I talk a lot about using an IEP work bin system in the classroom. But what kind of resources can you use to put in these work bins? The short answer? Anything as long as it will help a student make progress towards his or her IEP goals.
If you are brand new to IEP work bins, you’ll want to start here to read about what IEP work bins are.
In my shop, I have a plethora of resources you can use to put in IEP work bins, but let’s look at some together.
Resources Teachers Can Put in IEP Work Bins
Worksheets
One thing that is helpful if you have a student who is working on a math skill, or writing skill, and you need a good sample of student work, is a worksheet. Of course only used if that child is able to complete a worksheet, but this is a good way to collect student work samples as needed.
Sorting is an essential skill that students need to learn in their early educational years. The above link will take you to all of the sorting mats I have in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop where I offer sorting mats of ALL subjects – from letters, to seasonal information, colors, shapes, numbers, and even daily living skills and activities.
File Folders can take an activity that would sometimes require cutting, gluing, or writing, and simplifying them for students to use who may not be able to demonstrate those fine motor activities. Creating and using file folders is also a good way for you to reuse the same materials with different students, and from year to year without having to create a whole new activity every year. You can find file folders of ALL kinds in my shop to help students work on spelling, the calendar, math, and errorless learning to help teach students appropriate work habits.
These errorless flash cards provide you with an activity that gives your students a model to practice spelling their Dolch or Fry sight words when writing is a difficult task.
Tracing and/or fine motor tasks tend to be a very important skill that special education students are working on. If you have a worksheet or printed activity, these would be perfect to turn into file folder tasks to use for multiple students, and repeated without having to burn through paper printing them. Or you could use individual worksheets to be able to keep work samples for data collection.
Work Bin Task Cards target a variety of IEP goals and objectives in every subject. You can use these task cards to address subjects such as function of an item, math (literally every math topic you can think of), tracing/fine motor, life skills, matching pictures, colors, shapes, etc.
Step-by-Step Directed Drawings
Add visual motor activities to your classroom and work bins with these step-by-step drawings. Of course you would use these with students who have the motor abilities to draw the pictures given in the directions, but I offer them for different seasons to have as activities to be completed throughout the year. This is a good way to progress monitor towards following step-by-step instructions, as well as see the progression of your students’ drawing abilities throughout the year.
These Task Boxes help target a variety of IEP goals and objectives, just like the Task Cards, but with a higher level of support. These tasks would be good to use with a student who is working on matching picture to picture, or participating in non-preferred tasks for a certain period of time.
Missing Pieces activities can be used to help students with their visual motor skills, teaching them to look at a picture and figure out what is missing, just like a puzzle but with a higher level of support.
Matching Mats & Activity Cards
Matching Mats & Activity Cards are great, low prep tasks for students to complete. They will need to discriminate between different colors and patterns to recreate the patterns on the activity cards. A good work bin task for teaching patterns, matching, and for students who are working on participating in non-preferred work activities for a specific period of time.
You can find these, and a multitude of other resources on my website if you need something for any part of your day/week/month/year.
What are some of your favorite go-to’s for work bin resources? Let us know in the comments! Maybe you’ll spark an idea for another teacher.
