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. In the medical community, we use the term ‘Neurodevelopmental foundations for learning.” In the educational community, we use the term “Essential skills for Learning.”
Successful learning can occur when Neurodevelopmental foundations are strengthened, and when essential skills are mastered. The foundations and skills discussed in this website 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 require specialized instruction and supports in order to participate successfully 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: Get to know the Essential skills that all children need to master. The twelve skill sets below make up the neurodevelopmental foundations that need to be supported, and the essential skills that all children need to master. Here are the Essential skills and skill sets that are missing or under-developed in children with disabilities
Structural/ Formal language skills
Pragmatic language skills
Social cognition
Executive Skills
Self-regulation skills
Reading
Writing
Math
Vision
Hearing
Motor skills.
Adaptive skills
Step 3. Click on the disability category that you think best captures your child’s struggles. Each disability category from the list above (e.g. Autism, ADHD, Learning Disability) is associated with one or more Foundations that will need extra support. It’s those under-developed foundations that help explain why your child is struggling. Once you’ve identified the foundations that are under-developed, you will also know which Essential skills will likely need to be a part of your child’s IEP at school.
Step 4. Communicate with professionals who can help. Share what you’ve learned about your child’s struggles. Tell the professionals about the neurodevelopmental foundations that you think need extra support. show them the Essential skills that your child is not mastering successfully. 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? in this Essential skillset?
Is this the Essential Skill or Skillset that explains my child’s difficulties? Or, do you think it’s another one?
How are you going to help my child make progress in this skill?
Step 5: 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. While the term ‘neurodevelopmental foundations’ is useful for deciding your child’s disability category, it’s even more useful to know about the Essential skills that your child is not mastering. Essential skills are those target skills that your child is not mastering as successfully, and where your child will need extra instruction and practice. Limited progress in Essential Skills usually helps explain why some learners struggle to learn. If your child can master all of the Essential Skills of this Website, they will be on their way to successful learning.
Essential for communication and planning. Essential Skills allow for better communication: Between you and your child; between your child and their professionals; and between your child’s professionals and you. instead of talking about your child’s disability, you can talk about the skills that you know your child needs to build. 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 support, 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.
overwhelmed yet?
Don’t worry. You’ll be visiting and re-visiting this website, and the same essential skills, for a while. Have the long-term view in mind. Typically developing children master Essential skills over the first 6 to 8 years of school. Your child might take longer. Some children and youth do not master all of the skills in this website. That’s OK. As you get to know your child, you’ll get a better idea about how far they can travel.
Abilities or skills?
Sometimes, your child might not fully master all of the Essential Skills described 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 with extra adult supervision.
It’s just as important to make progress in essential skills as it is to make progress in level of support. Some children with disabilities do not achieve full independence in the skill sets that you’ll discover in this website. That’s OK too, as long as they are reaching their maximum level of independence. Essential skills support your child’s independence and successful community participation. Your child’s abilities can do the same.
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.
