College Prep for Student with Intellectual Disabilities – Part 4

This fourth installment of the series preparing your child with an intellectual disability for college illustrates ways to use assumptions about learning to a student’s advantage. I describe more of how I assess teaching-learning processes for that preparation. These descriptions also go along with the learning efficiency discussions.

Learning Not Observable
I can only assume that learning occurs. No one sees learning. So, I imagine that I’m the learner and use my learner eyes and ears to understand learning. This is a my way to arrange using scientific ways to increase behavior pattern changes people call learning. I think this is what successful teachers do: we pretend that we’re learners and try to provide answers in our lessons to these generic questions of learners:

What is this (name it, categorize it, describe it, define it)?
What is the same (match the sample, what belongs)?
What is different (what doesn’t belong)?
What comes next (follow the sequence)?
What is missing (find the missing part or parts)?

From this view, I try to identify relevant visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and other dimensions of the problem as posed by the teacher or other learning resource, so that I can complete that task successfully.

Vocabulary and Logic
In the simplest form, all lessons, including those preparing students for college, consist of vocabulary and logic, and that’s all. It doesn’t make any difference if you use a Tablet PC or pencil and paper. It doesn’t make any difference if someone shows how to bake a cake, write my name, add numbers, or fly an airplane; these activities require vocabularies and logic.

In general, that means, as a learner I start with trial and error behavior patterns while searching for what vocabulary and what logic pattern(s) the teacher or exercise requires me to use in order to do what they ask me to do. Sometimes behavioral scientists refer to this as a search for relevant dimensions, such as identifying the correct size, color, form, location, frequency, etc. Some teachers say this is learners resolving the problem at hand.

Good teachers, good lessons, good learning venues, and good learning material, by definition from this view, reduce the amount of each learner’s trial and error behavior to reach each prescribed learning criterion.

Here are common examples of exercises teachers and parents use in order for beginning academic learners, including those labeled with academic and intellectual disabilities, to gain proficiency with finding and using vocabulary and logic to resolve daily life and academic problems.

What is this?
Use picture and word dictionaries and encyclopedias; “Say, ‘Spoon’ (or pen, book, can, etc.)” as you show your child a spoon (or other object); read common words on cards stuck to the wall; name primary colors, name coins; say “Show me Ballet Position One;” add an age appropriate hear/sight-say reading vocabulary word a day to a word list; choose a pancake from the menu for your breakfast; please pass me the butter; …

What is the same?
Match colored sticks, group long sticks; put spoons with spoons in the flatware drawer; find and bring me a Phillips head screw driver from the tool box; find all the red (ones, hearts, etc.) cards in this deck of cards; match spoken to written words; find match pictures, words, and other images, in multiple choice formats; find all the birds in the picture; find the hidden items; find where each word goes into the crossword puzzle, draw a circle around all the words on the front page of the newspaper story that start with the sound /s/ or /sh/, …

What is different?
Sort nuts and bolts / nails / boards by size, thread by color, pictures by families, Teddy bears by size, laundry by light and dark colors, maps by state, snowboards by weight, newspapers from magazines, sugar and salt by taste, …

What comes next?
Connect the dots; wash the dishes clean, dry them by hand, and then put them away; show me ballet Position One, now Two, now Three; follow a recipe to make a sugarless cookie; help me install the Snoopy cutout on our front lawn, now Charlie Brown, now Lucy; set the dining room table for guests; sing songs; say Grace before eating; count by ones to 10; recite poems; say (write, type) the alphabet; find and say the page number after page 3; place a phone call to Grandma; change the TV to a certain channel; drive a racecar without hitting walls in an Xbox game, …

What is missing?
Find the book Hop on Pop; fill in the blank letter (color, numeral, picture, etc.); write checks; complete an online survey; answer questions; color the picture; …

Many warehouse and discount stores, school supply stores, children’s magazines and newsletters, and online suppliers provide more such academic exercises than any one student will likely use to meet age level learning expectations.

Learning Principles
When choosing learning exercises, select them with these learning principles in mind: Learners proceed from known to unknown, simple to complex, and easy to hard resolves to problems.

A TIP (Teacher’s Instructional Practice)
First, show your learner how to use your Tablet PC or other mobile PC to complete some of these tasks.

Second, I’d emphasize exercises that extend sequential responses (chains of responses), such as connect the dots, telling clock time, reciting numeral sequences and poems as well as (ballet or other stylized sequences) dancing until the child can handle formal sequences on cue.

Start with simple two step sequences until these appear easy to handle. Use and then fade out prompts as behavior patterns result from solving the problem rather than relying on the prompts. Then extend to three steps, then four steps, etc.

Next, prompt generalizing the process from one sequence problem to another sequence.

These are useful steps toward college prep: learn to sequence responses on cue and without cues.

Let me know if you have suggestions or questions. I’ll addresses them in future installments.