Social Skills

Social skills is one of the most difficult concepts to teach individuals because it requires a mechanism that many individuals with disabilities lack - reading other people's social cues. As a result, many individuals either do not generalize the skills they have been taught or they use them inappropriately. When this occurs, it is called a performance deficit - a person has the necessary social skills needed to perform socially appropriate behaviors, but does not use them or does not use them at socially appropriate levels.

I worked with a student a few years ago who was 5 years old at the time. He used to love Barney the dinosaur, so we taught him to ask students if they wanted to play with his figurines. He would ask "Wanna play Barney with me?" I was asked to work on a different case and did not see the child again until he was 8 years old. I was observing him in the classroom and saw him go up to a student and ask "wanna play Barney with me?" The teacher was thrilled at the fact that he had maintained his social skills throughout the years. What do you guys think about this situation? Does this student have a performance deficit or has he mastered his social skills?

Visual Prompts

Visual prompts have assisted some of my students to learn the skill of addition. In order to teach comprehension of this skill, I allowed my students to add two numbers using manipulatives. After this skill was mastered, the students were taught to add using a number line. These visual cues have supported my students in the process of addition and virtually guaranteed success, which is a powerful motivator. Hopefully, my students will begin to memorize these addition facts to increase fluency.

How do you use visual supports in your instruction?

An Advantage of Community- Based Instruction

Community-Based Instruction is instruction that is carried out outside the confines of the classroom. Students either walk or take public transportation to travel to a nearby grocery store, restaurant, convenience store, etc.. and apply skills that they have learned within a classroom environment. This is a clear example of training using sufficient exemplars. The behavior of making a purchase is not always performed in exactly the same way in exactly the same place. Students need to be provided with sufficient lessons and examples to generalize the skill of making a purchase. Student store in a classrom is one way of teaching this skill; however, performing this skill in a real life situation allows for generalization. The community is the most ideal place of instruction since it also prepares them for the realities of daily living.

RtI and Behavior

I spent Friday at an inservice on RtI and behavior. The women who did the presentation are from San Bernadino. The gave a lot of good information and also a website with forms and ideas that can be used in a classroom, school wide or district wide. The website is: www.modelprogram.com. Everyone should check it out, it may not seem worth looking at unless you are in classroom, but if I had know about this website before I started teaching, I would have had a much better start to the year.

Self Management and students with Autism

I found it interesting to note that in chapter 11 there was a breakdown of the effectiveness of self management with students with severe disabilities. This made me think of students I have worked with who have autism. To me, self management would be quite successful. I have had students that were fascinated with time, which tells me they would be great at monitoring how long it would take for them to complete a task or how long they must stay on task. Often these students would remind me of what they were supposed to do and when, so I say we should be taking advantage of these strengths within our students with autism. I have been told by my superiors that many children with autism want to follow "the rules" and gain a lot from structure. If we could work with students to have them create and be responsible for their own aspects of structure, this could be very useful. However the down side I see is a student becoming upset when getting only 4 points instead of the 5 points he wanted. So teaching some flexibility is also important, and focusing on a range of appropriate behavior and not just one possible way to be successful. Do any of you have any thoughts on this subject? Autism is definitely one of those areas we will most likely deal with and brainstorming solutions now can always help us in the future.

Final Review

Basically, you'll need to know concepts and issues that were addressed in the SPED 553 course AFTER the midterm exam...understanding that some concepts were covered BEFORE and AFTER the midterm...so, they will be included in the final exam.

Be knowledgeable of the following:

* Positive and negative reinforcement
* Punishment
* primary and secondary reinforcers
* schedules of reinforcement
* Stimulus control
* Generalization
* Elements of a contract
* Prompts
* Differential schedules of reinforcement (DRA, DRI, DRO, DRL)
* Social Skills (Performance vs. Skill deficits)
* Given a case,

• know how to identify the problem behavior using appropriate terms,
• select data collection systems,
• analyze data, determine if beh. is performance or skill deficit,
• develop appropriate strategies,
• identify and make recommendations for changes in the ecology/environment,
• develop a self-recording system, and
• teach student to self-reinforce.

I will see you all sometime next week...and if I don't see you, have a great summer!

Jose Luis

substitute teacher help

I have recently ended a long term subsitute teaching assignment (6 mos.) for a teacher on medical leave. I now find myself working in different classrooms every day. I encounter many different students with many different issues and behaviors. Most of the time I don't know the students and sometimes I don't even know their names. Most of the time there are no serious behavior problems and if there are I just send them to the office. Even though there are usually no serious behavior problems many student could have improved behavior and students who may have behavior issues could be kept from escalating to that point. I try to use positive reinforcement as much as possible in the form of verbal praise. Does anyone have any creative ideas about how to manage student behavior for a short period of time when you do not know the students?