Functional literacy

Functional reading is critical for our older students, but can be tough. In this post I outline the steps for instruction with tools to help.

Make sure your reading instruction is building functional literacy skills. If your students aren't great at generalizing skills across different settings, then you need to practice in a variety of life skills related situations. Click to read 10 different ways to target functional reading and life skills today!

Using environmental print to navigate the world and interact with others is a critical life skill. Sometimes it's easy to get stuck on the IEP goals and how to write them effectively. This post talks about how to teach meaningful, practical and functional sight words to students with all types of disabilities. It also provides you with IEP goals that you can think about and modify as needed for your students. Finally it points you in the direction of ready-made resources yo... via…

In order to develop life long and functional skills, students need to be able to read in different situations. Use this list of 10 ideas to plan your functional reading activities and develop critical skills. Click to read now.

Worksheets are an easy way to save time prepping lessons but also to make sure you have data without a lot of counting. Find out how in this post.

Listen to this Special Ed Podcast with 15 great ideas for Functional Centers for students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism in High School. Read more and subscribe today!

I work with many students who need real-life money skills, including just figuring out if they have enough money to make a purchase.

Ditch the chaos and embrace the structure with consistently planned literacy centers. "Empowerment Through Structure" digs into the why's and how's of setting up literacy centers that work. Rooted in the science of reading and packed with engaging phonics activities, this post is a must-read for first-grade teachers. Explore the power of routine in literacy learning. Click the link to delve into the benefits and methods of effective literacy centers.

We need adequate literacy skills in order to function and be productive members of society so working on these elements at an early age, will not only help us as individuals, but as a societal group! Read why phonemic awareness is so crucial to development and how to work on phonemic awareness with children.

Quick and fun way to get vocabulary in! I put the mystery word in the blue envelope with just the first letter showing. Each day I add a new clue, a synonym, an antonym, examples or using it in a sentence and the definition. Each day the kids can guess what the word is!