How To Choose the Best Life Skills Curriculum

The 3Rs are only the start when it comes to skills kids need to succeed. Life skills—everything from problem-solving and decision-making to financial literacy and independent living skills—can and should be taught. Curricula that teach life skills range from programs focused on supporting students with disabilities to broader school-wide curriculum that teach an ever-changing roster of skills that kids will need in the “real world,” such as dealing with social media and managing personal health. 

What are life skills?

A life skills curriculum targets foundational skills, says Rista Plate, senior researcher with CASEL, a nonprofit that promotes social and emotional learning in schools. Skills like self-management, relationship building, and making responsible choices are not going away. In fact, in a 2024 CASEL survey, 83% of principals indicated that their schools use a curriculum to address social-emotional skills, the highest percentage ever indicated for addressing these skills through a formal curriculum.

What is a life skills curriculum and why do we need it?

Life skills curricula are particularly helpful for students with intellectual disabilities or autism, Georgina Baba, training and accounts manager with the Attainment Company, says. The main goal of many life skills curricula is to equip students with the skills to become self-sufficient adults who can live and work as independently as possible.

Teaching life skills in a systematic way supports a range of outcomes, from attendance to self-efficacy. In particular, when adolescents learn life skills that are relevant to today’s society (for example, understanding and problem-solving to manage climate change), they are better able to understand how to engage with activities and topics that will impact them as adults. 

A life skills curriculum prepares students with practical knowledge and abilities to navigate life, including personal and professional success. The topics covered in a life skills curriculum can range from communication to decision-making to emotional intelligence. Depending on the curriculum’s purpose and audience, it may cover topics like reading a bus map to navigate a city, or understanding and implementing a budget.

A life skills curriculum should address the five key areas outlined by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA):

• Self-advocacy
• Job and career exploration
• Work-based learning
• Workplace readiness
• Post-secondary education and training

Some of the topics that a life skills curriculum covers are: 

• Communication: Active listening and how to engage in effective verbal and nonverbal communication.
• Decision-making: Analyzing a decision and making and implementing a choice.
• Emotional intelligence: Recognizing and managing emotions, building empathy, and developing healthy relationships.
• Financial literacy: Understanding how to manage money, including how to budget and make informed financial decisions.
• Health and wellness: Developing healthy eating, exercise, and stress management habits. 
• Independent living skills: How to cook, clean, do laundry, manage transportation, and manage other daily tasks. 
• Personal responsibility: How to take ownership of actions and follow through on commitments. 
• Problem-solving: How to analyze a situation, generate solutions, and implement a solution. 
• Self-awareness: How to understand personal strengths and weaknesses and develop positive self-esteem and self-image. 
• Social skills: Build and maintain positive relationships, understand social cues, and navigate social situations. 
• Workplace skills: How to search for a job, interview, and behave professionally. 

What are the benefits of a life skills curriculum?

The outcomes of a curriculum will depend on its focus, so it’s important to choose a life skills curriculum that has produced the skills you want to see in your students. Some potential skills:

• Self-sufficiency: Students gain the skills they need to manage their own lives. 
• Self-esteem: Students gain confidence in their own abilities. 
• Social skills: Students develop the ability to identify and navigate social situations. 
• Emotional skills: Students become better at identifying and managing emotions. 
• Greater resilience: Students are better able to manage the stressors that come their way. 
• Improved mental health: Students feel competent and capable of managing their health and well-being. 

What does a good life skills curriculum have?

A strong life skills curriculum will have a structure that supports student learning and provides lots of opportunities for students to practice the skills they are learning. Think: modeling, role-playing, and reflection. “A life skills curriculum should also be able to be implemented in multiple settings to ensure generalization of skills,” says Baba.

Plate recommends looking for a curriculum that has research-based evidence of its effectiveness. That way, says Plate, “you’re not taking a best guess for what might work, you are leaning on research that this series of steps or these series of practices can lead to student outcomes.” That includes life skills outcomes and academic achievement.

When considering research, think, too, about which programs have been shown to be effective with the students that will be using the program. For life skills, there are programs that are specifically designed for students with disabilities, there are programs that are for high schoolers, and so on. 

Life skills curricula take various approaches, but focus on programs that:

• Are divided into manageable modules that can be adapted for the needs of a class or student.  
• Are age-appropriate.
• Include hands-on activities with real-world scenarios.
• Include clear, actionable assessment and feedback tools.
• Support the integration of life skills into other subjects so students can see how these skills apply across their day.
• Provide an opportunity for collaboration and community.

What is the difference between life skills and SEL?

There may not be much difference, depending on the skills you are focusing on. Some curricula that focus specifically on students with disabilities are more targeted around skills like financial literacy or budgeting. Other life skills curricula address problem-solving and relationship building, skills that all students need.

Learn more about what SEL is and SEL curricula in our How To Choose an SEL Curriculum guide.

How To Choose a Life Skills Curriculum

Choosing a life skills curriculum is similar to choosing an academic curriculum. It involves community input, collaboration, and narrowing down a huge list of choices to the few options that will work for your school.

Figure out your starting point

It’s important to know where students are starting from so you can focus on the skills that your community needs most. Use a tool like the Casey Life Skills tools (they’re free) to assess the skills students have in the areas of daily living and self-care, relationships, work and study habits, and more.

Another thing to consider is when to start teaching life skills. Life skills can be taught as early as middle school, says Baba, to support students as they move through post-secondary education, job training, and employment.

You’ll want to choose a curriculum that has support from the school community, including parents and teachers. The benefit of having a formalized approach to choosing a curriculum, says Plate, is that it shows that the school has come together to decide what’s important for the community. 

Identify options

First, know what your options are. The CASEL Program Guide or the ACT for Youth list are good places to start. Narrow down your list to a few programs that produced outcomes you want to see in your students, and that were implemented with a similar population. As you narrow it down, some questions to ask are:

• What knowledge and skills do my students need in the future?
• What outcomes do I want to see from this curriculum?
• How will we measure the outcomes of this program?
• Who will implement the program?
• What amount of time can we provide to this program?

Try it out

Get a few sample units and see which aligns best with your school community. Which programs do teachers like best? Which are easiest to implement within the structures you already have? Or is there a curriculum that you like a lot and are willing to make changes in order to implement?

Life Skills Curriculum Examples

These life skills companies provide lessons and full curricula that can be implemented in the school setting.

The Attainment Company

The Attainment Company provides a variety of life skills curricula focused on helping students with disabilities transition to independent living and the workforce. It features courses on independent living, money management, and social skills aimed at students with moderate to severe disabilities. 

Botvin Life Skills Training

Originally developed as a substance abuse program for middle schoolers, this training expanded to include communication, decision-making, and conflict resolution. It also has lessons for high schoolers. The company offers free downloadable lessons and online training. 

Curriculum for Life

Curriculum for Life is an open-access life skills curriculum for students 6 to 18 years old. Lessons cover a huge variety of skills from agency to tolerance of ambiguity. The idea is to provide a free resource of lessons that are adaptable for students of various ages and that have been vetted by a community of teachers. 

Overcoming Obstacles

Incorporate this free life skills curriculum into school advisory periods or after-school and summer programs. Overcoming Obstacles has lessons for kindergarten through high school. Use activity-based lessons on more than 30 skills to teach students how to set and achieve goals, resolve conflicts, and more.

Project Life

Youth Skills for Life is an independent living skills curriculum for students who need to learn or enhance life skills to transition into adulthood. The focus is on stand-alone lessons to teach skills like choosing a career, interviewing for a job, the importance of exercise, and other topics. The curriculum focuses on six of the National Youth in Transition Database categories, with two to four workshops for each topic. The resources are free for anyone to download and use, but the program has not been formally researched.

Get your free printable social stories bundle!

Download all 10 of our free printable social stories. They’re fully illustrated with simple, familiar images, but you can also personalize them for your students using photos.

Which life skills curriculum do you use? Come share in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

For more articles like this, be sure to subscribe to our newsletters to find out when they’re posted!