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Sharing my experience in the classroom as a life skills special education transition teacher and providing resources and solutions for fellow educators.

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Transition Plan Student Workbook for High School and Transition Students functional life skills life skills special education teachers teacher experience teacherspayteachers transition Dec 12, 2022

I love a really good transition assessment.  I love when parents/family members give quality feedback.  I love when staff share their ideas and insight about a student’s future.  But, I really love when students are open, honest, and (most importantly) realistic* about their...

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Functional Reading Comprehension Worksheets for High School and Transition Students functional life skills life skills special education teachers teacher experience teacherspayteachers transition Dec 05, 2022

What is ‘functional reading?’ According to me, it’s being able to read and understand enough to get what you want or need AND what you don’t want or don’t need. This includes weeding out the fluff stuff that doesn’t matter.  The fluff detracts you from...

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Transition Assessments for High School and Transition Age Students functional life skills life skills special education teachers teacher experience teacherspayteachers transition Nov 01, 2022

You are sitting down to write a student’s IEP and you get to the Transition Plan section.  You plug in the same phrasing you use to every other student.

 

GASP!!!!

 

You would never do that!!!  You are a better educator than to copy + paste (even if it would save you a...

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The Life Skills Daily Warm Up Activity Resource You Wish You Had Time to Create functional life skills life skills special education teachers teacherspayteachers transition Oct 03, 2022

You know that starting off each school day with consistent structure, meaningful engaging activities, and skill-focused conversation will really set up your students for a great day. 

 

Well, I always wished I had a daily resource with fresh questions that were life skill related, but...

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5 In-School Vocational Jobs (That Isn't a Coffee Cart or Dog Treat Business)  functional life skills life skills transition Sep 05, 2022

 I can picture it now…

 

You are an effective, student-focused teacher who wants to provide valuable vocational experiences to give students work-based practice beyond a vocational box in the classroom.  You want them to get out of your room, work with new, less familiar...

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How You Can Help Families Prepare to Access Benefits Over Summer Break functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers teacher experience transition May 17, 2022

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...

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How To Teach: Eating at a Sit Down Restaurant and Tipping functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers teacher experience transition May 16, 2022
 

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...

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How To Teach: How to Behave in a Restaurant functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers teacher experience transition May 09, 2022
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...
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How To Teach: Ordering Food at a Restaurant functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers teacher experience transition May 02, 2022
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...
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How To Teach: Restaurant Meal Budget Skills functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers teacher experience transition Apr 25, 2022
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...
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How To Teach: Paying For a Purchase When Shopping functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers teacher experience transition Apr 18, 2022

Importance of Paying for a Purchase

The checkout step at any store can be overwhelming. Some have signs on the ground, some signs are at hip level, and some are up above. Some have only human cashiers and others have a combination of self check out and cashiers. Some have only 1 check out...
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How To Teach: Cost Comparison Skills functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers transition Apr 11, 2022

Importance of Comparing Prices

Cost comparison is a skill that can be used anytime someone shops for something. You can compare the price of cell phones, oranges, shoes, and haircuts. However, knowing there are two factors that go into determining which is the best ‘value’ is a...
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How To Teach: Find Items In a Shopping Store functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers transition Apr 04, 2022

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...
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How To Teach: Online Banking & Using an ATM Skills functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers transition Mar 28, 2022

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...
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How To Teach: Budget Skills functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers transition Mar 21, 2022

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...
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How To Teach: Paying With Cash and Debit Card functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers transition Mar 14, 2022

 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...
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How To Teach: Counting and Adding Coins and Dollar Values functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers transition Mar 07, 2022
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...
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How To Teach: Following a Recipe functional life skills how to teach life skills special education teachers transition Feb 28, 2022
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...
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How To Teach: 5 Food Groups functional life skills how to teach life skills teacher experience transition Feb 21, 2022
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...
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Soft Skills in Special Education Using Conover's Workplace Readiness functional life skills how to teach life skills teacher experience transition Feb 15, 2022
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...
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