Essential skills for Learning
What are Essential skills for Learning?
This website is about the Essential Skills that all children and youth need to master, so that they can learn successfully at school. Essential skills for Learning are those skills that are typically mastered by the time a student reaches middle school. Essential Skills almost always are the focus of instruction for children and youth who are receiving services through an Individualized Education Program (IEP).
who is this website for?
This website is inspired by and designed for children and youth with disabilities, who are served by an IEP at school. This website will help you pinpoint the Essential Skills your child with a disability is struggling to master. This website is focused on the following disability categories:
ADHD
Autism
Language impairment
Refusal / Disruptive behaviors
Anxiety
Learning Disability - Reading, Writing, Math
Intellectual Disability
Neurological impairment: Vision, Hearing, and Motor impairments
Attachment and traumata
Superior intelligence with co-occurring disability (twice exceptional)
How does this website work?
Step 1: Identify your child’s primary disability. Your child’s disability category will usually be identified by a health care professional or by your child’s school team. If your child has not yet undergone any sort of evaluation, look at the list above and choose the disability category that seems to fit your child the best. If your child has more than one type of disability, start with the one that you think is the most important.
Step 2. Read the pages that correspond to your child’s disability category. Click on the disability category that you think best captures your child’s learning difficulties. Each disability category is associated with one or more Essential
Skills that are missing or under-developed in your child. It’s those missing Essential skills that help explain why your child is struggling. The missing or under-developed Essential skills that you identify in your child will likely need to be a part of your child’s IEP at school.
Step 3. Communicate with others about what you learned. Communicate with people who can help. Share what you’ve learned about your child’s level of mastery of Essential Skills. Speak with your child’s classroom teacher, your child’s educational team, or your child’s health care providers. You can use your knowledge of Essential skills to help craft a special education program at school, and a therapeutic program outside of school. You can ask:
How is my child doing in this Essential Skill?
Is this the Essential Skill that explains my child’s difficulties? Or, do you think it’s another skill?
How are you going to help my child make progress in this skill?
Step 4: Make good decisions about what’s good for your child. Make sure that your child is learning to master the Essential Skills presented in this website. By mastering Essential skills, your child will be able to participate more fully at school, at home, and in the community. At times, your child may not be able to master Essential skills. That’s important to know also- In those cases, you’ll can consider what types of accommodations will help your child function at their highest level.
Why are essential skills important?
Essential skills are just what they say: Essential.
Essential for learning. Essential Skills for Learning are essential for your child’s learning success. As defined in this website, Essential Skills are those skills that are taught in preschool and extending up to middle school. Essential skills are typically mastered before your child reaches middle school. The absence or limited development of Essential Skills usually helps explain why some learners struggle to learn.
Essential for communication and planning. Essential Skills allow for better communication between you and your child, and between you and the professionals involved in your child’s care. By using the terms presented in this website, you can build consensus with your child’s therapists and school team about what skills need to be targeted in your child’s therapeutic program or in your child’s IEP. Each one of your child’s educational and clinical providers need to know about Essential Skills, and agree upon the Essential skills that may need remediation or specialized instruction. If you don’t all agree about the Essential Skills that are missing or under-developed in your child, it will be harder to identify remediation strategies and to work as a team.
Essential for progress monitoring. Essential Skills are essential for progress monitoring. When you have agreement about the Essential Skills that your child is struggling to master, you can also start to track your child’s progress.
Abilities or skills?
Sometimes, your child might not fully master all of the Essential Skills outlined in this website. There can be more than one reason for this. Focus on the skills that your child can master. When your child cannot master Essential Skills, they can still develop their abilities.
Abilities are those skills that become possible with the right supports. For example, some children might not be able to speak, but they may develop the ability to use a visual communication system. Some children may not be able to walk, but they may be able to develop the ability to walk with a cane, walk with a walker, or move about in a wheelchair. Still other children may not be able to focus their attention successfully, but can focus successfully when provided support using a medication. Those children can also be taught compensatory strategies, such as using the right strategies or physical supports to be able to participate in their community successfully. Just like Essential skills support your child’s independence and successful participation, so too can your child’s abilities.
BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY
Are you ready to begin your journey? Click on the page with the disability category that you think matches your child the best. You’ll find the links at the top of this page. Read about the Essential skills that are related to your child’s disability category. The skills that you identify should be the biggest barriers to your child’s success. Focus on those skills first.
Share what you’ve with your child’s classroom teacher, special education team, or health care providers. Verify whether or not they agree with you about the disability category that best matches your child, and the Essential skills that your child needs to develop. All of the professionals involved in your child’s care can help you identify those essental skills- they just need to understand the terms presented in this website and have examples to share that match your child’s profile.
Disability, diagnosis, and Neurodiversity
If you want to know more about neurodiversity and the terms that we use in this website, click on the button below.
