Lesson 3: Successful Teaching Planning and Preparation/Creating a Task Analysis/Prerequisite Skills Successful Teaching Planning and Preparation In this

is lesson, well teach you how to put all this stuff into practice and youll begin to actually build your teaching plan. As you move through this lesson, you will learn that planning is the key to successful teaching and that successful teaching can only result in successful learning. The first step in being a successful teacher is being sure that you have assessed your child thoroughly. One of the first tasks that well ask you to do in this lesson is to complete an assessment of your childs current skill levels. By doing this, you will be creating a baseline of the basic skills your child can perform. Youve already assessed your childs likes and dislikes when you created your reinforcer inventory, which as you recall will help you to motivate and give a paycheck to your child for their effort and hard work. In fact, you might already have an idea what skills you want to focus on. Finally, youll learn how to create a written teaching plan to help you stay on track when you teach. At this point you may be concerned about the thought of having to write a teaching plan. Well, one of the surest ways to have a teaching session fall apart is to get off track. By putting your teaching plan in writing, its more likely that youll be consistent and systematic in your teaching, which will result in faster and more consistent success for you and your child. Lets begin with going over the basic components of a good teaching plan. Once you have this information, youll get to learn how to build your teaching plan step-by-step, as we explain each component. You will need to define the specific skill youre going to teach your child. Remember, it has to be defined in observable and measurable terms. Then youll have to determine which teaching format and progress monitoring method youre going to use. Your first step is to determine some antecedents or things that will set the stage for learning. Youre going to need to create the best conditions possible for learning. Consider what environment youll be teaching in-is it appropriate for the skill being taught and is it free from as many distractions as possible? What materials are you going to need to teach the skill? Do they need to be adapted in any way to help the skill be easier to learn? Do you have the materials and reinforcers you need? Do you need to organize them for easy access? And, youre going to have to decide what transition cures to use to begin instruction, like the phrase; Its teaching time, or others that well talk about. Another key component is learning about and choosing the best prompting strategies to use for the skill to be taught. And, since kids and parents arent perfect, you will need to

plan how to correct errors and provide maximum positive behavioral support. Finally, because you want your child to use his newly acquired skills in all appropriate settings and situations, youll need to develop a plan for generalization. All of this may sound complicated, but dont forget; the ABA approach is very logical and based on common sense. This approach will quickly become second nature to you. Lets begin this process by helping you understand about the basic lesson formats associated with skills teaching. First, there is the sequential format. This is best used with skills that have many steps that are typically done in a consistent format (like hand washing). In this approach, you take several skills that you have taught, and hook them all together to form a sequence of responses. Think back to our hand washing example; we talked about all the individual skills involved, like reaching, turning, rubbing, etc., and how once theyre all put together they become the skill we call hand washing. This is the sequence of responses that were talking about. Most of the self help and life skills that youll be teaching your child will fall into this format. Many of these individual skills will be useful in many of the sequences youll be teaching. For example, once you teach your child to turn a faucet, that individual skill can be used for turning a puzzle piece to help it fit together with the others. Next, we have discrete trial format. This involves using direct instruction procedures to teach very specific or discrete skills. Discrete trial teaching is best used for skills like labeling things, academic concepts and discrimination skills like being able to tell green from blue. This type of format is most often associated with Intensive Behavioral Intervention (IBI) programs. These are the programs that often take place in the home with really young children that utilize tutors who provide instruction many hours per week. The Discrete trial format is not used to teach functional skills like dressing and hand washing, so we wont talk much more about it here, but you may decide to use this format at some point with your child, so a great resource for you to learn more about it is the Autism Internet Modules available at www.autisminternetmodules.org. On this website, you can look up a variety of evidence based practices for teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, including Discrete Trial Teaching. Lastly, there is the student-initiated teaching format. In this format, the environment or situation presents a natural opportunity for teaching. Teaching and learning occur within naturalistic settings and motivational contexts. We refer to this as incidental teaching, which weve talked about in an earlier lesson. This is where you simply capture your childs motivation or interest in something and turn it into a teachable moment. This format is perfect for teaching communication skills, social skills and certain play skills and concepts, but not so useful when teaching self-help skills. It requires that there is some intrinsic value in the task at hand, which is not often the case with things like toileting and dressing. This

approach requires that you as the teacher drop everything at a moments notice to catch your childs interest or that you plan for ways to set up motivating scenarios where you can provide your undivided attention. Some people will say, there is nothing incidental about incidental teaching because you really have to always be prepared to do it well. You can learn about incidental teaching at the Autism Internet Modules website as well. So, lets look a little closer at sequential teaching, which is most often the format used for teaching life skills. In the whole task sequential lesson format, the task or skill is taught in its entire sequence each time you teach. You maximize your use of prompting, including systematic fading of prompts. What kind of skills might this commonly is used for? Generally, this approach is used to teach self help skills where it is not feasible to repeat any of the steps in the task analysis in order to correct mistakes. For example, when toilet training, you cant really back up a step, you need to move through the chain of steps. Now, in the partial task approach, a portion of the task is presented and taught separately from the entire skill or routine. Once the individual portion of the task is mastered, it is plugged back into the more complex task. Commonly, this is how a routine is built. For example, you might teach your child to zip a zipper as one skill and then plug it into the more complex skill or routine called putting on your jacket. Just like when we talked about hand washing being several individual skills (remember, turning, rubbing, etc.) this concept is the same. The overall goal here is to teach prerequisite skills separately and then chain them together into a more complex skill. In fact, this is called chaining and when you utilize this approach, you can effectively and quickly teach your child a lot of meaningful and important skills. Quiz 1. True or False: Gathering baseline data is part of a process of assessing your child thoroughly. a. True b. False It is important to assess your child thoroughly and gather baseline data of the skills your child can perform. 2. Having a written teaching plan helps you to be what? a. Consistent and Systematic b. Confused c. More Appreciated d. More Entertaining

Having a written teaching plan will help you be a consistent and systematic teacher to your child. Your child will learn faster and you both will experience success. 3. As part of planning and preparation, you will need to create the best conditions for learning. In doing this, you are controlling as many of the __ as possible? a. Antecedents b. Consequences c. Rewards d. All of the above Part of planning and preparation includes creating the best conditions for learning. Controlling as many of the antecedents, consequences and rewards and possible will create a successful learning environment for your child. 4. A sequential teaching format is used when? a. Nothing else seems to work effectively b. Skill is immediately needed to teach another skill c. Skills have many steps done in a consistent format d. Trying to teach emotions A sequential teaching format is used when teaching skills that have many steps to be done in a consistent format. Individual skills that your child has already learned are hooked together to form a sequence of responses. 5. The Discrete Trials format is most often associated with what kind of programs? a. Intensive Behavioral Intervention programs b. All skills teaching situations c. School educational programs d. Programs that require medical assistance Intensive Behavioral Intervention programs are most often associated with the Discreet Trials format of teaching. It is best used to teach labeling, academic concepts and discrimination skills. 6. True or False: In the student initiated teaching format, the child determines when, where and how the teaching will occur. a. True b. False In the student initiated teaching format the environment or situation presents a natural opportunity for teaching and learning social, play and communication skills. 7. What format is used when a skill or task is taught in its entire sequence each time? a. Student Initiated format b. Naturalistic teaching format c. Whole task sequential format d. Teacher directed format

Whole task sequential format is used when a skill or task is taught in its entire sequence each time. It is generally used to teach self-help or vocational skills. 8. In the whole task format, you are maximizing your use of what? a. Prompting and fading b. Self regulation c. Systematic desensitization d. Data collection The whole task format maximizes the use of prompting and fading. This is generally used to teach self-help skills where it is not possible to repeat any of the steps in order to correct mistakes. 9. In partial task formatted teaching, a portion of the task is taught separately and then you do what with that portion? a. Wait for an opportunity to use it b. Categorize it for later use c. Allow your child to use it spontaneously d. Plug into a more complex task or routine Partial task formatted teaching teaches a portion of the task separately. You then take that learned or mastered skill and plug it into a more complex task or routine. 10. The partial task format is part of the process known as: a. Trial and error b. Chaining c. Strategic planning d. Continuous planning The partial task format is part of the process called chaining. By chaining together individually mastered skills, you teach a more complex skill. Hand washing is an example of a more complex skill that can be taught by chaining together several separately mastered skills.

Creating a Task Analysis Now you will begin to put into practice what youve learned. This will be a real opportunity for you to get some hands-on experience. At this point, we have begun to building your teaching plan, now youll get to create a specific component of your plan that outlines the steps you will follow. Remember the list of skills you made earlier in lesson 3? Well now you get to pick one of those to create a step-by-step breakdown of how that skill will look. Remember that is called a task analysis. Making use of a task analysis is actually a three step process. First, you create a task analysis, then you probe or assess to determine where your child is on each step, and then you begin to actively teach the skill based on the information you gather during your assessment. The benefits of doing the task analysis are many. It allows you to be consistent from teaching session to teaching session by following the same process and order each time. It will allow you to acknowledge all the steps within the task, many of which your child may already be able to do. Once you have the steps broken down, you will be able to better assess each step or component to determine what type of prompt your child needs in order to be successful. With a well written TA, you will ensure consistency of teaching across teachers too, so if you are not the only one working on the skill you can still ensure success. You know the old saying about too many cooks in the kitchen spoiling the soup? Well that is only if they are not following a recipe, so think of your task analysis as your recipe for successful teaching. So, the first question you have to ask your self is: Am I going to use a whole or partial task format? You should remember this from the previous lesson. But how do you decide which to use? After youve chosen the skill you skill you want to teach your child, you need to break it into component steps, which is the Task Analysis. After youve done this, you will be able to assess where your child is on each step or component. You will do this by probing where your child is on each step. This can be as simple as just asking your child to try the task. In the hand washing example you would simply state: Wash your hands and see what he or she does. You will then record how many or how much of each step they do and what type of help or prompts you must use to get them through the task steps. This assessment helps to clarify what you are going to need to actually teach. Once you know exactly where your childs abilities lie within the skill youve chosen, youll know whether you want to use a whole or partial task format. Well give you a quick refresher to help you understand. For whole task format, you begin by doing a Task Analysis of the entire skill or routine. Next you assess which of the steps he or she can already do by probing. On any

step he is unable to accomplish independently, think about the least intrusive or least physical prompt you can use to help them succeed in the skill or routine. We have not gone into detail on prompting yet, so just record what you had to do to get him or her through the skill to completion. If the skill has a lot of steps and it is clear that your child can hardly do any of them without a lot of help, you may want to chunk it up into a partial task format. With hand washing, for example, maybe you could just focus on pumping the soap, or using the towel to dry hands. Now, as we told before, every skill has many steps within it. Each step can be considered as a sub skill. As you begin to see weaknesses in the sub skills, youll be able to identify which sub skills you may want to address using the partial task teaching format. You may need to systematically teach several of these sub skills within any given task analysis. Just like in the whole task format, you start by assessing where your child is on the sub skill TA. Just like in the whole task format, you also need to determine the level of prompting needed to reach success. Remember, you want to know the least level of prompting needed. Frequently, parents will create a TA without actually going through the steps themselves and then realize theyve missed a crucial step once theyre in the middle of a teaching session. Clearly this is not the end of the world, but its always better to catch these things before we start to teach. Heres a quick trouble shooting tip if you do get to a point in a teaching session where you realize youve missed a step or possibly forgotten a pivotal item needed. If it is a missed or partial step that is the problem you can calmly motor your child through that step and keep going. By motoring, we mean physically helping them with the step. This motoring action is form of prompting, which we will discuss in lesson 7. If the problem is missing materials, just simply back up to the last step, and reinforce him/her for that step, and then end the teaching session. You can always come back in a little while once you take care of any roadblocks to success. Remember; dont try to have your child wait while you get something as this will result in a loss of focus and/or opportunity for your child to create some mischief. Hand washing is a fairly easy skill to break down into steps. Generally, most skills or routines are able to be broken down into simple steps. Of course, some skills have lots of steps and some have just a few. For example, this one had relatively few steps, but when you consider the skill of making a bed, there are a lot of steps.

Quiz 1. Why is a Task Analysis a helpful tool for teaching skills? a. A Task Analysis provides a way to figure out which steps your child is struggling with b. A Task Analysis provides a way to record your childs progress and the prompts you are using c. A Task Analysis provides a way to be consistent from day to day d. All of these are reasons why a task analysis is a helpful tool for skills teaching A task analysis provides a way to figure out which steps your child is struggling with, provides a way to record your childs progress and the prompts you are using and provides a way to be consistent from day to day. 2. How do you know where your child is on each step of the Task Analysis at Baseline? a. By probing or doing a pre-teaching assessment to look at the level of help your child needs before any formal teaching begins and writing that prompt on the task analysis by each step b. By asking your child what he or she can already do c. By guessing based on what you have seen your child do in the past d. By using a sibling to model or demonstrate the skill while your child watches and then asking your child what he or she can already do You can establish a Baseline of where your child is before you begin teaching a skill by writing down the type of prompt you needed to use or the level of help your child needs for each step of the task on your task analysis. 3. When assessing where your child is on a skill, how much of the skill should you provide assistance with? a. You should do the entire thing for your child since he or she cant do it yet b. Use the least amount of assistance needed and only after you have allowed your child to try the step on his/her own. Record the type and amount of help on your task analysis c. Dont help on any of the steps because you are assessing d. Before you assess any skill, you should first teach your child to ask for help When assessing, you should use the least amount of assistance needed to help with each step and only after you have allowed your child to try the step on his/her own. You should also record the type and amount of help on your task analysis so you have a Baseline of your childs performance before you begin formally teaching the skill. 4. True or False: Each step in a task analysis can have many steps within it. a. True b. False

You can usually break steps of skills down into smaller and smaller pieces, if necessary, in order to determine where your childs teaching/learning needs are. For example, Turn on Faucet can be broken down even smaller into steps like 1)With right hand reach toward faucet 2)Grasp faucet on top 3)Turn faucet to left. 5. True or False: A sub skill is the same as a routine. a. True b. False A sub-skill is a smaller segment or step of a larger skill or routine. For example, putting on shirt is a sub skill to a dressing routine. 6. A good way to avoid missing steps when creating your task analysis is to: a. Look it up on the internet b. Have the child do a run through and try to write down what he or she does while you observe c. Not worry, just fix-as-you-go d. Physically go through the steps yourself and write what you do in the order that you do it It can be helpful for you to walk through the steps yourself so you think about all of the small steps of doing the skill. As you go through the skill, write each step down for a task analysis. 7. How often should you revise your Task Analysis? a. Never, once it is made you should stick with it b. Daily to ensure youre on top of it c. Weekly, because you need to have a schedule and routine to be successful with using a task analysis d. You should revise your task analysis whenever you find steps that are missing or whenever you decide you need to break a step into smaller pieces to allow for better teaching You should revise your task analysis whenever you find steps that are missing or whenever you decide you need to break a step into smaller pieces to allow for better teaching. 8. A Behavioral Definition is one that a. Is accepted by your child b. Makes sense to you c. Is observable and easy to measure or count d. Applies only to problem behaviors A Behavioral Definition should describe the actions or steps that the child will do in a way that is observable and that is easy to measure or count. 9. Which of the following is a good Behavioral Definition? a. He will clean up his room b. He will pick up the toy with both hands and put it in the toy box c. He will do it right d. He will do it the best he can

It describes the behavior or action in a way that can be seen and is easy count or measure. This type of definition provides the best way to measure your childs progress on a skills teaching goal.

Prerequisite Skills In this lesson, were going to go into the whole notion of prerequisite skills. What is another name weve used for this? Sub skills, up until now, weve been focusing on giving you a foundation of knowledge, now youre getting to put that knowledge to work. Every skill you can think of to teach will be comprised of sub skills or prerequisite skills. These prerequisite skills are often basic, or core skills that will come into play in many skills that youre going to teach. But before you teach any skill, you need to determine the prerequisite skills needed and teach them first. Lets begin by defining what we mean by prerequisite skills. A prerequisite skill is any skill or ability that your child needs before he/she can complete the primary skill to be taught. So, think about walking as a skill; you would need to be able to stand before you could walk, so standing is a prerequisite skill for walking. Frequently a child is seemingly unable to learn a given task only because nobody had taught them the skills to actually perform the prerequisite skills. The simple task of washing your hands is comprised of multiple prerequisite skills. You need to be able to reach for the soap and the faucet; you need to turn the faucet on; your child will have to pull the towel off the rack; theyll have to tolerate soap and water on their hands, rub their hands together, use two hands at one time; look at their hands; possibly push, if thats the type of faucet you have; hold the soap; stand still while washing their hands and possibly be able to step up on to a stool and balance there. This can seem like an over whelming amount of skills that need to be taught, but all of these prerequisite skills have a place in many other skills youre going to teach as well. And many of the skills your child already has. When you encounter a skill that your child does not have, you know you have to teach it first. Many of the skills in this list are related to gross and fine motor skills and sequences. Depending on your situation, you may have the help of an Occupational Therapist that is already working on these skills. Ideally, they could support you in teaching the skills also so that learning can take place more quickly and in more situations and opportunities. The point were trying to make here is that these prerequisite skills may need to be taught independently before you can teach the skill youve chosen. Remember, prerequisite skills are skills that are needed before you can another skill.

Quiz 1. Every functional skill you can think of will be comprised of what? a. Sub skills b. Trouble c. Resistance d. Confusion A sub-skill is a smaller segment or step of a larger skill or routine. For example, putting on shirt is a sub skill to a dressing routine. Putting the shirt over your head is a sub skill involved in putting on a shirt. 2. Prerequisite skills are: a. Skills your child to be able to perform prior to tackling a specific skill b. Whether or not your child has the language to describe what you are doing c. Your childs IQ or mental age d. Things that your child is born with Some skills require that your child is able to perform other skills first. For example, in order to learn to eat with a spoon, your child has to have a prerequisite skill of grasping and holding an item with a fisted grasp for a period of 10-15 seconds. 3. Prerequisite skills might be best taught: a. Based on your childs IQ b. Early in the day c. First, before the target skill d. As you move through the Task Analysis It is often best to teach or practice a prerequisite skill before another skill that has many more steps. This allows for better success when the more complicated skill is taught. 4. When thinking about playing a game of catch, which of the following would likely be prerequisite skills? a. Pushing, pulling, lifting b. Turning, twisting, kicking c. Smiling, blowing, pointing d. Looking, holding, throwing In order to be successful at a game of catch, your child will need to have the skills of looking at the ball or person to throw the ball too, holding the ball and throwing the ball. 5. Doing a good job on teaching prerequisite skills is important because: a. It keeps your child busy b. They will be useful in many other skills that your child needs to learn c. It will make you feel good d. They take the place of other skills

Prerequisite skills, once learned, provide a foundation for many other functional skills. For example, once a child is able to hold an item in his hand using a fisted grasp, many skills can then be taught including eating with a spoon, a form, brushing hair, brushing teeth, etc.