February 2017

February 2017

Cold Probe Data

By now you have received progress reports from your child’s teacher that indicate how many items or skills your child has “mastered.” This may leave you wondering how we decide when something is learned or “mastered.”

Skills targeted for teaching are “probed” or checked each day, relatively close to the start of your child’s school day, before those skills are worked on for the day. School staff present the targeted items and write down whether the student responded correctly or incorrectly. Students must respond correctly on the first try for the response to be scored as correct. When the student responds correctly on the set number of consecutive days (usually 3), the skill is considered mastered and a new target is chosen for teaching. Teaching occurs using the errorless teaching procedures described in our January newsletter.

When a student masters a skill, that skill is tracked on a skill tracking sheet, and the student’s graphs are updated to include the newly mastered skill. The total number of skills or items mastered are then reported to parents using progress reports or other means such as communication sheets and/or graphs.

Operant of the Month

IMITATION

Repeating or copying someone else’s motor movement. (Doing what you see someone else doing).

Ex. the student sees someone clap their hands, student claps hands, student is reinforced with general reinforcement (praise, treat, etc)

Individuals often look to the behavior of others in order to figure out how to do something or what they should be doing. Developing the ability to imitate others allows students to learn indirectly by copying a model. 



Important dates:
2/8/17: 2 hour data delay
2/16/17: Spartan Dress Down Day with $1 donation 
2/17/17: Act 80 Day: Teacher in-service day/No School for students
2/20/17: President's Day: No school for Teachers or Students