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| Preparing for Adulthood: Skill Assessment and Life Skills Programming for Young Adults With Autism |
| Friday, May 23, 2014 |
| 4:00 PM–7:00 PM |
| W175a (McCormick Place Convention Center) |
| Area: AUT/DDA; Domain: Service Delivery |
| CE Instructor: Elizabeth Martineau, Ed.S. |
| ELIZABETH MARTINEAU (Nashoba Learning Group), STEPHANIE DANIELS (Nashoba Learning Group), JESSICA TILLEY (Nashoba Learning Group), KELLEY WARD (Nashoba Learning Group) |
| Description: Individuals with moderate to severe autism who have received quality ABA programming generally develop a strong repertoire of skills. As those students age, it is critical that programming be geared toward building those skills into routines that will allow them to be as successful as possible as adults. Although there is a substantial body of research to assist in teaching early learners, there is significantly less documented work to assist practitioners in designing functional programming for older students who still require individualized ABA instruction. At Nashoba Learning Group (NLG), we have developed a curriculum for teaching vocation and life skills that has allowed our students to significantly increase their functional skills and independence. Our curriculum utilizes well researched ABA techniques, such as task analyzed instruction, incidental teaching, discrete trial teaching, and stimulus fading to build repertoires of skills essential to success in adulthood. This workshop will review NLG's Life Skills Inventory assessment and curriculum and describe how we use the assessment to identify skills to target. We will compare patterns of student scoring on the assessment by age category and compare performance when students are 22 with ability to participate in adult program activities. We will look in depth at two skill areas in part 2: food preparation skills (for employment and as life skills) and community job placement skills. We will present task analyses and demonstrate how to modify teaching procedures based on students' varying skill levels, including multiple case studies of students performing at different levels as well as task selection for two students with different profiles at a community job placement. |
| Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this workshop, the participant will be able to (1) design integrated vocation and life skills programming for teenagers with autism, (2) assess current student performance in a variety of skill areas, (3) create learning objectives for students for vocation and life skills, (4) teach food preparation skills using task analyzed instruction, (5) match community job placement tasks to individuals in a food service establishment, (6) adapt teaching procedures to students' varying skill levels and supervision needs, and (7) complete a portion of NLG's vocation and life skills assessment for a presented student. |
| Activities: Participants will engage in a variety of activities throughout the workshop. We will begin with an overview of NLG's vocation and life skills curriculum and assessment tool. Participants will watch a video of a student completing vocational skills and will complete the corresponding portion of NLG's task analysis and then translate that into an item on the vocation and life skills assessment. We will review relative scores on the assessment instrument for NLG students and adult program members by age level and for adults based on relative emphasis of their school programming and the skill area of grocery shopping; participants will discuss how to adapt the procedures for students of varying skill levels. Participants will receive a copy of the assessment tool and instructions for completing the instrument. |
| Audience: This workshop is designed for licensed psychologists, BCBA level teachers and clinical directors, as well as program coordinators. Presenters will assume that participants are familiar with a variety of ABA techniques and with individualized curriculum design for students up through young adulthood. Participants should have a strong interest in developing individualized programs for children, teenagers, and young adults with autism that result in the students achieving independence on core life skills and work readiness. |
| Content Area: Practice |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |
| Keyword(s): Lifeskills Inventory, Lifeskills Training, Vocational Training, Young Adults |