FUNCTIONAL ACADEMICS

 

Academics at Coryell Autism Center are intended to be as functional as possible, maximizing usefulness beyond a classroom setting and avoiding the development of splinter skills that will serve no purpose later in life. We want our students to actively identify and solve problems, ask and answer questions, schedule and carry out plans, make and manage money, and generally be able to learn and share their learning as others do. Our functional academics provide access to many modalities of learning to increase students’ ability to generalize across a variety of settings, materials, skills, and people, and to deepen students’ connections to their environment. Throughout each day, students at Coryell Autism Center have meaningful interactions with the kinds of people, technologies and situations they will continue to encounter throughout their lives.

Functional Academic skills our students are learning include:

• Math: Telling time, following a schedule, using a calendar, arithmetic, basic algebra, measurement, logical reasoning, handling money; using a bank account, checks, ATM, & debit card
• Language Arts: Grouping words, items & activities by feature, function & class; identifying people & places; listening & reading for information (newspapers, magazines, schedules, videos, online, etc.); writing and speaking for functional communication
• Creating lists, maps, plans, diagrams, logs & models
• Productive use of standard technologies (e.g. Word, Excel, calculators, internet, email, phone, etc.)
• Fluency with personal information & filling out standard forms
• Following recipes and other multi-step sequences
• Observing holidays & following current events
• Taking quizzes and tests and understanding grades
• Using standard learning tools (flashcards, worksheets, PowerPoint, books, websites)
• Learning through multiple modalities (visual, auditory, role-playing, etc.)
• Learning across environments (1:1, small group, large group, self-teaching, school, community, home)
• Understanding if-then causality, experimenting, and predicting outcomes