Autism Awareness Day Blog Hop

Although the entire month of April is Autism Awareness Month, April 2nd is known as World Autism Awareness Day! So a few of my blogger pals and I decided to get together and throw a blog hop your way to celebrate Autism and increase awareness!  

I'm super excited to share some tips with you today about how I design programming for my students with Autism and my students with other Intellectual Disabilities. 

If you are not familiar with this book, it is a must have in any Autism classroom, or any other self-contained classroom for that matter! Although written for Autism, don't let that confuse you! I have found it to be very beneficial for all of my students with intellectual disabilities. It is researched-based, a systematic approach, very well-written, well thought out, detailed, and so EASY to follow and implement. It is my classroom bible! 

I'd love to show you how "A Work in Progress," can be a valuable tool in your classroom."A Work in Progress," edited by Dr. Ron Leaf and Dr. John McEachin of Autism Partnership, is a tool for teaching behavioral strategies and improving behavior of children with Autism. In addition, it provides a curriculum for programming and individualizing discrete trial teaching lessons with your students. This is extremely helpful for me as I live in a rural area and have very little local or on campus support. I do not teach an "Autism Program," but rather teach a self-contained class with a wide range of disabilities that can include students with Emotional Disturbance, health impairments, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and Autism. It varies from year to year, and this year I only have one student with Autism in my class. Let me just tell you, I have made tremendous progress with all of my students with Intellectual Disabilities using this book!

Here is a peek at the Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) programs offered in this book.  

Currently, I am using 4 of these programs with my one student; Functions, Asking Questions, Conversation-intermediate, and Joint Attention.

Here is a look at the Joint Attention program. Each program lists the objectives, prompts, entry criteria (what they should know prior to beginning this program), mastery criteria that includes generalization, the procedure, and easy to follow phases that guide you through an explicit and systematic teaching approach. 

 My student had already mastered phase 1, so as you can see I started my student on phase 2. She is currently on phase 4 after mastering phase 2 and 3. It depends upon your student(s) as to which phase you will begin each of them on. 

Here is a look at one of the other programs my student is currently working on.

This program has 10 phases as you can see below. My student is currently on phase 3. Each phase uses a systematic approach for teaching the skill. 

Most of the time we typically know where our students are and need to be. But, if you're unsure of what phase to start your student on; maybe your student is new; there is a curriculum assessment included in the book that allows you to assess and record their skills for each phase within each program.

And planning for your assistants has never been easier with the tools provided in this book! This sheet is all I need to ensure my assistants know the programs, the expectations, and are implementing my student's programs with fidelity. This keeps us all on the same page and consistent.

Here is how I use this page and set this up for my assistants so that they can be self-directed and run all of the programs themselves.   

 I create a binder for each student I use "A Work in Progress" with. I use just a one-inch binder. There's not much to it. Each program has just two pages in the binder. Page one is the page you see above. It is the program description and details. My assistants can refer to this page and see the procedure expected for teaching the skill, what they should say and expect the student to say, prompts, and any additional comments I may want to share with them. 

The second page for each program in the binder is the data recording sheet. So my assistants can quickly and easily read the program description, procedures, Sd, and detailed information on my individualized programming; implement and record the trials on the sheet included in the binder.

 I place the program description page in a sheet protector and the DTT recording sheet behind that (not in a sheet protector). I love these color coded edge sheet protectors!! It allows you to easily divide and separate each program without the need to add colored paper dividers or label tabs. 

 You can see here my student has 4 programs going that I can easily flip through!

"A Work in Progress" is a road map that gives you the tools needed to plan an individualized program for your students with Intellectual Disabilities, as well as guides you in shaping common behaviors amongst these children. It is a research-based systematic approach that has been very effective in my classroom. It is also a great resource for parents to implement in the home. The phases and detailed program descriptions make programming, teaching, and IEP goal writing so simple and easy, you will soon be calling it your classroom bible as well!!! 

In honor of World Autism Awareness Day, I'm giving a hard copy of this book away! Enter below to win a copy! Open to U.S. residents only and will be shipped directly to the winner via Amazon! I hope this book and my tips will ease programming and DTT in your classroom and help your students with Autism be more successful! 

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Next up is "All Things Special Ed." Thanks for joining in on our blog hop! Keep spreading awareness of Autism and light it up blue this evening. 

Light it up Blue,