Special Education Resources:

Instagram: @diverse.learning.hub

Tiktok: @diverse.learning.hub

Youtube: @diverselearninghub

Animated Social Stories: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

Special Education Resources: 

Instagram: @diverselearninghub 

Tiktok: @diverse.learning.hub 

Animated Social Stories: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

Special Education Resources:

Instagram: @diverse.learning.hub

Tiktok: @diverse.learning.hub

Youtube: @diverselearninghub

Animated Social Stories: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

Special Education Resources:

Instagram: @diverse.learning.hub

Tiktok: @diverse.learning.hub

Youtube: @diverselearninghub

Animated Social Stories: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

Special Education Resources:

Instagram: @diverse.learning.hub

Tiktok: @diverse.learning.hub

Youtube: @diverselearninghub

Animated Social Stories: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

Special Education Resources:

Instagram: @diverse.learning.hub

Tiktok: @diverse.learning.hub

Youtube: @diverselearninghub

Animated Social Stories: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

Special Education Resources:

Instagram: @diverse.learning.hub

Tiktok: @diverse.learning.hub

Youtube: @diverselearninghub

Animated Social Stories: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

Easy tips to create a calm classroom for your students! 

 Tip 1: Good lighting 💡- fluorescent lights can cause your students to break down! Get good lighting for your classroom. 

 Tip 2:  Headphones  🎧 - identify the underlying cause of what is triggering breakdowns and frustration and address the underlying issue.  

Tip 3: Practice Mindfulness 🙏  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MTNoVzgXU&t=13s

Tip 4: Calm Corner! Make a calm corner in your classroom!

 Tip 5: Fidget box 📦 - review social stories to help students understand how to cope with frustration, anger, and anxiety.  Animated social stories designed for kids with autism here 👉 http://www.diverselearninghub.com 

Social Stories 💬 http://www.diverselearninghub.com 

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!

3 tips to get your special education students more engaged and interested in learning  

1. Tip #1: Play to your students interests/strengths Your students or kids likely have one or more interests or passions. As teachers and parents, it's important to get to know these interests and weave them into your teaching. For example, if your student is an amazing artist, instead of just leveraging art as a reward for assignment completion, try to incorporate art into the assignments. For writing assignments, you can have your students use their artistic strengths to draw out a story map for their writing. For math problems, you can encourage your students to make drawings to help them conceptualize the material.  * For other interests such as movies or super heroes, you can find ways to incorporate these into learning as well. For example, if your student loves Star Wars, you can ask math questions with Star Wars themed questions.  

2. Tip #2 Choices to complete assignments  Give your students choices to complete assignments. For example, if you typically have your students demonstrate their understanding in the form of worksheets, you can instead give them options of different ways to demonstrate understanding. Some ideas might be to have them make a video, label a drawing, write a blog post, or make a poster. Give your students the agency to choose the method in which they complete assignments.  

3. Tip #3 Provide instructional content in a variety of ways. In order for your students to be engaged and interested in content, it is important to provide content in a variety of ways. Instead of just asking students to engage with material through reading books, you can give them the option to listen to recordings or the books, watch videos with similar content to the reading, or teach different concepts through song.  

At Diverse Learning Hub, we’ve taken the traditional paper based social stories and transformed them into engaging animated social story videos. We have also now added social story songs. Through this example, you can see how we’ve taken something traditional such as social stories and transformed them into diverse pieces of content for your students to engage with.  I hope you enjoyed these tips! Stay tuned for more!    For more social stories, songs, meditations for kids with autism, check out: http://www.diverselearninghub.com

Easy strategy to help students with autism and special needs complete work who refuse to. 

 Do you have students refusing to complete their work? 

Try this language: First work, Then Play  

Positively reinforce their behavior when they refuse to.  

social stories and tips for autism 👉 http://www.diverselearninghub.com

 About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials.  I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from.  Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!