Build Independence in Your Students Across the Day

In our classrooms, there are many opportunities to teach a student to become independent across the day.  Let's look at part of my class schedule and the times during the day a student should be independent and the skills needed:

• Entry Routine - remove backpack, coat and shoes.  Put on indoor shoes, unpack backpack and put items in their designated location.  Checking their schedules and going the first activity.
• Morning Seat Work - getting their morning work book, choosing a spot to sit and completing the work in their book.  Putting their book in the "All Done" basket.  Checking their schedule and going to next activity.
• Morning Meeting - ensure they have their communication device, choosing a spot to sit, getting a fidget toy if needed.  Remaining seated, answering questions, taking their turn when required.  Checking schedule when morning meeting is finished and going to next activity.
• Independent Work Stations:  getting their work binder or work bins, getting a dry erase marker if needed and putting it away, completing their work, and putting their binder or bins away.  Checking their schedule and going to the next activity.

Now, let's just look at the skills that are required during mealtimes to be independent.

1. Student must know it's time to eat.
2. Student must be able to wash his/her hands.
3. Student has to be able to get his/her lunch bag and bring it to the designated eating area.
4. Student must be able to open their lunch bag.
5. Student must be able to open the containers and packages in their lunches.
6. Student must be able to feed him/herself.
7. Student must be able to wipe their mouth and hands.
8. Student must be able to remain seated while eating.
9. Student must be able to wipe up any spills.
10. Student must be able to throw away trash, close containers and put them back in their lunch bag.
11. Student must be able to close their lunch bag.
12. Student must be able to return their lunch bag to the correct storage place.
13. Student must be able to know what to do next.

How many of these can your students do independently?  How many are they missing?  Our goal as educators goes beyond teaching information and skills...ultimately we want all our students to be able to participate as independently as possible in all facets of their life. 

Why does the goal of independence elude some students and educational teams?

Here are some common reasons:

Prompt Dependence

Students with ASD can easily become prompt dependent. That is, they are willing and able to do what is asked but have not learned that they can or should do tasks without being asked! Educational teams need to systematically reduce prompting and reward independent completion of steps in a task.

A Focus On Accuracy Over Independence

Teams that value accuracy over independence can inadvertently instil a mindset of incompetence. If someone is always helping the student to do a task faster or better by doing it for them, the student lacks the opportunity and eventually the will to try to do things on his own.

Failure To Fade Reinforcement

Some students come to expect that every action will be followed by a tangible reinforcer or by verbal praise, and will not do a task independently because there is no one to deliver the reinforcement if they work alone.

Lack Of Visual Supports

Students with ASD often have difficulty planning, managing their attention and processing or remembering verbal instructions. And many educational teams provide the adaptation of one to one adult support to help them accomplish particular goals. They fail to realize that visual supports can help the students complete a task without an adult to prompt and remind them.

 What can we do to correct this? 

 

Be alert to the level of prompting you are providing to get students with ASD to do a task.

Be particularly aware of how much verbal prompting you are providing. We want the student to use natural cues to recognize what they are to do next rather than only moving on to the next step when they hear the voice of the adult at their elbow. If you need to prompt, use gestural prompts over verbal prompts when possible (they are easier to fade). Give the student time to respond before prompting (wait 5 – 10 seconds). Visual supports can greatly assist you in fading prompting.

Be sure to praise efforts and attempts over accuracy.

How important is it that the student’s product look identical to his peers? Does he really need to complete all the math problems or would he be better to complete half all on his own? How important is it that his socks are put on right side in? The problem of demanding accuracy over independence can be particularly problematic in the case of the student with ASD who is intellectually capable and may be expected by his parents or teachers to perform at grade level or better. The pressure to keep up academically may cause the team to provide a lot of one to one support to help the student complete the required work at the expense of teaching independence. We must not lose sight of the fact that independence is also an important goal. Today's technology allows many students to compensate for the executive function deficits that may impede their organization of or attention to tasks. Teach them how to use the technology so they can do assignments on their own.

Avoid reinforcement dependency

To avoid the development of reinforcement dependency, teams must systematically fade reinforcement to the level of intermittent reinforcement when teaching a task. For initial learning, the child may need reinforcement for each attempt to complete a step. If the team is using a tangible reinforcer (e.g., a toy or an edible) they should pair verbal praise whenever they provide the toy or food. Then, the toy or edible can be provided for every third or fourth correct response while verbal praise continues. Finally, the toy or edible is only provided once in a while (intermittently) and verbal praise is also faded to a lower level.

Use visual supports... we all use them!

For the student who can’t read, picture symbols are available to help him see the steps necessary to completing a target. For the student who does read... provide written checklists, visual organizers and time lines. Teach him how to create his own visual supports so that he can stay organized and remember what to do.  I have written about the effective use of visual supports here. Visual supports can be used to break down the steps of any task. When the steps are put into pictures on a strip, the person with autism now has those for a handy reference. I’ve used this idea for routines like getting dressed, toileting, hand washing and brushing teeth. There are some great ideas for breaking down routines on the Do2Learn website. Thinking this forward, these tasks strips could be used for doing laundry, dishes and other household chores.

Start small and build on success. 

When teaching a new skill, it is important to break down the skill into smaller steps.  This is called Task Analysis.  You can either write your own or you get them online.   Once you have completed the task analysis, or read it, you can do a baseline on your students' current skills.  Knowing what steps your student can independently will allow you to know where to start teaching.  Often, backwards chaining or forwarding chaining are used to teach students to independently complete tasks like washing hands or operating a computer.  However, this teaching method isn't used for all tasks in which a student should be independent.

Let's look at a common scenario in my classroom.  Most of my students come into my classroom without the ability to open their food packages during mealtimes.  When teaching a student how to open packages when eating, we begin with teaching him/her to ask for help.  Once they have mastered the skill of asking for help, we focus on the skill of opening the package.  Once they request help, we only open the package a tiny bit, so that they have to open it the rest of the way.  Once they have mastered opening a portion, we teach them to open it from the beginning using modelling and physical prompts if necessary.  If a student doesn't have the physical strength to open some packages, then we teach them to use scissors to cut the package open.  We start by handing them the scissors and then teach them to go and get the scissors on their own.  

Some things to think about...

• At your next team meeting, or on your own, come up with a list of all of the times throughout the day when your student relies on the adults in the room to do something for them.  Or when the adult automatically does something for the student, eg., get the student a pencil to complete a worksheet.  Take frequency data on this to help you and your team realize how many times this is actually happening.
• Identify times of the day when you want your students to be completely independent, then identify the skills that are necessary to achieve this.
• Do you have visual reminder strips posted in your classroom?  Do you have enough?  Think beyond personal care skills such as washing hands.  Do you have reminder strips for completing a worksheet?  For turning on a computer and logging in?

How do you teach your students to be independent?  What are your biggest challenges?  I'd love to know!  Thanks for stopping by!

Reading Comprehension & Autism: Where to Start?

Literacy is one of the most important skills we teach as SPED teachers.  Reading is fundamental for further learning in all other skill areas.  Yet, teaching literacy skills to students who have autism can be very challenging.  Because autism affects language, this can have a strong effect on reading comprehension. But this is not to say that reading and autism are mutually exclusive.

While language is often strongly affected by autism, this does not mean that reading and autism cannot work together. It only means that autism presents a unique set of challenges for a child, as well as for parents and teachers.  Children with autism, including nonverbal children, learn to read and comprehend better with programs that capitalize on their strengths.

Research has found that people with autism are relatively better at visual-spatial processing. This may explain why children with autism may struggle with verbal instruction or the decoding of written text, but thrive with instruction that incorporates visual accompaniment, particularly visuals that correspond seamlessly with the text with which they are engaging.  Structured reading programs like this Strength-Based Approach by Olewein and Broun, use visual accompaniments to help children with autism read and comprehend.

If a teacher is confused about a student's ability to comprehend, he or she should give the students many ways to demonstrate understanding.  Using the Strength-Based Approach has allowed me to build comprehension from the very beginning of instruction by pairing words with pictures and thereby giving the words meaning to my students with autism.  It is important to note that this approach uses ABA teaching methods, specifically, discrete trial training.  Once my students can select words within an array, I then make sure that they can pair the words with the pictures and objects they represent.  It is important to use a variety of materials to ensure generalization, so I use a variety of pictures and objects and also teach and test using the SMART Board and iPads.

Once students can match words with pictures and objects, we then move to teaching them to make and comprehend sentences.  We teach them to make sentences initially, by matching the words to pictures in an order that form a logical sentence.  When teaching students to read sentences, we start by reading it to them while having them point to each word in the sentence.  Then we have them read it aloud, if they are vocal, and silently if they are non-vocal.  To teach comprehension at this phase, we have students match words and sentences to pictures.

The second phase of teaching to sentence comprehension involves using sentences that contain an instruction that the student then performs after reading the sentence.  In this teaching phase, after reading the sentence, we prompt the student to complete the correct action.  Again, this is done using a variety of materials and modalities.

The next step in teaching reading comprehension uses short story passages.  In this phase of teaching, the student is learning how to answer questions about material they have read.  Again, the use of visual prompts is necessary at this step to assist the student in answering questions about the passage.  In this phase of teaching, it is important to use passages that contain words the student knows how to read and that only contain 2 or 3 sentences.  I also like to use materials that contain prompt fading as in the worksheets below.  By providing a selection of answers from which the student chooses the correct answer, it reduces the amount of effort it takes for the student to demonstrate understanding.  Remember, answering questions about passages they have read involves, decoding, recall and the communication skills necessary to convey information about what they have read, all of which are difficult for students with autism.

From this phase of teaching, you can continue to expand the length of the passages and the complexity of the questions.  I will be exploring these issues in an upcoming blog post next month.  In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this approach and what strategies you use to teach reading comprehension in your classroom.  Leave me a comment below or shoot me an email!

Thanks for stopping by!

   

Set Up A Stellar DTT Station in Your Classroom

Discrete trial training, or DTT, is an integral part of my classroom.  As one of the major teaching practices of Applied Behaviour Analysis, we teach most new skills through DTT.  Discrete Trial Training (DTT) is a method of teaching in simplified and structured steps. Instead of teaching an entire skill in one go, the skill is broken down and “built-up” using discrete trials that teach each step one at a time.   There is a clear beginning and end to each trial with prompts and antecedents kept simple and at an appropriate level. By

breaking down tasks into short manageable trials and using suitable prompts and guidance ‘DTT maximizes children’s success and minimizes their failures’ (Smith, 2001).  I am not going to go into great detail about what DTT is, but thought it would be helpful to provide some background information.

The Basic Concept

It might be helpful to initially think of DTT as a series of “teaching attempts” with each “attempt” called a “discrete trial” or sometimes just a “trial”. As an example, say we’re teaching a child, Jane, to learn to identify the colours red and blue by asking her to point to red or blue cards placed on her desk. Each teaching attempt or “discrete trial” might be scripted (structured) like this: 

Discrete Trial One

1. Teacher places one red and one blue card on the table in front of Jane
2. The teacher then says “point to red”
3. Jane responds by pointing to the red card
4. The teacher would say “That’s right! Great job!”
5. There would be a very short pause before a new discrete trial would begin

Discrete Trial Two

1. Teacher places one red and one blue card on the table in front of Jane
2. The teacher then says “point to blue”
3. Jane responds by pointing to the blue card
4. The teacher would say “You’re right! That’s Brilliant!”
5. There would be a very short pause before a new discrete trial would begin

Within DTT, each trial has a very specific set of steps that are clearly defined and scripted, and always need to be followed. Clearly defined steps allow the instructors to identify what specific teaching methods are working and which ones are not.

Steps for Implementation: 

Step 1: Deciding What to Teach 

Effective DTT sessions are well thought out, fast-paced, and highly organized.  Before you can begin to implement DTT in your classroom, it is essential that you decide what you are going to teach.  Before I choose the skills we are going to teach, I complete an assessment.  We use the Hawaii Early Learning Profile Assessment and Curriculum in my classroom, but other common assessment/curriculum tools are the ABLLS-R, the VB-MAPP, or STAR, among others.  Once the assessment is complete, teachers decide which of the learner's IEP objectives will be taught using a DTT approach.  Some learning objectives are better taught using DTT than others. Objectives that involve fine and gross motor skills, language, recreation, self care, cognitive, and academic skills are very often appropriate for DTT. 

Step 2: Setting-up the Data Collection System

One of the defining characteristics of a high quality discrete trial training program is the collection of trial by trial data. When setting up the DTT instruction plan, it is important to have data sheets specifically designed for the skill being taught.  I like to use these data sheets from Christine Reeve's Book, Taming the Data Monster.  

These data sheets contain all of the information needed for the instructor to run the program, take the data and graph it all on sheet.  You can also customize them to meet your specific needs.  A good data sheet includes a brief description of the skill being taught, teaching phases, prompt level, mastery criteria, scoring code and space to add comments/notes.

Step 3: Designating Location(s)

Selecting an appropriate location or locations for teaching is a very important part of planning DTT instruction. When the team meets either during the IEP meeting or separately, it might be helpful to generate a list of possible locations where the teaching can take place. Each location should be carefully examined to determine the advantages and disadvantages of that location. Considerations might include: a quiet place without too many distractions, sufficient space for instruction and for breaks, and adequate lighting and seating.  

In my classroom, our DTT area has two large tables which can each accommodate 2 students and 1 instructor at a time.  The area is defined by shelving units which section it off from other areas in the classroom.  Teaching materials are within reach and there is enough space for the students move around for movement breaks or to perform gross motor movements if required by their programs. On the whiteboard, I have posted visual reminders for the staff with tips on how to run effective DTT sessions.   

Step 4: Gathering Materials

Having the correct materials will make your program easier and more efficient to run.  Below is a list of materials that will be helpful in setting up your program:  

• Binders for data collection and team communication 
• Pencil case with pencils, pens, ruler and calculator (for data binder)
• Variety of tangible reinforcers (edible and non-edible)
• Choice board of possible reinforcers based on preference assessment for those students using a token economy system 
• Instructional materials (flashcards, flip books, real life objects, scissors, crayons, dry erase markers for teaching fine motor skills) 
• Bins for storage which can be clearly labeled 

In my classroom, we store small teaching materials, such as flashcards, flipbooks, and small manipulatives in shoebox bins.  These bins take up little space and also allow us to take the materials to another area of the classroom or school if needed.  We also store edible reinforcers or small toys used as reinforcers and token boards, choice boards and first/then boards as appropriate for the student based on their schedule of reinforcement.  On the lids of these bins, I post some information about the student for staff to reference.  It includes information about their preferred reinforcers and schedule of reinforcement, their current learning goals, mastered skills, excessive behaviours and information about how staff should respond to these behaviours.

 For larger teaching materials, we store those in the large bins in the shelving units in this area or in letter sized poly zip pockets I got at Costco.  All the teaching materials are labelled according the HELP goal number, along with a brief description of the goal.  This assists staff with quickly locating the teaching materials they need for each goal.  This information is also on each data sheet for the student.  The student's data binders are kept just below their DTT Bin on the shelving unit.  That way staff can grab both at the same time.

Step 5: Delivering the Trials 

 There are 6 possible parts to a discrete trial: 

1. Antecedent
2. Prompt
3. Response
4. Consequence for a correct response
5. Consequence for an incorrect response
6. Inter-trial interval

Authors generally state that there are 5 parts to a discrete trial (e.g. Malott & Trojan-Suarez, 2006; Smith, 2001) because the consequences (my parts 4 and 5 above) are usually regarded as just one part. I have separated them into two because I think it’s helpful to show that there are two possible consequences and that both need to be clearly defined.  A seventh step could be also be added; that being data collection.  After the response is given and/or prompted, the student's response should be immediately recorded on the data sheet.

When conducting DTT sessions, it is important to intersperse easy and hard tasks to keep students engaged.  This is why we also store maintenance materials in this area as well.  Maintenance refers to mastered to mastered tasks or skills.  Storing these materials in this area also allows you to modify teaching if your student is having a rough day by lowering demands and also provides some "fillers" while you get organized to run the next program.

When using flipbooks for teaching, the natural prompt would be a gestural one, however if you want the student to focus on the stimuli and not your finger, I would suggest using a visual prompt.  It can be challenging to find the correct visual prompt, which is usually a flashcard, while running the trials and keeping the student on task.  I have found that it's easier to have all of the visual prompts velcroed to one page.  That way, you can quickly find the prompt you need and keep up the pace of instruction.  This is also effective when using flashcards, plus you can use this as a matching task!

I hope you have found this information useful and would love to hear how you organize DTT sessions in your classroom!  Do you have any brilliant tips to share?  I'd love to hear them!  Drop a comment below or email me!  Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!