Hey there, teacher friends!
As teachers, we are often guided into what we should be teaching based upon our students’ diverse needs. However, we also need to address the hidden life skills curriculum.
While academic skills are certainly important, it is also essential for special educators to focus on teaching life skills that will help their students thrive in all areas of life.
In this blog post, we’ll explore five essential life skills that special educators should teach. From communication and social skills to money management and self-care, these skills are critical for your students’ long-term success.
So, if you’re ready to help your students develop the skills they need to excel in all areas of life, let’s dive in.
Communication Skills
Communication is a fantastic skill to start with, as effective communication is key to success in all areas of life!
Special educators can work with their students to help them express themselves clearly, listen actively, and understand non-verbal cues. By teaching strategies for dealing with conflict and navigating social situations, students can feel more confident in their interactions with peers and adults.
Classroom conversations and social stories are great methods for building communication skills and preparing students for school and beyond. These skills will not only help them in the classroom but also on the playground and throughout their lives.
Time management
⏰ Good time management skills are essential for success in school and beyond! The great thing about time management is that it’s a life skill that will always be relevant, no matter where your students go in life.
Special educators can help their students learn how to set goals, prioritise tasks, and manage their time effectively. Using tools such as timers, schedules, and task lists, students can learn how to better understand how long things take to complete and allocate time for different activities.
In addition, educators can teach strategies for staying focused and avoiding distractions, which are key components of effective time management. These skills will not only benefit students in school but also in their future career paths.
Self-advocacy
Students with special needs may face unique challenges and barriers in their daily lives, but it’s important for them to develop the skills to advocate for themselves and their needs.
Special educators can help their students learn how to speak up for themselves, ask for help when needed, and access resources and support. By empowering them with self-advocacy skills, students can become more independent and confident in their abilities.
Additionally, it’s important to showcase successful stories of people who are on the spectrum and have achieved great things in their chosen fields. By highlighting their illustrated abilities and self-advocacy skills, we can inspire students to dream big and follow their passions.
In our classroom, we use the “Autism Awareness” unit, which features eight famous people with autism who have achieved amazing things and self-advocated for the life they wanted to create. By sharing these stories through illustrated books, social stories, and YouTube videos, we hope to inspire and encourage our students to believe in themselves and their abilities.
Problem-solving
Life is full of challenges, and for students with special needs, those challenges can feel even more daunting. But as teachers, we have the power to help and support our students in meaningful ways.
By teaching our students crucial problem-solving skills, we can empower them to overcome obstacles and gain a deeper understanding of the world around them.
In our classroom, we encourage students to identify and tackle problems both academically and socially. Through collaborative brainstorming sessions, we help our students develop critical thinking, decision-making, and creativity skills.
By evaluating the effectiveness of different strategies and reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, our students can become more confident problem-solvers and develop resilience for the challenges they may face in the future.
Independent living skills
s special educators, our ultimate goal is to help our students become as independent as possible. We can achieve this by teaching them a range of practical life skills, such as cooking, cleaning, managing money, and navigating transportation.
In our classroom, we’ve created a daily morning warm-up that focuses on vocational and independent life skills. We cover everything from calendar skills, maths ➕, and literacy, to transportation, time-telling ⏰, and wages.
In our classroom we have created a yearly daily morning warm up, attributed to vocational / independent life skills. Focusing on calendar skills, maths, literacy, transportation, telling time, wages and pay.
This is a unit created in fostering essential life skills, for students in understanding various career paths.
Click here to find out more about Vocational Skills resources
We can even go further and teach them strategies for staying safe and healthy, such as self-care and first aid. In our classroom, we love using task cards to help our students practise these important skills.
By equipping our students with these essential life skills, we can empower them to be more independent, confident, and successful in school and beyond! So why not try adopting these 5 key life skills in your own classroom.
Click here to find out more about Life Skill Task Boxes
What are your favourite life skills to teach your students? Let’s connect on Instagram and share our ideas!
Thank You! ❤️
Thanks for hanging out with us!
We hope you found this post helpful to both you and your special students.
___________________________________________________
⭐️Join our free resource library (aka The Studio) to get exclusive FREE content for your classroom! ✏️
Here, in the Studio you’ll get awesome, helpful teaching resources for your class, from Daily Morning Warm Up activities, easy printing classroom tasks, games and more!!!
It’s all free, and exclusive to email subscribers. Download to your heart’s content!
___________________________________________________
Shoot me an email or Instagram message if you have a suggestion for something you would like to see in the library Studio
We’re thrilled to have you!
