One of my favorite parts of teaching High School students is just how many life skills we get to cover on a daily basis! Think about a typical week for you as an adult- it’s likely you’ll make a grocery run. You will probably place an order or make a purchase. You may have to recite your phone number or address to someone, or follow step by step directions to prepare a meal or build a piece of furniture. At the very least you’ll have to wash your hands (hopefully!) As a High School Self Contained Special Educator, it is my job to ensure my young adults can do all of these skills as well! In fact, half of our instructional day is spent on life skills. Read below to see what I consider the top five life skills categories, and tips on how to track that for your student’s IEPs.
Life Skills Area 1: Grocery Shopping
Grocery stores are such a wealth of good practice for life skills learners! Down every aisle you can find endless opportunities to strengthen gross and fine motor skills, executive functioning, and real world reading. My students are lucky enough to do one grocery store visit per week, and we like to rotate the stores so that they become familiar with a variety of environments. To set them up for success, we create a visual shopping list that they take with them to the store. They check off items as we find them and everyone takes a turn pushing the cart. We pause and discuss as teachable moments come up. Sometimes an item is sold out, or we need to decide how much of something we need. If you’re able to get out to a grocery store I know you won’t be disappointed!
Grocery Shopping: How To Track
Latency- How much time passes between hearing the direction and completing the task. Perhaps you give a student a directive (i.e. “Find the ketchup”) and then you start a timer. You can track duration as well as prompts needed to complete the task. You can increase the difficulty of the task by changing your distance from the item. Maybe start by challenging them to find it in the condiment aisle before finding it from the front door. A potential IEP goal for this might read something like “Given a visual list and no more than 5 verbal prompts, student will be able to locate a specific item in the appropriate aisle in under 10 minutes during 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Body Positioning- Ambulating throughout the store with appropriate body spacing and speed. You can monitor and instruct students on how to remain socially appropriate while in the store. This is a great natural environment for discussions on personal space, waiting your turn if someone’s in the way, and controlling urges to engage in potentially harmful or distracting gross motor activities like running or jumping. You can track this by using phrasing such as “Given no more than 5 verbal prompts, student will be able to navigate the store appropriately (walking in proximity to the group without jumping or running) for 10 minutes during 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Life Skills Area 2: Hygiene
Hygiene is so important, especially in middle school and high school! A large part of a student’s wellbeing and happiness comes from them feeling clean and refreshed. Oftentimes, hygiene can be heavily directed by a parent or caregiver. It’s important that our students foster independence in this area for their own privacy and wellbeing. In my classroom we have students complete a routine each morning. They increase independence with this as the year goes on, with help of a visual checklist and many prompts. It’s important to note that each student’s checklist is a little different. They are each based on what tasks they complete at home and what needs targeting. It’s a good idea to communicate with parents what they’d like their child to work on and then reinforce that.
Hygiene: How To Track
Handwashing- Hopefully by the time they reach high school they’ve mastered most of this skill. However, anyone who has spent time with a teenager knows that consistency can become an issue! In my room, we like to reinforce hand washing with prompts (verbal/visual) and use of a timer. You could track a goal like this “Given no more than 2 verbal prompts, a 20 second timer, and access to a visual step by step checklist on hand washing, student will wash their hands with soap and water for the full 20 seconds in 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Completing a Hygiene Routine- You can even track how effectively your student can complete a simple routine. Using a visual checklist and lots of modeling, students can show progress and independence in caring for themselves. In my classroom we cover lots of skills such as teeth brushing, face washing, combing and styling hair, and applying deodorant. Again, be sure to communicate with the student’s family to see what they’d like targeted as well and then give it a try! You might track something like this: “Given a visual 3 step sequence, student will be able to complete a hygiene routine with no more than 3 verbal prompts in 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Life Skills Area 3: Task Completion
Possibly one of the most important skills to practice as your students get ready to enter the workforce is task assembly and completion. Employers are looking for adults who can follow the steps provided to complete a task effectively and efficiently. There are so many ways to practice this! A couple of examples from my classroom include stocking shelves in the cafeteria, assembling small parts/manipulating items in a task box, categorizing and organizing materials, and following a sequence. Really anything in your classroom environment can be used to practice task completion. Maybe you offer a student the chance to organize papers or books in the class library. Perhaps you task them with organizing your sticker collection or pencils/pens. This is such an adaptable life skill- get creative with it!
Task Completion: How To Track
Latency, again! How long would it take for the student to hear the directive and complete it. Make note of how many prompts and what types of prompts are needed, and then build in supports to reduce that as they progress.
Accuracy- how accurate is the student in what they’ve completed. For example, if you ask a student to organize 10 random words alphabetically, how many out of 10 did they get correct? Or if you’d like them to place washers on a wooden peg board, how many times were they able to manipulate the washer accurately onto the board? You can write something like this: “Given a set of 10 items of various colors, student will sort the items by color with 80% accuracy in 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Task Endurance- a large part of task completion requires endurance. Perhaps you have a student who completes the first part of the task and then walks away. In order to target that, you’ll have to increase support and give them tools that foster longer periods of endurance. You could track that as “Given a task and visual directions, student will be able to complete the task with no more than 5 prompts of redirection in 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Life Skills Area 4: Personal Information Practice
Being able to memorize and produce personal information is an hugely important life skill. In fact, it could be the thing that keeps your student safe in case of emergency. Every morning in my classroom, students are drilling on their personal information. I’ve been using the method pictured above, but there’s a number of great ways to practice this. We focus on four important areas: Phone Number, Name, Address, and Birthday. Students are given four pieces that are accurate and four distractions. They sort their accurate information into the top box and place the distractors on the bottom. You can increase the difficulty level here by making the distractors very visually similar. This will require students to really analyze and parse out their specific information. A step above this would be asking the student to produce the information on their own, either orally or written. For birthdays, I am sure to mix up using both numerical and alphabetical dates (i.e. using both the word “April” and the number 4). For name practice I display their full name and nick names in a variety of fonts.
Personal Information Practice: How To Track
Accuracy- it’s important for students to produce this information accurately! I would focus in on this one area in the IEP, and potentially word it like “Given a field of 8 choices, student will be able to accurately locate their home address with 80% accuracy in 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Life Skills Area 5: Placing an Order
This is hands down one of the most fun life skills to track- placing orders! I try to do two or three outings like this each semester, and there’s a lot of prep work that goes into these! Typically, I tell the parents about our outing and send them a menu ahead of time. This allows them to discuss with their child at home what they’d like to order. Then, we get to practicing. I create a visual script for students to follow and we use money manipulatives to practice giving an order total. This is a great time for role play in the classroom and we tend to practice it at least once a day before the outing. When we get there, students enter a waiting area and one by one they come forward to place their orders. We try to stay as hands off as possible as they navigate their own independent experience. It’s a great time for AAC users as well! The SLP and I work closely to help them curate appropriate sentences and make specific requests. To see their faces light up when they receive the item they purchased independently makes all the prep worth it!
Placing An Order: How To Track
Communication- work with an SLP here as this would most likely be a speech goal. But it’s important for students to make a request appropriately while ordering. You can write something like “Given a visual script, modeling, and access to their AAC device, student will be able to compose and then communicate a request of at least 4 words with no more than 3 verbal prompts in 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Money Fluency- this is a large part of ordering! Students need to be able to produce an appropriate amount of cash to pay for their item. We discuss beforehand, using direct instruction on the dollar up method. Students can also use a card of course, but most often parents send in cash and it’s a great time to firm up those skills. Something like “Given a price, student will produce an appropriate amount of cash to pay for an item with no more than 3 verbal prompts in 2 out of 3 observed trials.”
Ready, Set, Go!
Hopefully this was a jumpstart for you into the world of life skills! When you create meaningful experiences for students to practice these skills, you set them up for success and independence- something we all deserve.
Want even more ideas and resources? Be sure to check out Simply Special Ed’s Year Long Bundle full of life skills centers! One click and you can have a year’s worth of great resources that will help your students flourish. Click here! And read this blog, “How To Set Up Life Skills Centers” to get a jumpstart.
