Mastering the Special Education Schedule (One Tetris Piece at a Time)

Scheduling in special education isn’t for the faint of heart! Whether you’re leading a resource room program, a self-contained classroom, or managing inclusion services across multiple grades, you’ve probably felt like you were playing an endless game of Tetris...trying your hardest to make all the pieces fit without leaving gaps or losing a part of your soul.

In this episode, I’m breaking down three distinct approaches:

Part 1: Scheduling for a Resource Room

We’ll dig into a practical, step-by-step method for building a workable resource room schedule. You’ll learn how to:

• Use Google Sheets in 5-minute increments for precision and flexibility
• Add all staff names across the top so you can visually track who’s doing what, when
• Assign a unique color code for each para, subject, recess/lunch duty, and transition for instant clarity
• Map out student service minutes straight from their IEPs using color-coded sticky notes, so you can see exactly where those minutes fit best before locking anything in
• Adjust your plan for inevitable overlaps, push-ins, or schedule conflicts

Part 2: Scheduling in a Self-Contained Program

When your students are with you all day, the challenge shifts from fitting them into other schedules to structuring a daily flow that supports learning and regulation. We’ll cover how to:

• “Anchor” your day by first plugging in non-negotiables like arrival, lunch, recess, specials, and dismissal
• Place your most demanding academic lessons during peak alertness times, and save hands-on or lower-energy activities for after lunch or late afternoon
• Run smooth small group rotations with paras leading activities or supervising independent work
• Schedule sensory and movement breaks proactively, not just reactively
• Build in life skills, social skills, and transition time as intentional parts of the schedule
• Use color-coding to quickly read the master schedule at a glance
• Teach the schedule to your students so it becomes a predictable part of their day

Part 3: Scheduling for a Full Inclusion Program

If your special education program is fully inclusion-based, scheduling is more about strategically embedding support into the general education environment. You’ll discover how to:

• Start by collecting all general education class schedules across the grades you serve
• Layer in your students’ IEP minutes so you can match support to the most critical times of instruction (rather than spreading minutes too thin)
• Coordinate with general education teachers to determine when you’ll push in, co-teach, or provide targeted small group support in the classroom
• Factor in paraprofessional coverage so your staff are placed where they’re most needed without overlapping unnecessarily
• Plan for high-need transition times like arrival, dismissal, and lunch to ensure students are supported during those unstructured moments
• Keep a flexible mindset—your inclusion schedule will likely shift frequently at the start of the year as you learn student needs and teacher expectations

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a clear framework for making the most of your time—without feeling like the pieces are constantly falling too fast. The key isn’t creating a “perfect” sch

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