April 6: Tips for parents for home learning

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to link you to another great blog post from the Autism Helper website that lists 5 tips for parents to support home learning: https://theautismhelper.com/focus-on-five-tips-for-parents-for-home-learning/

It talks about how to:

• create a schedule
• make rules for learning time
• motivate your child
• use simple teaching strategies (like "I do, we do, you do" and "errorless learning")
• practice life skills

In speaking with you last week, it sounds like most (if not all of you) are using daily schedules with your child. That's great! And I love how in the above blog post the writer reminds us that our schedules don't have to be fancy - they can simply be quick drawings and words on a scrap piece of paper! So remember there's no pressure to print off colour visuals or laminate your schedules. Do what works for you!

I also wanted to highlight the information given in the above blog about errorless learning. In our classroom, my education assistants and I refer to the "prompt hierarchy" when teaching our students new skills to incorporate errorless learning techniques. As shown in the picture below, the most invasive/highest level of prompt is a full physical prompt (i.e., help child complete a puzzle with hand-over-hand prompting to put pieces into correct holes). The least invasive/lowest level of prompt is a visual prompt (i.e., help child complete a puzzle by simply showing them a picture of the completed puzzle). When first being introduced, a student may need full physical prompts to complete the puzzle. Over time, prompting is faded, and the student may only need gestural prompts, then verbal prompts, and then they can eventually do the puzzle independently (without prompts). Teaching new skills in this way reduces frustration for students, allows them to practice the skill the correct way (rather than making an error and having to "un-learn" that error), and therefore decreases task-avoidant behaviours (i.e., wanting to stop doing the puzzle because it's too hard or they keep doing it wrong).

Check out the following video that gives some examples of what errorless learning looks like:

I know you are all just parents - not therapists - but I want to share the successful strategies we use at school with your children in the hopes that they may make things easier for you at home! Trying to put on a therapist or teacher hat at home with your child may not be easy; lots of times our students associate "work" with their at-home therapists or with school. So take it easy on yourself if your child is not responding well when you try to pull out the work bin at home with them...

That being said, I know you are all experts on your children, have been on this journey with them from the beginning, and know them the best! So a lot of this information may be old news to you. Please know I am just attempting to share as many universal strategies as I can on our blog to help those of you looking for more guidance. 😊 Take care, and happy Monday!

-Heather