Teaching Transition Skills in Inclusive Schools

How can high schools teach academic content and the critical skills students need to navigate life beyond the classroom? Fitting it all into one curriculum can be a challenge—and this book helps you juggle it all, ensuring personalised, student-centred instruction that prepares students with and without disabilities for success.

This book introduces a unified framework for transition services in an integrated, cohesive process that gets all students ready for college, careers and citizenship. With six model lesson plans aligned with Common Core State Standards this guidebook helps educators and transition specialists make key improvements to transition services and instructional practices. You’ll learn the basics of

• raising expectations for all students through rigourous, personalised, and standards-based instruction
• improving access to the general curriculum for students with special needs
• developing meaningful transition IEPs based on students' strengths, preferences, and needs
• blending quality transition services and quality instructional practices into one integrated approach
• weaving in additional adaptations and accommodations for students with more significant support needs
• connecting academic content to practical, real-world contexts

To help you strengthen your practices right away, you'll get practical tips and activities, specific examples of embedding transition skills into good classroom instruction, and recurring case studies that follow two students with different support needs and interests. And the included forms—assessment tools, student profile sheets, self-evaluations, and more—will help you gather and organise key information on each student.

A must-have guide for all education professionals in inclusive high schools, this book will help you meet Common Core State Standards while fully preparing all students to succeed: in college, in the workplace, and in life.

Table of Contents

Series Preface

Editorial Advisory Board

About the Authors

Preface

Acknowledgments

Dedication

1. Expanding Our Thinking About High Schools: A Unified Framework for Secondary Transition Services
• Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in High Schools
• A Unified Framework for Secondary Transition Services
2. Good Transition Practices
• Legislative Influence
• Quality Transition Practices
• Appendix: Summary of My Performance
3. A Solid Instructional Foundation for Positive Postschool Outcomes
• Key Concepts for Quality Instruction
• Academic Rigor and Standards
• Personalization: Knowing Students Well
• Career Exploration
• Inclusive Practices
4. Bringing It Together: Good Transition and Good Instructional Practices
• The Universal Level of Transition Services
• Internal and External Supports
• Appendix A: Examples of Content Area Units
• Appendix B: Blank Forms
5. One Step Further: Supporting Students with Unique Needs
• Quality Instruction
• Academic Rigor and Standards
• Career Exploration
• Personalization
• Inclusive Program Practices
• Internal and External Supports
• Appendix A: Student Profile

References

Index

"A compelling resource for both general and special educators . . . provides an excellent overview of quality instructional practices that meet the academic standards while preparing students to transition to productive futures!"
- Margo Vreeburg Izzo, Professor, Ohio State University Nisonger Center

"A well-described overview of the issues surrounding transition planning for students with disabilities combined with practical suggestions for inclusive schools . . . a welcome addition to the transition literature."
- Lori Howard, Assistant Professor of Special Education, Marshall University Graduate School of Education and Professional Development

"Timely in its philosophy, focus, and content . . . offers numerous practical tools and suggestions for working with transition-aged youth with disabilities in inclusive settings."
- Gary Greene, Professor Emeritus of Special Education, California State University, Long Beach