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Novel Applications of Behavior Analysis to Teach Typical Learners II |
Monday, May 30, 2016 |
2:00 PM–3:50 PM |
Regency Ballroom A, Hyatt Regency, Gold West |
Area: EDC; Domain: Service Delivery |
Chair: Kent Johnson (Morningside Academy) |
Discussant: Vicci Tucci (Tucci Learning Solutions, Inc.) |
CE Instructor: Kent Johnson, Ph.D. |
Abstract: This symposium addresses three challenges in teaching typical learners. The first challenge is increasing feedback to individual learners in large classrooms contingent on their specific performances. Two presentations address this challenge. In the first presentation, Erickson will describe an adaptation of Morningside Academy’s teacher-led delayed prompting procedures for students to use as an intervention in paired work with each other. In the second presentation, Reilly and Bohnen will describe a generalized peer coaching procedure for students to give feedback to each other, after both timed practice in reading and math, and paragraph writing. A second challenge in teaching typical learners is implementing evidence-based procedures with fidelity, given the relative novelty of implementing specific protocols in general education, as well as the complex environment of a large classroom. In the third presentation, Lewis will describe one school district’s journey to apply Implementation Science to improve procedural fidelity in reading instruction. A third challenge is teaching learners to cope with the conditioned aversive stimuli that arise from their individual histories of academic failure and challenges. In the last presentation, the Newsomes will describe an ACT-based strategy that they teach to learners to support flexible behaviors and reduce avoidance behaviors. |
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Teaching Children to Use Delayed Prompting Procedures to Coach a Peer’s Performance During Reading, Writing, and Math |
NICOLE ERICKSON (Morningside Academy), Kent Johnson (Morningside Academy) |
Abstract: We use a Delayed Prompting procedure to help our students answer questions that require them to apply reading, math and writing principles we have taught them, in new contexts. During instruction, the teacher asks questions and uses prompts to help the student give the correct answer. When a student makes an error, we do not call on another student to answer, we help the student identify correct their original answer to our question. We use a series of organizational, language, content, and definition prompts to improve their answers. Recently, the first author has taught students how to use delayed prompting to help one another. She will present a student-friendly delayed prompting procedure and recording tool that allows peers to identify the error being made, identify the correct answer, and determine what prompts will work to help their partner correct their errors. Students are able to identify and correct another student’s errors easier when they are partnered with a peer who performs similarly to them. We partner middle level performers with other middle performers, or middle performers with high performers. Videos of teacher-led and student-led delayed prompting procedures will also be presented. |
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Peer Coaching: Increasing Active Behaviors in Reading and Writing Fluency and Composition Writing Tasks |
JENNIFER REILLY (Morningside Academy), Bryon Bohnen (Morningside Academy), Kent Johnson (Morningside Academy) |
Abstract: Well meaning educators often overuse prompts with their learners and decrease both the learner’s opportunity and the learner’s responsibility to engage in the learning process. Transferring the responsibility from an adult to the child is the main premise in Solving Behavior and Learning Problems of Children (Ozer, 1980). Ozer defines responsibility in part, as continuing a dialogue between adult and child. Ozer’s principle of Degrees of Responsibilities is an underlying concept used to operationally define target behaviors included in the Levels of Active Behaviors Tracking Sheet (LAB Sheet) designed by Jenni Reilly at Morningside Academy, 2007. Underlying components for the different phases of learning from acquisition to adduction are placed on a continuum and include the degree or level a child initiates and gives a correct unprompted response. This presentation, will describe how Morningside Academy uses the LAB sheet as a tool for guiding peer coaching transactions in precision teaching and composition editing sessions. Students engage in taking turns being a performer and monitor and apply the repertoires of Problem Solver and Active listener defined in Learn to Reason with TAPS: A Talk Aloud Problem Solving Approach (Robbins, 2014). |
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Utilizing Implementation Science Within an MTSS Framework to Improve Teacher Instruction and Learner Reading Outcomes |
SONIA M. LEWIS (Michigan's Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative) |
Abstract: Reading research indicates that 90-95% of all students can achieve literacy levels at or approaching grade level. Furthermore, we have research that tells us what evidence-based practices will produce better reading outcomes for learners. Yet, nearly half of American fourth graders have not achieved a minimal level of reading fluency. Knowing what works does not guarantee improved student learning outcomes. The gap from research to practice needs to be filled by high quality implementation, or a specified set of activities designed to put into practice an activity or program. The goal of implementation is to have teachers use innovations effectively. To accomplish this, high-fidelity practitioner behavior must be created and supported. The field of Implementation Science, which is based on the concepts and principles of Applied Behavior Analysis, is the how to create hospitable environments in districts and schools where strong leadership, solid organizational structures, and educators with the necessary competencies to deliver evidenced-based practices becomes routine practice. This presentation will describe one school districts journey to improve teacher instruction, and thus learner reading outcomes utilizing Implementation Science within a Multi-Tier System of Supports (MTSS) framework. |
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"I Hate School, My Brain Is Broken, and My Teachers Are Jerks": Strategies for Undermining Language-Based Barriers to Academic Progress |
DONNY NEWSOME (Fit Learning), Kendra B. Newsome (Fit Learning), Staheli Meyer (University of Nevada, Reno & Fit Learning) |
Abstract: For struggling learners, features of the academic context may come to function as conditioned aversives. The environment is smattered with letters, words, numbers and symbols, requiring sufficient academic skills to navigate successfully. When these skills are lacking, the resulting avoidance behavior has considerably different manifestations in verbal learners when compared to animal learning-based avoidance paradigms; there is no lever press to terminate aversive stimulation, and physical escape is often unavailable. Whereas physical or mechanical escape is futile, psychological escape is possible. Behaviors like arguing, giving up, changing the subject, cheating, procrastinating and �checking out�, emerge as the dominant forms of avoidance. Verbally mediated avoidance can persist even when conditions under which the repertoire was established are gone. A student whose reading skills have vastly improved may still resist reading. Exercises informed by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT) can help students overcome language-based barriers to progress. Applying Precision Teaching's (PT) measurement and pinpointing, we can produce accelerations of academic skills while producing decelerations of avoidance behaviors. In this presentation we will demonstrate how PT can be integrated with these approaches, and curricula can be developed to support mindful and flexible behaviors in academic settings. |
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