Building Character is from Susan Traugh’s Daily Living Skills workbook series offering life skills and transitional skills for mild-to-moderately affected special needs students and general education students alike to meet federal mandates for transition and provide executive functioning skills practice for teens with special needs. These workbooks serve as both a traditional print version and an interactive version - using Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Because “character words” such as trustworthy, motivated, and courageous are defined in the book, it kicks the vocabulary level up a little higher than the third grade level normally used in these books. But, each vocabulary word is thoroughly defined directly after word introduction and the overall "feel" of the book matches the rest of the series. Like the other books, it contains airy-pages and bullet-point information for easy independent study, yet, these books, nevertheless, respect teens’ maturity and humor while presenting federally mandated transition skills and Indicator 13 skills needed for adult independence.
Workbooks are meant to be self-paced and adaptable with student interests and goals driving most units. Each lesson is taught in a short one-to-four page format with follow-up worksheets/activities to check comprehension. Real world activities are provided whenever possible.
Lessons in Daily Living Skills' Building Character include:
- What is Character?
- Why Should I Care?
- Changing the World
- Why Should I Have to Change?
- Golden Rule=Empathy
- Ten Terrific Traits
- Courageous
- Positive
- Grateful
- Trustworthy
- Kind
- Best Effort
- Persistent
- Self Reliant
- Sense of Humor
- Balance
- Weighting Character Traits
- Balancing Conflicting Virtues
- When Other People Behave Badly
Additionally, this book provides a student grading sheet, answer key and Parent Letter suggesting at-home activities for families in accordance to federal mandates.
A preview of this book is provided here, or sample the series with our free book—Doing Laundry.
Some titles in the Daily Living Skills transition series include: Building Character, Cleaning House, Doing Laundry, Dress for Success, Everyday Manners, Fair Fighting, Getting a Paycheck, Grocery Shopping, Kitchen Basics, Making Conversation, Making Meals, Managing Stress, Nutrition, Paying Bills, Safe Dating, Staying Healthy, Time Management, Transportation, Voting, Who Am I? College and Career
A Teacher's Manual (sold separately) provides tips on organizing and setting-up a transition program, pre- and post-test assessments, class grading sheets, written ITP goals for each workbook to plug into annual IEP's, and code numbers and definitions for federal transition standards for each book.
A Powerpoint presentation is available free on this site to introduce your class/parents/administrators to the program.
Follow me here and on Facebook at Transition 2 Life for tips and free lessons.