I’m excited to introduce this week’s guest blogger: Fiona from Sped Adulting aka Adulting Made Easy to talk all about vocational skills!
Maybe you are distance learning or you are returning to school. Many of our students that have off-campus work experience are not going to be able to participate effectively. There are alternatives to practice vocational skills that students can work on in the meantime.
Your students are probably already doing this! You can make it more work or vocational skills related, or even create checklists with tasks to complete. This is a great way to practice reading time. Making sure the student is attending to an activity early or on time, as well as completing tasks before moving onto the next. Here are some activities to work on schedules:
The first thing you should do is make sure your students are working on chores or classroom jobs. Many of the chores we have at home are great vocational skills. This is one alternative to work experience that can easily be practiced in the home or classroom setting. Not only are students practicing motor skills, but also following # step directions. If you are assigning these tasks for students to do at home, make sure to provide parents with the visuals and materials to successfully support their child in doing so at home!
Pair this activity with the life skills homework choice board FREEBIE
Students can pick a different vocational skill to focus on each day! Some of these levels of difficulty may differ from student to student, depending on where their areas of strength are. This is a great way for students to find which skills they are good at or enjoy doing (or maybe do not enjoy doing).
Next, whether your student is completing chores or classroom jobs, they can practice filling out a timesheet. This way they learn to track the time they’ve spent doing their job. Which also makes for an age-appropriate reward system and building vocational skills!
Filling out timesheets will practice several different skills in the areas of reading, math, vocation, and life skills. Students should understand exactly what clocking in and clocking out really means.
Then, there are tons of job applications you can find with a quick Google Search to print. You can also create a Google Form customized to each students’ level, whether it’s just their personal information, all the way to writing work history, and references. Here are printable and digital differentiated/simplified sets of job applications for your students to practice with:
Community-Based Instruction (CBI) activities mimic a vocational experience of working at the grocery store. This can help students work on several basic consumer money math, stocking, time management and other job skills before applying them. Try the FREEBIE Virtual Grocery Store Job Activity here. Yes, these are also included in vocational skills.
There are tons of “A day in the life of…” or Job Shadow videos on many different careers that you can find on YouTube.com. If you ask someone to film their day on their job, that could be awesome as well!
Set your students up for a successful career by finding out what your students’ preferences are. Here are interest questions with visuals/real images that get students thinking about the skills they have or the skills they need to get their dream job. These types of activities are also great for informal assessment for transition plans.
Find volunteers to come share information about what their career is. Ask what skills they need for their job, what they love about their job, and so on. This can easily be set up over video conferencing and the classroom! Applicable vocational skills!
Work task boxes are always a great way to work on foundational skills when you are short on time and money. Finally, we all know you are a busy teacher and work tasks help build skills.
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