios.

Week 1 focuses on deepening place value understanding and multi-step addition of decimals and whole numbers in space grid systems. Students practice regrouping tenths and wholes, balancing battery loads, and tracking fuel payload readings.