Speed Writing- Changing it up!
So, I don’t know about you, but I know my kids get bored of the same time every day. While students with autism need routine and structure within their day, it is okay to change up the activities within the structured work center to add some excitement! So today we changed up our writing center, and we had a BLAST!
I have multiple sets of these writing flashcards. I found these somewhere for free online (sorry I don’t remember where otherwise I’d link it!). I simply highlighted the tracing lines so that it was easier for my students to see. Then I laminated the flashcards and cut them out.
Since we spend EVERY day working on letter formation, spelling and writing I decided today we would focus on SPEED. Okay, yes, speed. I know most of you are thinking who cares about speed? Of course the first priority is proper letter formation and spelling, however every once in a while I think it’s just fine to switch it up to make it fun. Today I gave each student a stack of writing flash cards and I started the timer. They went through each letter of the alphabet as fast as they could. We did this several times and each time they tried to “beat” their own time. For my students that are not working on tracing, I timed them writing the entire alphabet on a piece of paper. My writing center was full of cheering, giggling, laughing, on task behaviors and WRITING.
So in short, yes, we focus on proper letter formation. But if it takes a little bit of sloppy writing to make it fun and competitive every once in a while, I figure why not? I already had my students asking me if we could do it again tomorrow. Can you guess what my answer was? I told them if they work hard on their writing all next week, we can do it again on Friday! I love it….motivating kids on their writing by rewarding them with WRITING!
Tomorrow we are going to do SPEED math at the math center to see if it has the same affect 🙂 More to come about that later….
