Sharing my experience in the classroom as a life skills special education transition teacher and providing resources and solutions for fellow educators.
Creating Teaching and Student Schedules: What to Consider
Jul 01, 2022
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Create schedule
It’s the thing that lingers on your to-do list and weighs on you all summer because it is NEVER just a one-and-done sort of thing. The first student schedule draft will take you a few hours and you’ll hesitate to even remove the task from your to-do...
How You Can Help Families Prepare to Access Benefits Over Summer Break
May 17, 2022
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Let me preface this by saying that YOU won’t be doing any work for your well earned summer break. Instead, you’ll give your families a summer to-do list to help them be ready to dive into the benefits/service/support application process in the fall.
Here are...
How To Teach: Eating at a Sit Down Restaurant and Tipping
May 16, 2022
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Importance of Knowing How to Behave in a Sit Down Restaurant and How to Tip
Your students may enjoy a sit down restaurant every week with family, they may go periodically on the weekend with friends, or they may go a couple times a year for special celebrations. Either way, they...
How To Teach: How to Behave in a Restaurant
May 09, 2022
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Importance of Having Manners When Eating at a Restaurant
Besides the grocery store, restaurants may be the community environment your students will visit the most. Therefore, it is important that they know what restaurant manners are expected of them in that setting. There are endless...
How To Teach: Ordering Food at a Restaurant
May 02, 2022
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Importance of Ordering Food at a Restaurant
No matter what kind of restaurant you are ordering food at, your food order with a cashier or wait staff is a conversation. If your students struggle with bilateral conversations (ask question, respond, ask follow up, respond, etc), then ordering...
How To Teach: Restaurant Meal Budget Skills
Apr 25, 2022
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Importance of Using a Restaurant Meal Budget
We may want to order everything on a restaurant menu that sounds delicious (including cheese fries, cheese curds, and a chocolate shake), but we just don’t have the money or stomach space for that. So, deciding how much money to spend on a...
If I Had $1,000 to Spend on My Classroom
Apr 19, 2022
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I’m going to give it to you straight right from the get-go: Some teachers will NEVER be given a budget to spend on their classroom, some will be given various amounts of money at various times with a strict timeline of when to spend it or what to spend it on, and some will have the luxury...
How To Teach: Paying For a Purchase When Shopping
Apr 18, 2022
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Importance of Paying for a Purchase
How To Teach: Find Items In a Shopping Store
Apr 04, 2022
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Importance of Navigating a Store
Being able to walk into a store and know where to go to get what you need can reduce anxiety and increase shopping confidence in a student. Most stores have similar layouts and will demand similar skills from the shoppers, so helping students to know how to shop...
How To Teach: Online Banking & Using an ATM Skills
Mar 28, 2022
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Importance of Online Banking and ATM
When was the last time you balanced your bank account using a check register? Yeah, I thought so! Online banking is now available through most banks and can eliminate a whole list of challenging tasks for our students, like completing check registers! No...
How To Teach: Budget Skills
Mar 21, 2022
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Importance of Teaching How to Budget
Knowing how to budget, money specifically, is how someone strikes the balance between getting both their needs (food, water, shelter) and wants (movie tickets, game tickets, new phone) met. We all wish we had endless amounts of money to spend, but...
How To Teach: Paying With Cash and Debit Card
Mar 14, 2022
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Importance of Knowing How to Pay with Cash and a Debit Card
Many people make more purchases using a debit card than paying with cash, and very few pay with a check anymore. Therefore, learning how to pay the way stores and businesses accept payment is a must.
In fact, more...
How To Teach: Counting and Adding Coins and Dollar Values
Mar 07, 2022
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Importance of Counting and Adding Coins and Bills
Yes, the debit card (and even credit card) reign supreme in the money world, however there are still times when a student would need to not only know and add dollar bills, but also identify and count coins. So, while the need for this skill is...
How To Teach: Following a Recipe
Feb 28, 2022
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Importance of Following a Recipe
Cooking is just following a set of steps to create an end product. While the concept is simple, it can create a lot of opportunities for students to get off track and experience a cooking failure rather than a cooking success.
Learning how to...
How To Teach: 5 Food Groups
Feb 21, 2022
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Importance of 5 Food Groups
The Food Pyramid is what most of us grew up learning about and while I know there were levels to the pyramid and that determined how much of something you should eat, it was a little complex. MyPlate is the new guide, rolled out by Michelle Obama during the...
Soft Skills in Special Education Using Conover's Workplace Readiness
Feb 15, 2022
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A speech pathologist shared with me recently that Google conducted a study and found that of the top 8 reasons people are most successful at work, the first 7 reasons were soft skills (read: nothing to do with the worker’s capacity to do the actual job at hand). If you aren’t...
How To Teach: Where to Store Food and Read Expiration Dates
Feb 14, 2022
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Importance of Food Storage and Expiration Dates
Helping unload the family groceries and putting the food safely away can be a BIG help to caregivers. Also, detecting mold and knowing not to eat it can keep students safe from sickness. So, knowing where to store food and how to read expiration...
How To Teach: Kitchen Safety
Feb 07, 2022
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Importance of Kitchen Safety
The kitchen is now the heart of the home. So, your students are likely in and out of their family kitchen multiple times a day, to grab a quick snack, eat a meal, or get a drink of water. However, the kitchen CAN have many hazards that could put students at risk...
Why I Prefer Teaching Transition Over High School
Feb 01, 2022
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I remember squating in front of a student’s desk in a high school math class where I was a co-teacher reviewing absolute value with them and how to apply it to different problems. I thought to myself, ‘they are probably never going to use this in their entire lives and yet, I must...
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