My November Newsletter - includes tips for parents!

Hi Everyone!

I just finished up a newsletter to send out to my parents this Friday and thought I would share it! This week we had an open house and parents were asking about ways that they can implement strategies we use in the classroom at home. I am so excited that parents want to learn more about ABA! Having families involved in early intervention is one of the best ways to both increase and generalize the skills that we are teaching our students.

I always try to emphasize how important discrete trial teaching is when I give tips on how to use ABA in the home. This kind of approach to teaching skills works for all people, not just children with autism! However, when trying to research what discrete trial teaching is, it can be very overwhelming when you aren't familiar with ABA terminology. I crafted a simple chart and found a Google image to illustrate how ABC (antecedent, behavior, consequence) works. I am hoping that this is helpful for my parents and that it will be of use to my readers as well!

The download is a Word document so that you can edit it to meet your needs. Enjoy!

Here is the download!

Know Your Role!

Not exactly accurate for the speducator type but alas, there is no "what I think I do" meme out there for us! Who wants to take the lead on that?

A co-worker passed on a document today with job descriptions of the most involved people in your preschool autism classroom. At least for our school system, this is the list of people who are in direct contact with the students on a very regular basis and what their roles are. The list is short and very simple but gives an overview of who does what in the classroom. There are many other things I would like to add to the list but those are specific to my classroom and I think that anyone could take this list and adapt it to what best meets their needs.

I also think it's important to note that the responsibilities of the instructional assistant are also 100% the teacher's responsibilities. For example discrete trial teaching, data taking, ...and toilet training/diapering (because we don't want them to have all the fun, now do we! :-).

Make sure you go over these responsibilities with the staff that work directly with your students so that everyone is on the same page about what is expected of one another. You should also note particular things that you want to see happen in your classroom that they might not know otherwise. This will facilitate a smoother working environment!

DOWNLOAD HERE!