Middle school is such an interesting time! Students are going through significant changes as they get older. They aren’t little elementary kiddos anymore, and it seems like they grow taller and change right before our eyes. The question for Middle School Life Skills teachers is often, “How do we start preparing them NOW for High School and beyond?”
Class Jobs
Every day, my students have “Jobs” on their schedules to practice life skills or different activities of daily living. During this time, students choose a classroom job from our chore chart to complete. Our chore chart has 9 velcro spaces and various removable symbol supported cards. I typically place pieces on the chart for the day, and leave off the symbols that may not need to be completed that day. For example, we may not have enough laundry to wash every day, but we sweep and wipe tables every day.
Students choose their job and remove the symbol piece. When they’ve finished, it goes into an All Done bucket.
Want to get started on Middle School Life Skills with classroom jobs? Check out the YEAR LONG bundle of Life Skills Centers, which includes visuals and task analysis for 12 different skills!
Vocational Task Boxes
We also work on vocational task boxes to practice various tasks or life skills. Students work on various tasks like sorting utensils, pairing socks, folding laundry or hand towels, wrapping cutlery, stocking sweeteners, or packing care packages.
The sky is the limit with task boxes! Create task boxes for a variety of skills. Wrapping hamburgers, giving correct change, or filling customer orders are just a few ideas. Starting in Middle School Life Skills can help strengthen these skills for students throughout the years.
Hygiene Skills
Hygiene skills are important life skills and students coming into and headed through middle school are experiencing many changes to their physical bodies and may need to learn some new hygiene skills that they didn’t practice much in elementary.
In our Middle School Life Skills class, we typically complete a hygiene checklist. Hygiene checklists can be adapted to fit each student and what they need. I have placed visuals in our bathroom- one checklist for girls, and one for boys. They complete the same hygiene checklist. First we apply deodorant, brush teeth after lunch, wipe faces with skin-safe wipes, comb hair, and then wash hands. After hygiene, students are fresh and ready for the second half of the day.
Include and practice whatever your students need! Do they need additional practice tying shoes? Cleaning their eyeglasses? Consider your students and mold these tasks to their needs.
Check out Stephanie’s Blog “Top 5 Adaptive Tools for Special Education” for more ideas!
Special Projects
Classroom cooking is always a great time to work on middle school life skills in the kitchen! Students can practice preparing food for themselves, and they get to enjoy the fruits of their labor. After everything is done, they can practice cleaning the kitchen as well.
The Simply Special Ed Shop has so many great visual recipes! Check out some October recipes here, or see how your students like working with visual recipes here with this freebie!
Community Based Instruction: Take your students into the community to work on various skills. Keep your ears open for opportunities. Ask your Transition Coordinator for ideas!
Coffee Cart: Students work on vocational tasks like taking and filling orders, taking money, making change, and counting money, as well as kitchen skills like making drinks and washing dishes.
Class Pets: We have had classroom Guinea Pigs that students helped to take care of, feed, and keep clean. We have also hatched eggs in an incubator and cared for baby chicks. Check out Sabrina’s blog on Class Pets Do’s and Don’ts. Bonus! You can use the pets to work on the scientific skills of recognizing what living things need to survive.
Random Acts of Kindness: Pass a little kindness around! After creating decorating or writing notes and attaching cookies, my students helped distribute a “random act of kindness” for World Down Syndrome Day on March 21st.
Again I say, “The sky is the limit!” Students in middle school are growing up and might want a little more independence. When you give them the tools and let them try things on their own, they might surprise you… and make you proud!
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