Creating Effective Independent Practice Activities for Special Education Students

Independent practice activities play a crucial role in helping special education students build skills, gain confidence, and foster independence. Yet, setting up these activities can be challenging. As a teacher, you are limited in time and often find yourself scrambling to create activities that don't have students calling out, "help!" every five seconds... or students saying, "done!" after five seconds either.

Organized learning materials on a classroom table for independent practice

Why Your Teacher Mindset Matters During Independent Practice

Independent practice is not simply an opportunity for reinforcing academic skills, though it can serve such a purpose. Working with special education students, you feel the frustration of teaching a student a concept 30 times only for it to falter the moment you set away. This is because independent practice requires generalization skills, and that's an entirely new ballgame.

Your students must be taught explicitly how to problem-solve when they don't know how to approach a problem, and you can expect it to take 30, 50, 100+ tries to get it right.

5 Odd Tactics to Increase Independence

Role Play Your Tasks

It's time to put your acting face on. Make yourself the most helpless and dramatic student, refusing to start any task on your own! Have your student be the teacher and gently redirect you.

DON'T Use Consistent Formats

What? I thought we were supposed to do the opposite? Don't students need consistency? Of course! But your students need to learn that content is the same no matter what format it comes in. Take some time to internalize this concept with them. Print the page in a different color. Use a different font. Show your students that new-looking stuff can still contain already-learned skills.

Practice One Skill at a Time

Literally one skill. The sound /t/. Adding 4 to a 1-digit number. Don't assume that your students can complete a skill independently until you've witnessed it yourself!

Have Students Help You Set Up

It's tempting to have the classroom on full display before your students arrive. A beautiful set up papers, materials, organized & set out neatly for work time. But when your students get to be involved in the process, they learn how to execute their own workspace. Then, when you have a busy day, your students will already know how to get themselves started.

Choose Activities with Built In Accountability

Students are the masters of completing tasks efficiently... too efficiently. They start to learn loopholes to the tasks and complete them without actually using the skill in focus. Be sure to choose activities that force students to use that skill. For example, Beyond Basic Math's CVC centers require students to match pictures to the words. The activity won't be complete unless they've read those sounds!

Independent Work is Its Own skill

It comes with its own set of skills and its own challenges. Being capable of completing a skill academically isn't the same as being able to complete it independently.

Here's to a quiet classroom of independent workers!

Charlotte Miller

Beyond Basic Math