My Life Skills

Our Life Skills curriculum is designed to equip each learner at Mabel Prichard School with secure skills to best prepare them for live a meaningful, fulfilled adulthood. In order to support progress towards this, we motivate our students to learn throughout their lives, and through the whole curriculum, encourage them to succeed as individuals as part of a community they are part of.

With preparation for adulthood from the earliest of years at the centre of our offer, our Life Skills provision has been divided into three broad areas of learning:

Independence for adulthood

Eating and drinking; Cooking; Shopping; Personal care- toileting and hygiene; Belongings, Dressing & appearance; Keeping Healthy; Using a wheelchair; Community awareness; Road safety, Travel & Journeys; Family life; Independent living

Learning for adulthood

Play, Leisure, and Social Interaction; Structure and Routines; Engaging in Learning; Thinking and Problem solving

Navigating adulthood

Sensory Processing; Emotions and Wellbeing; Regulation

Our Life Skills framework incorporates content from the Autism Education Trust’s Progression Framework, along with the practice, pedagogy, and principles of Equals. This covers a broad range of areas, which enables our learners to develop the necessary skills, knowledge, and cultural capital that will enable each of them to individually flourish.

Our Life Skills curriculum is delivered through a combination of both skills and process-based learning. Because life skills, by their very nature, are embedded in so many of our everyday tasks, ‘Independence’ in itself is not planned as a discrete, timetabled subject. Instead, we facilitate the acquisition of Life Skills by capturing and maximising learning opportunities, as they occur organically and holistically. 

• Developed anticipation of the initiation of daily routines

• Developed awareness of everyday tasks so that these are done with not to them.

• Developed voice and agency over how, when, and if routine tasks are carried out with them.

• Developed management of and involvement in essential, day-to-day tasks (sensory or otherwise)

• Increased tolerance of the demands that come with aspects of everyday experiences (in particular, those embedded in family life)

• Increased sense of responsibility for living as independently as they can, within their own lives

• Increased independence.

• Increased pleasure in being part of a wider community

• Increased recognition of the role active members of a community play, as a result of using skills to have a positive impact on others

• My Communication and Interaction

• My Maths

• My Literacy

• My World

• My PE

• My Creativity

• My PSHE

• My Careers

• RSHE

• Opportunities to develop cultural capital (in and out of school)

• Travel training

• Community facilities that may facilitate cross-curricular learning experiences (swimming, SOAP, museum visits, trips to the library).