Room 504 is dedicated to going out into the community once a month where we can apply all the life skills we are learning at Midland. Part of the Midland’s School vision is to ensure that we are preparing our students with life skills that will help them be as independent as possible. One way to practice these skills is through community-based instruction. Community-based instruction is a teaching method focused on giving students the opportunity to apply vocational, independent living, and transition related skills in the natural environment.
In our classroom, we take students on community-based field trips once a month. It is something that all the students get excited about. We decide as a class on different trips that the students want to engage in. Students can use their voice, their talkers and visuals to come up with ideas. One of our students even wrote up a proposal, researched and is finalizing a trip to a local animal petting farm! We want to make sure that students have some input into the learning experiences that we will go on. All our students participate in pre-trip lessons that prepare them for the upcoming experience and expectations so that we can fully engage in and apply our skills when we go out into the community.
As a class we have already gone on four CBI trips. The first was to the mall where we practiced navigating the stores using a map, learning how to safely ride the escalators and elevators, find specific departments within a store and how to order and pay for meals at the food court. We also went to Michael’s craft store where we had to find and purchase all the materials needed to make a Valentine Craft for our families. We even practiced using the self-checkout and credit card machine. Our third outing was to Life Town in Livington, where students had the opportunity to apply a myriad of skills in a simulated town that included withdrawing money from a bank, making purchases at each store, visiting the dentist, hair salon, grocery store, pet store and so much more! Our most recent CBI outing will be to an aquarium where students will learn about aquatic life. This aquarium will also teach our students about navigating an aquarium safely, being flexible amongst multiple school groups visiting at once, listening to a facilitator and feeding some of the animals. This trip will end with eating out at a restaurant, ordering and paying for food, and eating etiquette in larger community space.
Room 504 can’t wait to plan our next adventure and get more opportunities to independently apply all the life skills we have been gaining over the course of the school year!
