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| Social Skills Groups Utilizing the Principals of Applied Behavior Analysis for Students with Autism. |
| Friday, May 23, 2008 |
| 10:00 AM–5:00 PM |
| Stevens 2 |
| Area: AUT; Domain: Applied Research |
| CE Instructor: Jill E. McGrale Maher, M.S. |
| JILL E. MCGRALE MAHER (McGrale and Associates), CHERYL J. DAVIS (Crossroads School for Children Consultant), JOSH PLAVNICK (McGrale and Associates), LINDA J. LOCKHART (McGrale and Associates) |
| Description: The recent increased diagnosis of Autism has rapidly inflated the demand for social skills training and instruction for children on the Autism spectrum. As a result, methods and strategies for teaching social skills that utilize the principles of applied behavior analysis have been developed. These programs have increased the opportunities for children with Autism to gain social behaviors that enhance peer interactions. However, clear and comprehensive programs are difficult to find that meet the needs of specific students, especially those designed to be taught in applied settings in small homogenous groups. Furthermore, available resources are often lacking in programs with strong procedural integrity; comprehensive skill assessment; instruction for the staff who will actually be implementing the programming; systematic teaching procedures and prompt fading strategies; repetitive learning opportunities; and clear, accurate data collection systems. This workshop will provide participants with a comprehensive model intended to teach a systematic method of designing, implementing, and evaluating homogenous social skills groups for children on the autism spectrum. Skills acquired will be generalizable across all age groups as participants will review the process from development of the social skills assessment, grouping students, writing lesson plans, running groups, designing data collections systems,, trainings staff, and evaluating progress. |
| Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to: 1. Identify skill domains and develop and an initial scope and sequence including behavioral definitions to create a social skills assessment. Participants will also leave with a format to expand on their Social Skills Assessment. 2. Create guidelines for constructing homogeneous groups. 3. Identify key components of a staff-training program. 4. Write a lesson plan for a group to include selection of appropriate activities for teaching skills 5. Create a format for teaching groups with empirically based group management techniques and interventions for addressing challenging behaviors. 6. Determine empirically based teaching techniques including prompting strategies and reinforcement systems. 7. Develop data collection systems that target up to three behaviors for individual students . 8. Develop a plan to teach strategies for generalization to family members of the students. 9. Promote the use of best practices and ethical standards into social skill groups. |
| Activities: - Didactic instruction - Role play - Development of lesson plans - Development of staff training program - Development of data collection procedures |
| Audience: Directors, supervisors and instructors of social skills for children with autism and related disabilities. |
| Content Area: Practice |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |