Sharing my experience in the classroom as a life skills special ed transition teacher by providing resources and solutions for fellow educators
How To Teach: Table Manners
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Importance of Meal Manners
While you may think manners only happen at the ‘dinner table,', meals can happen anywhere. However, regardless of if your student eats at a dinner table, a pop-up tray, on the floor, or at a restaurant high-boy, they need to know what to do at each point...
How To Teach: Packing Skills & Keeping a Wallet or Purse
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Importance of Packing and Wearing or Using a Wallet or Purse
As students become teenagers and young adults, being able to hold their own things shows a level of independence. Holding on to a bag and keeping the bag with them as they move from one environment to the next will allow them to...
How To Teach: Self Advocacy Skills
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Importance of Self Advocacy
Adults advocate naturally constantly throughout their day, we just don’t come right now and announce that we are doing it (however, we really should). Therefore, advocating for yourself is not something that is typically modelled for our students on a...
How To Teach: Cleaning A Room
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Importance of Cleaning a Room
Some people are born with the need to have things clean and orderly and others...just aren’t. However, learning to keep a room clean (like a bed room or dorm room) is a useful skill. Not only will students increase their feeling of accomplishment because it...
How To Teach: Phone Skills
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Importance of Phone Skills
Answering and talking on the phone may be a life line in the case of an emergency. Making a phone call may be necessary to set-up a doctor's appointment. Texting may be the best way to communicate with a manager or supervisor. Phone skills are important for our...
Teaching Life Skills: Washing the Dishes [Special Education]
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Importance of Doing the Dishes
If you eat, you create dirty dishes. Since we all eat, about 3 times a day, we are bound to create at least 10 dirty dishes.It's the skill that can be an independent work task (like after eating a quick lunch) or whole group activity (like during holiday meals...
How To Teach: Laundry Skills
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Importance of Doing Laundry
Washing, drying, and hanging clothes is a mundane chore that will truly never end. Students can greatly increase their self confidence by learning how to sort clothes, start the washer, flip clothes, unload the dryer, and fold and hang. Laundry also incorporates...
How To Teach: Cleaning Skills
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Importance of Learning How to Clean
Cleaning is a great way for students to maintain their own space AND contribute to their home, no matter if they live with family or in the community. Cleaning skills also cross over into just about every vocational job, so it’s a worthy skill for...
How To Teach: Time Management Skills
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Importance of Time Management
Like it or not, being able to manage one’s time is a quality that is often judged. If you are late, then you are lazy, unaware, or unmotivated. If you are early then you are prepared, punctual, and responsible. Being able to manage time is a skill and it...
How To Teach: Problem Solving Skills
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Importance of Problem Solving
If, ‘Ow, looks like we have a problem to solve.’ isn’t a part of your teacher phrases, then consider adding it! An important step to living more independently and holding down a volunteer or competitive job is to be able to identify and solve...
How To Teach: Email Writing and Management
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Importance of Writing an Email
I hear families say over and over again that they wish their child could socialize with their peers in the evenings and on weekends. Teaching students how to email gives them an avenue to communicate with others. A student doesn’t need to be verbal to...
How To Teach: Exercise and Fitness Routines
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Importance of Fitness
P.E. or Gym class may have been a time to relax, to work on social skills with peer buddies, or to get in physical therapy or occupational therapy minutes. When a student’s schedule begins to allow autonomy in their fitness routine, then the activity will have new...
How To Teach: Recreation Leisure Skills
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Importance of Recreation Leisure skills
Humans engage in recreation leisure activities because it makes them feel happy, it reduces stress, and it provides a mental break from other thoughts or tasks. Since these are all good things, we must support our students in being able to find the ...
How To Teach: Internet Safety
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Importance of Digital Citizenship
Regardless of if a student is obsessed with their smartphone and uses all the social media apps or if they have no interest in computers or smartphones, knowing how to handle themselves when they do go online is important to keeping themselves and their money...
How To Teach: Safety Skills
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Importance of Being Safe
The goal is to always be safe and protected from all of life’s disasters. Sadly, that isn’t reality and our students need assistance in knowing how to move forward in different situations.
Helping them to look at a situation and decide what...
How to Teach: Caring For Your Body During a Period (Menstruation)
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Importance of Period and Menstrual Care
Some bodies experience menstruation. Since they do, it’s important to address. While menstruation typically occurs once a month, some students may experience their cycle more or less frequently. Either way, students should know how to care for...
Teaching Life Skills: Nail Care Lesson Plan [Special Education]
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Importance of Nail Care
Nail care can easily be seen as a skill that can be pushed off for another day (or another school year). However, having long, jagged, dirty nails can hinder progress in other personal hygiene goals.
While taking care of your fingernails and toenails isn’t a...
How To Teach: Washing Hair and Shaving
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Importance of Washing Hair and Shaving
Squeaky clean is a good thing! Hands are clean, teeth are clean, body is clean, and hair is also clean! Dirty hair can attract lice and absorb the smells around it, so washing your hair on a regular basis will help to keep those locks smelling fresh and...
How To Teach: Brushing Your Teeth
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Importance of Brushing Teeth
Clean the body, clean the hands, and clean the teeth! There is both a social value in being clean AND a health value in being clean. Therefore, it's important to explicitly teach students how to be clean. Regardless of age, some students will need step-by-step...
How To Teach: Picking and Putting on Clothes
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Importance of Getting Dressed
It is a social norm for humans to put clothes on to keep their body private, to protect it from the weather, to allow it the ability to move as needed, and to serve as a non-verbal cue to others how they can serve you (work uniform). Therefore, knowing WHAT to...
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