As Flora, like many children with ASC, has difficulty with social interaction and active participation in activities, it is important to plan activities that give Flora the opportunity during the day to interact with other children and take part in activities.
To achieve this, we created the Morning Circle.
The Morning Circle is the first activity of the day and gives Flora the opportunity to interact with her peers and the adults in the class, to develop a sense of belonging to a group, to participate in a group activity and also to prepare for the day.
It is important that the Morning Circle has the same structure every day so that Flora can anticipate what will happen during the activity, consolidate the vocabulary related to the days of the week, the weather, the timetable for the day and share her attention with her peers (joint attention).
Before the Morning Circle starts it is important to have the classroom set up in such a way so that after the students have checked their visual timetable (more information can be found here), they go to the part of the classroom where the Morning Circle takes place and sit in a semi-circle around the adult.
1. Who is in class today?
It is important to plan an activity that gives Flora and her peers the opportunity to interact with each other and develop a sense of belonging to the same class.
The adult has pictures of all the students and adults in the class. The adult is displaying the photos of the members of the class one by one and they decide who is at school and who is at home. Here we can encourage children to choose another student or adult they want to say hello to.
2. The days of the week.
With the use of symbols the adult is naming the day of the week. In order to encourage participation and to achieve sensory learning of the days, we have associated each day with a different smell and colour, for example, Monday smells like cinnamon and the colour is red. After the adult has named the day, students take turns to smell the cinnamon.
3. The weather
After finding out what day it is, we look at the weather. In addition to the symbols that include vocabulary related to the weather, it is important to use objects. In this way, students gradually associate the weather with the relevant object they need. For example, when it rains I hold an umbrella.
Gradually, we can enrich this section of the activity, with students identifying what the weather is that day and taking turns to use the objects.
4. The timetable
Once we have completed the weather, it is important to show students what will follow for the rest of the day. This way, they can anticipate what will happen and avoid any tension caused by the uncertainty of what will happen later. More information about the Morning Circle can be found here.
Each student has different needs, which it is important to take into consideration when we are planning our activities so that we can differentiate them appropriately (more information, you can find here) .
If you are interested in planning the Morning Circle, you can contact us at florastophasma@gmail.com to share ideas and advice.
We will share more tips and activities in the future, so keep visiting us.
We are looking forward to hearing your views and experiences.
You can email us at florastophasma@gmail.com.
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