SCHOOL AGE PROGRAMS

Intermediate to School Supplement Service

At ABC Group we offer individualized learning experiences for a diverse array of school-age students. We offer targeted opportunities that promote the academic achievement and social/behavioral development of students who benefit from a smaller, supportive and data driven learning environment.

We offer social skills instruction when your child attends ABC Group to facilitate the building of social understanding skills for children pre-school aged through high school. Instruction includes the following topics through lessons and activities:

• Conversation Topic Initiation and Topic Maintenance
• Listening with our Eyes and Brain and Body
• Understanding the Perspectives of Others (Theory of Mind)
• Understanding and Using Body Language
• Problem Solving, Negotiation and Compromise with Peers
• Increasing Flexibility and Executive Functioning

Intermediate programs are preparing children to benefit from a transition to typical preschool or general education, these are ideally full day. After this transition has been made, School Supplement service is generally provided 2:00pm-5:00pm.

Typical goals for this profile include:

• Complex language concepts such as; prepositions, adverbs, past/future tenses
• Intraverbal/Conversation skills
• Manding/Asking for information, missing items, with peers, etc.
• Responding to multi-step directions, group instruction and pre-academic work

As you may know, kids on the autism spectrum or with developmental or behavioral challenges do not succeed in general education classrooms for a variety of reasons. Children may exhibit behaviors which impede their learning, lack fluency of  responding, or be generally unmotivated by a past history of being unsuccessful in school. We call this a worsening set of conditions and these kids learn to avoid them pretty well!

Academic Acceleration Program

Our students in the ACCEL program are engaged in developmentally appropriate, data-driven, individualized learning programs that put them on a path to achieving learning success.

This program is suitable for students who are capable of learning in an Elementary inclusive setting, but may require a more thorough analysis of learning problems.

Goals include:

• Closing of academic gaps in math, reading, comprehension, and handwriting
• Reduction in disruptive or off-task behavior
• Confidence and enjoyment of learning

Let’s get started!

Ok, ready to get started? In order to know what to teach your child, we will need to do an assessment to determine a starting point for teaching. You can call our office to first schedule a parent orientation and then once you attend this important meeting,  you will receive an intake packet which you will then fill out and return to us. You will want to include some videos of your child so we can get a sneak peak of your child in order to prepare for evaluation. At this point, we can schedule an intake assessment and get started with ABA!

The ABC Way

Ok, this sounds good but how does it work? Well, we start with an assessment to evaluate a variety of skills which may need intervention, determine the starting point for our programming.

We select a developmentally driven curriculum at each student’s individual level, and use evidence based teaching procedures to close the gaps between where they are and where their typically developing peers are.

We do this while supporting each students individual needs at the same time as we continue to build on their unique strengths.
Our goal is to teach them the skills to become motivated, curious and engaged life-long learners. We encourage the celebration of their diversity, self-advocacy and encourage our students to act as vehicles of change in the world in which they live.

Target skills include reading, comprehension, math, writing, and thinking skills. We teach them to fluency because rapid processing speed are a measure of true mastery or proficiency of the skill.

Achieving fluency in these critical target areas results in not only improved memory, and heightened confidence, but increased resistance to distractions in the environment and fatigue. In addition, it results  in the ability to quickly and effortlessly learn new skills. Such gains are possible for every learner whether gifted and talented, average, struggling, or learning disabled/dyslexic.

We use precision teaching and direct instruction and several different curriculums for our instruction in this program, and are guided by a graph called the standard celeration chart. This chart allows us to see visually the trajectory of learning, to determine that we are reaching the aims set and determine daily of we need to change something in our instruction if it is not successful for the student.

Direct Instruction

Direct Instruction (DI) was developed by Siegfried Engleman in the 1960’s. Direct Instruction is an evidence based curriculum of instruction that focuses on carefully designed lessons with a guiding principle that “all students can learn.”
The teacher follows carefully scripted lessons and students are constantly given learning opportunities through choral responding and by writing answers to problems in their work books. Easy skills are taught before more complex and difficult skills. Effective scope and sequences for effectively teaching reading, writing, and math have been outlined accordingly. Everything is taught to mastery; students are never passed on or “pushed” to the next level unless they meet mastery criteria. Check the Association for Direct Instruction for more information, including research, at http://www.adihome.org/.

Precision Teaching

Precision Teaching (PT) is a method of precisely and systematically evaluating student learning. Ogden Lindsley pioneered this method of teaching in the 1960’s based on his training in Behavior Analysis and Operant Conditioning under B.F. Skinner. The crux of PT is the use of frequency as the standard measure of learning.  By using equal interval standard celeration charts, student learning can easily be compared. Using frequency as a measure and focusing on fluency, our instructors can adjust any curriculum to maximize learning. The frequency is charted as a per-minute count of the targeted skill. Basically we teach a skill to fluency. Reaching fluent levels allows for effortless performances and learning that will maintain over time. Just think of how fluent a piano player is with the music pieces they perform or an an NBA basketball player who is sinking free throws or three pointers. These fluent performances did not happen by luck; they are results of many purposeful practice sessions of prerequisite skills, as well as the more complex skills involved. For more information on this topic, go to the Standard Celeration Society’s website:http://celeration.org/