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

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Visual Fidgets for Adults
101 Best Fidget Toys for Teens and Adults with Autism & ADHD

Please do NOT buy that fidget box full of random rainbow-colored fidgets, and I hope it will meet the needs of teens and adults!  You are bound to find that they are small in size, simple, and limited in use.  

So, I made a list of the best fidget toys out there for older kids,...

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Visual Supports for Teaching Life Skills to Nonverbal Students with Autism
11 Best Methods for Teaching Nonverbal Students with Autism

I think every special education teacher has had the feeling of wanting to teach new skills or address IEP goals with a student and knowing all the ways that haven't worked.  Educators often turn to other coworkers looking for the right tools, including ideas, insight, and suggestions for...

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List of Prevocational Skills Assessment
125 Pre Vocational IEP Goals for High School and Transition

Early in my time teaching transition my fellow special education teachers and I split up the responsibility of visiting job sites and teaching vocational skills classes.  Like any true novice teacher, I focused most of my vocational skills class time on writing text-based resumes and mock...

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How You Can Help Families Prepare to Access Benefits Over Summer Break

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
 

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
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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Ordering Food at a Restaurant Worksheet
Teaching Life Skills: Ordering Food [Special Education]

For some students, ordering food from a restaurant is basically a part of their everyday life, but for others, it's an important life skill they might use a handful of times a month.  Regardless, food is a basic necessity and students are bound to access a restaurant (either by visiting...

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How To Teach: Restaurant Meal Budget Skills
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

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

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

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

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

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

 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
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
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
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
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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How To Teach: Where to Store Food and Read Expiration Dates
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...
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How To Teach: Kitchen Safety
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...
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