Preschool Language and Skills

Elementary Curriculum and Training » Preschool Language and Skills

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Perspective: Direct Instruction.
Its authors are committed to maintaining a high level of scholarly ethics.

Created: 2011 01 25 | Percent completed:

What is Preschool Language and Skills?

Preschool Language and Skills is a teacher/parent guide for teaching children with autism and developmental disabilities language and school readiness skills at the preschool level.

Each guide section is numbered and can be taught or reviewd in one day. Some sections also contains scripted instructions for the parent, teacher, or therapist. Many sections contain workbook pages and activities.

What gets taught?

This program will focus on Pairing, Manding, Tacting, and Intraverbals for language skills up to the age of 4-5.

Early Learner - Pairing

In the very beginning, it will look like much time is spent playing. This is not playing but Pairing. The focus is on early play and social skill development by teaching the child that it is fun to interact with parents, teachers, therapists, and peers along with fun items and activities.

Natural Environment Teaching (NET) and Manding

The focus will slowly morph to teaching functional communication skills. Here, you will teach the student that communication makes their world better. We do this by developing manding skills by either shaping verbal or sign language in order for the child to communicate requests of items or activities. In this way, the student learns that talking, signing, or exchanging pictures (PECS) is fun and provides immediate benefit. These skills are often present in 1-2 year old children but must be discretely (directly) taught in most children with autism.

Natural Environment Teaching (NET) takes advantage of a more loose teaching environment (generally not a table with chairs). In NET, you can find more items and activities to motivate and reinforce the student. You are able to take advantage of a larger array of learning environments: kitchen, backyard, playground, store. Although it may look like teaching is taking place in a haphazard way, there is always a plan with reinforcers at hand.

Intensive Teaching/Discrete Trial Training (DTT) and Echoics, Imitation, and Tacting

The focus then morphs to gaining and maintaining instructional control and compliance. Often at a table with cards, objects, puzzles, and toys, students learn to respond quickly and accurately to teacher directed demands for increasingly longer periods of time.

By pairing reinforcers with low preferred activities/toys and using errorless teaching (don't let the student guess at answers) a therapist is able to build the number of demands (finishing a puzzle, identifying flashcards), the effort of the response, and the complexity of the task(s). It is here where tacting (labeling and identifying) is mostly taught. The student tacts (labels) items because he or she can see, hear, small, taste, or feel something.

Echoic - repeating what someone else says - you say it because someone else says it

Imitation - repeating someone else's motor movements - you move because someone else moved the same way

Listener Responding/Receptive - following directions - you do what someone else asks you to do

Advanced Natural Environment Teaching (NET)

The focus moves to teaching conversation skills and generalizing skills learned in intensive teaching. The student learns to ask and answer "Wh" questions, expand sentence structure and length with adjectives, adverbs, and discuss items and activities without them being present. These skills all fall under the Intraverbal skills. At some point, the student can answer "How was school today."

Social Skills with Peers

Students will need to learn to give and take in discussions, sharing or objects, and cooperative groups with peers.

Academic and Group Skills

A focus on teaching basic and advanced academic skills for home schooling or schooling in the classroom. Often Direct Instruction materials by SRA are used to teach reading, math, writing, and spelling.

Who is the teacher?

A teacher is anyone who interacts with the student with disabilities. One parent doesn't have to be the only teacher - you can also recruit the other parent, grandparents, aunts/ucles, church members, neighbors, high schoolers, and even college students. Sometimes you can find volunteers. You may also be able to hire individuals ($8-$15 per hour) from your local college, university, even high school. You’ll need to train everyone, regularly supervise each therapist via video taping or sitting in on sessions, and ensure quality control through regular team meetings.

Do I need a consultant?

It is highly advisable to hire a consultant to review the student's progress and ensure appropriate teaching procedures. A team (therapists and parents) can lose valuable teaching time by getting off track.

Finding qualified professionals can be difficult. It is best to find a Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) or, in the minimum, a Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst (BCaBA). However, because of the lack of certified professionals and the high demand for ABA consultants, some families may be forced to go out of state for ABA expertise. Another way to bring in experts is by banding together to bring an outside consultant for periodic visits and share the associated travel expenses. Email listserves are one way families can get in touch with each other to hire a consultant.

According to Association of Behavior Analysts, it is recommended that at minimum consultants:

Hold a master’s degree in psychology, special education or related field;
Have two years of experience using ABA to treat autism in young children;
Provide customized program design and monitoring;
Provide training of line therapists. Expert consultation is essential to successful ABA programs.

Authors and contributors

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