Curated OER
Teaching Life Skills to Students with Special Needs
Ideas for instilling essential life skills in learners with special needs.
Curated OER
Sexual Education Assessment Tool: Special Education
The FLASH program in Seattle has put together a set of questions for special education classes covering sexual education. Some of the topics include appropriate, inappropriate, self-esteem, puberty, hygiene, reproduction, and sexually...
Curated OER
Using Simultaneous Prompting to Teach Opening a Locker
Make opening a locker with a key an easy task for your special needs upper grader. Here you'll find a prompting hierarchy and 15 steps to guide your learner through the process. You'll verbally prompt while physically modeling the locker...
University of Alaska
Lesson Plans for Teaching Self-Determination
How do we prepare kids, especially those with disabilities, for life after school, for the workplace, for independent living? This 96-page packet is loaded with self-assessment surveys, with skill builders, with information about rules,...
Curated OER
Home Living/Life Skills: Face Washing
Having good hygiene skills is a very important part of living an independent life. Learners with special needs follow sequencing cards to practice washing their faces. They follow each step in the process and discuss the importance of...
Do2Learn
Toileting Picture Cards
Assist scholars in the restroom with a set of cards created to show every step needed to follow. Each picture details a specific step from closing the bathroom door to drying your hands.
Curated OER
Beat the Clock
Tired of wasting time trying to get your class to split up into groups? Engage in an activity to help your charges manage time. Learners reflect on a time they were left out or rejected, and then practice forming groups of three within...
Conflict Resolution Education Connection
10 Lessons for Teaching Conflict Resolution Skills
Promote responsibility and camaraderie with 10 lessons on conflict resolution. Learners define conflict and teach ways to resolve it. Each lesson provides an activity and scenario for role play, and lends itself to discussion among peers...
University of Oklahoma
Developing My Resources
Learners with special needs create Summary of Performance (SOP), a written document which describes their disability, its impact on their daily life, ways they have learned to compensate, their personal strengths, and their goals. The...
Curated OER
Reproduction, Day 4: Sexual Decision-Making
Every human has the need for affection. This lesson teaches mild to moderately disabled secondary high schoolers to make good choices regarding sexual contact. The lesson is developmentally and age appropriate and covers topics such as...
Do2Learn
Respecting the Ideas of Others
Communicating clearly is one part of a successful conversation, but listening to others is just as important. Individuals with special needs plan calm responses and reactions to differing opinions with a collaborative activity.
Curated OER
Home Living / Daily Living: Importance of Keeping a Healthy Body Weight
Prepare your special education class for a healthy life. They visit with a nutritionist, practice simple exercises, and discuss healthy food choices. They then make goals for weight loss and management. Additional supporting activity...
Curated OER
Using Poetry in Teaching Reading to Special Education Students
A series of well-written activities, these lessons prompt middle schoolers reading below grade level (at a second, third, or fourth grade level) to use poetry to practice basic reading skills. They rhyme, build words, make inferences,...
Mobile Education Store
Rainbow Sentences
Learners who struggle with grammar, foundational reading skills, and sentence composition can learn how to write proper sentences using an app that relies on research-based practice. It uses a color-coded formula that had been proven to...
Curated OER
Relationships, Day 5: Acquaintances & Strangers
It is important for special needs students to know the differences between acquaintances and strangers. They define the world helper, acquaintance, and stranger then discuss a scenario based case study.They talk about touch and no touch,...
Curated OER
Exploitation, Day 2: Exploitation and Getting Help
Exploitation is a real issue for the disabled community. Secondary Special Education students learn what exploitation is, their personal rights, and how to say no. They focus on finding a trusted adult to get help if they have been taken...
Perkins School for the Blind
Mail Delivery
Teaching job skills to your learners with special needs before they enter the workforce is a great way to ensure that they will gain employment. For this lesson, your students will become the school's very own mail or delivery people....
Curated OER
Introduction to Cause and Effect
Teach your special education students about cause and effect with this SMART board activity. After analyzing real-life examples of cause and effect -'What happens when you eat too much? What happens when you don't get enough sleep?"-...
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Immigration: Why Come to the United States?
Don't limit your curriculum to texts! Young historians listen to a song, read an interview, and examine a cartoon as they explore motivations for immigrating to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Curated OER
Video Self Modeling to Teach Students with Autism Appropriate LIFE SKILLS
Use a video on self-modeling to practice life skills as part of an Autism activity. Learners complete modeling activities and use a video activity to practice the life skills.
Practical Money Skills
Budgeting Your Money
How do you make sure that your income doesn't disappear before you have a chance to save it? Use a creative budgeting activity to teach learners in both special education and mainstream classes how to keep track of their expenditures and...
Harper Collins
Amazing Women
Helen Keller became a teacher after her experience with Anne Sullivan, demonstrating to the world how valuable a dedicated mentor and determined spirit can be when overcoming adversity. Middle schoolers learn more about the influential...
Education Bureau of Hong Kong
Fundamentals of Critical Thinking
Analyzing arguments is key to critical thinking. Colorful slides teach viewers how to recognize the structure of an argument, the claims, and the validity of the evidence used to support an argument. Then, provided scenarios permit...
Do2Learn
Clothes Picture Cards
Help all scholars become familiar with articles of clothing with a set of picture cards showcasing 24 different items—from a bathing suit to a wristwatch.