Independent workboxes are kind of the meat of my AU classroom. During workbox time, I can observe whether my students have truly mastered skills like I think they have and it gives my students the opportunity to gain some independence with following a system/to-do list without any teacher guidance or prompting.
After posting a picture of my workbox station on Instagram, I had a lot of people ask for how I set these up. Now that I have finally gotten around to it, I hope it can help some of you!

Workbox shelves / I organize these by type of skill (I.e. yellow – sorting by color, shape, size, or object); green – math; red – literacy; orange – science/SS; blue – goal specific that don’t fit in other categories. The pencil bags on the left are clothespin tasks, matching tasks, fine motor tasks, etc. On the other shelf (not shown) is where I hold all my put in tasks and file folder tasks. 

Each box has two matching cards – one with Velcro attached. I purchased these boxes at Michael’s during the summer when they go on sale for a dollar! They work perfectly for workboxes!

How I label the task in the box for easy located when setting up a student’s work system 🙂 
Sorry it’s upside down! This is a work system for my students that complete a traditional left to right work system at a desk. For some of my older students, they can use the cards from their bags below to match up to retrieve the boxes from the shelf and they are able to complete them at the table. 

I just updated some of the tasks and I thought I’d share. I know I’m always scouring Pinterest for ideas myself!
Puzzle sensory tasks!
Sort by color
Sort hard/soft real objects 
Transportation sort by object
Shape matching – from a Lakeshore Math Center
Another transportation sort by object
Teddy bear big/little sort
Rhyming words sort (inspired by The Autism Helper)
Hard/soft picture sort
Living/non living picture sort
Heavy/light picture sort 
Sort by shape (different sizes)
Sort by color (different shapes)
Lakeshore beginning sound center turned into a workbox using Velcro! 
Sorting different coins 
Hope these gave you some ideas 🙂 
Everything I used I already had laying around the classroom.
It’s amazing how much you can do with math manipulatives! 
Have a good Monday OFF!! 🙂

4 Comments

Kim @ Mrs. Hs Resource Room · January 20, 2014 at 12:53 am

These are some wonderful work box tasks and the organization…A+! 🙂
Kim
Mrs. H’s Resource Room

Kate · January 22, 2014 at 1:20 am

I am your newest follower. Thanks for sharing your organization system (I am going to have keep my eyes open for the boxes at Michaels). I just started to make work box tasks as I am getting more and more students with autism in my ECSE classroom. Thanks for sharing!
Kate
Fun in ECSE

Anonymous · March 2, 2014 at 12:25 am

do you have an aide that sits with the student doing this to be sure the child understands, complete the work, etc.? how often do you rotate the workboxes throughout the week or month? how does a child know which box to get out or do you put it on their desk? love this system.

    Mrs. Dixon · March 2, 2014 at 3:41 pm

    Yes, when we do our work rotations in the afternoon, a TA runs this station and prepares the workboxes for each student. For my older students, we place the shape cards on the velcro strip on the desk for them to retrieve the activities. For our younger kiddos, he places the boxes on a small shelf to the left and they do the traditional left to right work system. He monitors to ensure they are doing the activities correctly; however, they are all completing mastered tasks so they are supposed to be able to do the activities with complete independence. I will be writing about our system in better detail soon in my newest series: A Day In My AU Classroom 🙂

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