Supporting children’s independence in school helps build confidence, resilience, and essential life skills. Routines and visual supports such as timetables, planners, or step-by-step guides can help make tasks more predictable and manageable. By breaking down activities and adapting your approach to match a child’s learning style—whether through doing, watching, or listening—you can better support their success across different environments.
Our video below on Independence skills for Key Stage 1 & 2: Addressing toileting, dressing, eating and personal hygiene challenges in school explores the building blocks of independence and provides tips on supporting children to develop various life skills. More guidance on supporting children to dress is available on the dressing section of this OT Support Hub.
The Watch Me Do It site contains video demonstrations recorded from a first-person viewpoint to help children with Developmental Coordination Disorder learn everyday movement skills such as zipping a hoodie, putting on socks, using cutlery, tying shoelaces and peeling vegetables.
Our OT Tools for School and Home video below explores how a child learns new skills, helps identify goals and strategies for improving independence and provides guidance on how to use these new strategies to help children achieve their goals.
Have a look at this video on Building independence for secondary students – a focus on attention and organisational skills to find strategies and ideas on supporting independence in secondary school. A checklist and further ideas to support students in secondary school and at sixth form can be found in these accompanying resources.
