Video Modeling to Teach New Skills (And Possibly a Good Approach for Online Learning)
Hi everyone! I've been using the teaching strategy of video modeling for years and it's a great, evidence-based practice for students with autism. I also did my dissertation for my PhD about video modeling, so it's a strategy that I was forced to know a lot about, LOL. Just kidding; I chose video modeling for my dissertation because it can be such a powerful and effective teaching strategy for students with autism. Simply defined, when you're teaching with video modeling, you
Activities for "The Big Wide-Mouthed Frog" (Or Other Frog Books)
This is a really cute little story and I made a bunch of learning activities for one of my students to go with it. We did all of these activities over three days and it was really fun. The first thing I did was teach my student the vocabulary words “wide” and “narrow.” We practiced sorting different shapes into piles labeled “wide” and “narrow” (both words that the student could read, but wasn’t familiar with the definition). We did this with various shapes (triangles, rectan
Links to My Free Activities and Blog Posts
Just as a note about this blog post, I'm making this list of my recently posted activities and news so that I can easily link to it from my Instagram page. "What is a Coupon?" Instructional Story: http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads/WhatIsACoupon.pdf Visual Schedules/Task Analysis for Building Student Electric Circuit Kits: https://www.autismhomeschoolsuccess.com/single-post/2020/07/23/Visual-SchedulesTask-Analysis-for-Building-Student-Electric-Circuit-Kits "Harry the D
Free Online 3D Modeling Class for High School Students with Autism
I wasn't planning on launching this course until summer, but I've decided to go ahead and try to have it ready sooner, in case your have children at home from school and are looking for activities for them to do. I've been teaching 3D modeling to students with autism of various ages for about 4 years and I've found that many of my students are very good at the visual-spatial thinking that 3D modeling requires. Many of my students really enjoy it too! The class with focus on t
Train Color Words Book
I made this quick activity for one of my students, so I thought I'd share it. You can have the student read the pages to know which colors to make the trains, so it's kind of like a reading assessment too. You can download it here: http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads/TrainColorWordsBook.pdf I also made a train-themed color word matching activity that you can download here: http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads/readingcolorwordtrains.pdf
Mini-Units on Columns, Rows, and Intro to Tables/Graphing
I was looking through some old files on my computer and I came across this math mini-unit that allows students to practice the vocabulary words "columns" and "rows." It also just briefly introduces the concept of interpreting a bar graph. So, I updated it and also made one with a train theme. You can download them free by clicking on the cover photos of each one. I also have a free unit on bar graphs (with an ocean animal theme) here: http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads
Desert Animal Report and Craft
I've been working on animal habitats lately with one of my students who loves animals, and we did a fun desert animal report and craft that could easily be adapted for lots of different kids. We first read about the desert animal habitat using these resources, then he chose one animal that he wanted to make. To plan the project, we listed out the parts of the snake and what we might use to make each part. Once this was planned, he painted the macaroni black (because the snake
What is Naturalistic ABA?
One of the teaching approaches that I use the most is what I call “Play to Learn.” Whenever I can, I try to use fun activities or subjects that a child loves in order to teach language and academics. You can find lots of ways I do this on my blog.
A more “formal” term for this play to learn approach is called “naturalistic ABA.”
Naturalistic ABA is an approach that maintains principles of the science of ABA, but focuses on playing with the child in a natural way. The educ
