Core Subjects vs. Functional Subjects in The Autism Helper Curriculum

All right, let's go over the difference between the functional curriculum and the core curriculum. So we have language arts and functional literacy and math and functional math. So basically, the functional subjects are going to work on the same or similar core concepts but using real-world-based texts, using functional scenarios. These are amazing for junior high, for high school, any of your older students, but can definitely be utilized by younger kids as well. They work extremely well together and were designed to complement each other, so you can definitely use both. So let's go go in depth and let me show you language arts and functional literacy first, and then I will show you math and functional math. So language arts is going to focus on our basic literacy concepts. We have writing, we have grammar, um, based on the skill level. This is level 1.5, so we see, you know, level 1.5 has minimal writing, so we see lots of sight words, lots of grammar concepts. Let's peek into level 3 here on language arts. This is going to have quite a bit of writing. This has a lot of different writing skills, different grammar. We're gonna get to really more advanced phonics in Language Arts Level 3. Now let's peek into what Functional Literacy Level 3 looks like. So a lot of similar skill level, you can see lots of writing, but look at all of the types of text we're working on. These are all things you would see in the community. They're signs, they're recipes, they're menus. We're gonna write text messages, We're gonna answer based on like real-world scenarios. So all of these types of texts are things that we are seeing all around us. So similar concepts, just working with different types of texts. Let's look at Functional Literacy Level 1. I love this one. So Functional Literacy Level 1, same, like minimal writing. We also have a non-writer version in this where people will trace, but again, we're looking at matching with real-world-based text. Text, matching, you know, number words, finding the words in different signs, functional concepts like small, medium, large, prepositions in more of a real-world way. So again, all of the real-world-based text here for that functional literacy. Let's look at the math and functional math subjects. So we have math and functional math, and both of the core concepts of language arts and math come in 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, and 4. So Math and Language Arts have the most levels. Functional Math and Functional Literacy have 1, 2, and 3. So let's look at Functional Math because it's going to look similar to that Functional Literacy. We're going to see a lot of real-world-based texts. We're going to see lots of concepts that we need to utilize on an everyday basis, like measuring, like temperature, telling time. There's lots of time and money, which there are definitely in the regular math, but it's going to really extend on what we're learning. Things like writing it check, using a calendar to count, all kinds of— there's just so much you can do with real-world math. Lots of word problems in, in Level 3, really important skill to work on. And then if you'll see in the regular math, we still are working on time and money, but we're going to also add in, you know, orders of operations and things like that. And that is going to just be a lot more real-world based in the functional math curriculum. We're going to have based on more functional scenarios. So that was Level 2. And here's 1.5 that has that minimal writing. Again, we're still working on time and money, um, just like we are in the functional subjects, but it's going to be, um, based on those real-world situations with the functional subject and in functional math.