Picture Schedule

I have been in quite a few preschool classrooms and honestly the first thing that I look for in a classroom is a visual schedule.  If I find it posted, I always say to the teacher- I love your schedule!  This is an excellent visual cue that can help students of many different ages.  In the autistic support classroom, students often live by that schedule and if you stray from it they will be quick to note the difference.  At the preschool level, a good deal of teachers think that students are unaware of the schedule or they don't care.   That might be true in a very small percentage of students but for most kids, they really want to know what is coming next in the schedule and what to expect throughout the school day.  Even if your routine is the same, every single day, preschoolers love to see it it posted.   I also use visual schedules to assist with maintaining appropriate behaviors.  Take this scenario, Johnny complains while doing table top activities that he really does not want to finish his work.  4 year old Johnny can't see an end to this activity, it just seems to him that it is boring and so long.  The teacher walks over to the schedule and points to the activity after table top activities, it is play time.  She asks Johnny to just hang on a little bit longer and then it will be play time.  He hears it from the teacher and he sees it on the schedule.  If you want to reward a child, let them know where on the schedule they could have a treat or play with a certain toy.

Here is an example of a preschool schedule that also looks like a clock

Here is another example of the schedule.  The teacher is using a clothespin to mark the current activity.