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“I Want it Now”- Teaching Requesting Skills to early Learners

What is requesting?
It’s important to validate the words they have. Give them what they request even if we don’t know if that’s what they need.

The inability to request will most certainly lead to behavior problems. Anything from crying, physical aggression to shutdowns.

When requesting communications are received usually students will communicate in the only way they know will definitely get attention -aggression.

Reward items should be available only when they are requesting. Not any time else or they won’t feel the need to utilize the requesting.

Requestind Beyond Independent requests

Reaching and pointing

Approximation to a word (“ba” for bottle”)

Gaze shift

Imitative requesting

Picture exchange

Sign language

AAC Device

What’s best for my child? You need to consider their levels with...
-social engagement, motor skills, imitation skills, vocal verbal skills.

Picture communcation
Step one to any communication is to make sure they know they need to approach someone with that request. Picture communication is nice because most people can communicate successfully through pictures. The challenge is being able to provide enough pictures to access everything they want to request.

Sign Language
The advantage is that they always have the tools for this communication, however not eveyone they encounter knows sign language.

AAC Devices
These are easily understood and consistent. The voice sounds the same through all requests. They are expensive and a broken device means broken voice.

*The major goal is to make sure the child’s wants and needs are met.*

Reinforcing positive requesting should be short term. For example, a piece of an Oreo not a whole Oreo. A short tickle not long. Also the reward needs to be something that ends on its own. For example if an IPad is the reward it will be hard to get that back from them.

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Saturday Morning Keynote -Russell Lehman 

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Saturday Morning Keynote -Russell Lehman 

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Theautisticpoet.com
28 year old gentleman with Autism. Motivational speaker who was nearly nonverbal at the age of seven.

Struggled with sever depression starting at the age of 7 with severe OCD, then hospitalized at age 12 for the first time due to depression. At this point he was still not diagnosed with Autism. He went to public school and found it extremely difficult because he was given no support.

Diagnosed at the end of 2003.

Taking baby steps-chances of failure decreases and chances of success increases.

"Inside Out” book of poetry by Russell Lehman
Book 2: Outside Looking In

If someone is having a meltdown, you can’t give them an order, you need you ask “How can I help?”

"It’s not that I didn’t want to be there and participate in school it’s just the hat I didn’t know how to get to that point” (2nd time I head something like this at this conference)

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Exploring the strength-based approach to supporting and growing exceptional minds

“Autism is not a choice, however acceptance is”

The Treffert Approach

Individualize

Strength-based and learned centered

Natural environment

Developmental persepctives (we are all on our own growth journeys)

Sensory aware (we all interpret the world differently)

Collaborative

Personal learning plan -based on their strengths found through observation and inquiry.
-hands on, project based, collaborative learning, differentiation, ect.
-interview, observation, checklist: our parents are the experts that know the strengths and interests.
“See a child differently...see a different child.” -get to know that child

Let that kids become an expert. Not an obsession, a strength.

We learn best by experiencing the world. Brains are wired through hands on interactions in the real world.

**can we add a column to our student sheets that we pass on to next years teacher that includes strengths and interests?**

Involve students in sensory journeys. Give them experiences with different sensories so that they can have the tools to be successful.

Partnerships and relationships are important. Mentorship  is important.

Leaders in Creative Media
-learning job and social skills through the medium of digital media

Participating in learning through media is a more passive way of learning but it’s effective, even more than face to face learning sometimes!

Leadership is always being in charge.
Give them a chance to see that they are a person beyond autism and have a personality.

*what’s in the hidden curriculum of like that You need to provide to your students to be successful?

Fun and engaging way to promise positive social skills with peers : Zip, Zap, Zop

“There’s no passion to be found playing small...” - Nelson Mandela

What are we (NT’s) missing out on?

Christine Barnett-“spark”

“Strokes and genius”

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The student we have has great language skills and can type well for communication. Yet we are seeing physical aggression at random times. Is this a requesting action? Is that because she doesn’t have her communication tool when the physical aggression happens?

When modeling requesting with a more advanced language, how do we address the requesting. “You want Oreos. Vs. I want Oreos. Vs. Brianna wants Oreos”
How do you recognize an action his body wants to do vs. an action he wants to do?

What’s the percentage of people with Autism who experience depression? It seems like a common topic amongst the few sessions I’ve attended.

What’s the best free app for iPad for voice text communication

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Kimberly Schmidt + two others

"If you e met one person with Autism, you’ve met one person with Autism” - Stephen Shore

Person with Autism vs. Autistic person - it’s up the the individual and what they prefer
1 in 68 are identified with ASD (1 in 34 are boys & 1 in 151 are girls). A lot of diagnostic tools are centered around boys.

There is no one known cause of Autism.
Autism is usually identified medically or educationally. An individual may meet criteria for one and not the other.

Medical Diagnosis: it’s not a medical test but a checklist that’s usually based on observations, records, reviews, personal reports, and assessment.

Characteristics of Autism

Cognition

Social/emotional

Communication

Sensory regulation

Sensory Regulation
-much of what the keynote speaker discussed
-Don’t stop that actions that are calming to the individual. If it’s a harming action we need to create an opportunity for a transition into a healthier calming action but not completely eliminate this method right away.
-stimulation regulation is up to the individual. We as adults can not care about social interaction if it stops the calming. (Obviously!)
-They may have different processing sensory input: for example they may need more input that what a chair can provide. Bumping into friends may be more of a sensory input.
-They may have a difficult time maintaining levels of arousal and modulating. That means can they maintain their level when transitioning from one location to a next. Example: loud noise, high activity, outside and okay but then come in for lunch with loud noise and high activity might not be okay.
-may need “mono-channel processing”. That means they may need to shut off everything to get one thing through to process.
Supports

Be aware of the differences, offer supports and escapes from “insulting inputs”

Allow for breaks from inputs

Allow for safe ways to seek out input (bang head on mat not wall)

Be aware of changes, how many, what kind, how often. (Alternative seating for the rest of the class so Kcan always have her seat without the class having to do without a seat change)

Communication
-range from nonverbal to hyperverbal
-may need additional time to process and respond to communication
-sometimes talk language very literal. They also don’t know to ask if something is an idiom because they believe they understand it perfectly. (Ex. Undies in a bundle)
*consider your Social Fluff when talking to them!
**Concider the way you talk to them with wait time. Give them time! Ex. Get your boots on, Time to put on your boots, your boots are over ther, can you put them on? (This is OVERLOAD to someone who is process, you think you gave them one command but they hear five different layers) It becomes static. Simplify.
-Find the meaning behind behaviors.
-check out the book Disney Language to see one mans journey through finding the language connection between him and his sons autism through Disney quotes.

Communication methods need to be reliable. Especially across environments, if communication is through pictures or an iPad that needs to be traveled through home and school. It can be destructive for a person with autism to only be able to effectively communicate for seven hours of school and then not again until the next day.

Cognition

Change is hard, how can you prepare an individual for change. As simple as glasses vs contacts, summer clothes vs winter clothes, holiday decorations.

Skills learned in a certain environment may only be able to be recalled in that same environment. Ex: if the mudroom  gets remodeled then they may not be able to access the skills it takes to put boots on.

May experience “context blindness” (see above)

Attention dispersed differently is not inattentiveness.

Difficulty seeing Shades of Grey-thinking very concretely. If they call you a liar, that aren’t calling you a bad person but holding the truth. Use the terms “a wishing truth” and a “changing truth”. Not the same for everyone. Please ask the individual if something you have done has helped!

Supports

Make it visual

Use passions and interests to teach

Limit changes, foreshadow when changes will occur

When there are rules, make them clear. Specific.

Social/Emotional

They experience a full range of emotions but may have difficulty showing and communicating them

Has difficulty responding to the social gestures. They read in colors. If they read an angry color but you don’t express anger then they are bond to get confused. And maybe caught up on that.

The pictures of Emotions shoUnder be shown in different ways.

Support

Teach ways to calm, cope, and modulate

Provide access to peers

Find ways to connect

Teach about shades of grey

Teach about emotions

Top 10 Tips

1. Make the “least dangerous assumptions” -ex: dangerous assumption:because this person is nonverbal, they don’t understand language.

2. Presume competence

3. Relationship, relationship, relationship -

4. Read the messages found in behavior - we need to find the “why” before we implement support

5. Use concret visuals and tools

6. Beware of sensitivity to possible sensory insults

7. Remember about “variably in access” - teAcher, just because he could do it yesterday doesn’t mean that the moments environment lets him access the skill

8. Provide a reliable way to communicate - reliable

9. Focus on the proactive

10. Change the way to think and talk about behavior -it’s not that he won’t, be he can’t

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Opening New Possibilities -Breakout session 2

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Opening New Possibilities -Breakout session 2

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Char Brandl-former teacher
Roy Bedward (real teacher)

Those who are non speaking are the ones that need us to listen the most.

In 1966 Char was one of three graduates in WI with a masters in Special Education.

Children with Autism are not lost in their own world, they really want to be part of our world they just can’t or need help.

"The kids I respect the most are the ones who can outsmart their behavior plan”-Char

Dangerous assumptions can be made- 2nd Breakout session today that said this!!

Presume Competence (Doug Biklen)

Go with the Strengths (Temple Grandin)

See the Gifts (Awetizm, Awesomeism)

Swallow our pride, proceed with humility (Char Bradl)

See us Smart (Char’s students that are now teachers)

Consider the least dangerous assumption (Anne Donnellan)

*he was very passionate when he typed “please help me to get more people to try typing”

"Love yourself and hope the world for the people around you” Roy

"Tell him he is important to you, it makes a difference”-Roy

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Kelly Mahler - Friday Morning Keynote Speaker

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Kelly Mahler - Friday Morning Keynote Speaker

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Friday, Apr. 12th

Interoception, the 8th Sense: impact on self-regulations, health & Well Being
Interoception is the sense that gives the body information about body emotion connections
Flourish- to grow successfully

Five things to know about Interoception
1. Inside vs outside senses
-inside senses: procrastination, vestibular, interoception
-outside senses: visual, tactile, auditor
Interoception helps us FEEL. (Hunger, fullness, bladder problems...etc)

IA- Interoceptive Awareness
-the ability to 1. Notice the body signals 2. Connect body signals to an emotion

2. IA and self regulation
Affective emotions  vs. Homestatic emotions (self regulating hunger, thirst, toilet ect.)
IA Regulation

1. notice (body signals)

2. Connect (body signals goes to emotions)

3. Urge to act

4. Regulate (behavior)

5. Outcome (discomfort fades)

Nick Eh 30- YouTuber with Autism

IA does Break Down, there is no connect until it is too late. They don’t make the emotional connection until the homestatic emotions are at 100%. “I don’t feel the anxiety until it’s so overwhelming that it’s deliberating and I can’t control myself.”
Note: we are NOT talking about people who lack emotions. We are talking about individuals who have a hard time figuring out emotions.
**Reach our to Emi for the 5-Point scale in regulating strategies for IA.

3. IA and Language
Interoception gives emotion words meaning. Your body grounds the concept.
Asking the students what different emotions mean they aren’t allowed to respond using other emotions. For example, when you ask “What does angry mean?” They can’t respond, “it means I’m mad.” They should say it means my fists are closed and my heart is beating fast.
Building IA can Enhance Language - it’s not just verbal language. There’s an app that displays all the different body parts and all the different ways those parts could feel. Then you need to teach them how to identify and connect the feelings so they are allowed to pick the correct icon.

Social participation and IA
The Insula: How Do I Feel? And How do YOU Feel?

People with Good IA-better at reading people’s body language and facial expressions

3. Many people have Difficulty with Interoception
Poor IA is connected to many conditions, not just Autism.
IA & Autism

Adults with Autism showed significantly lower IA compared to a control group.

Study’s show that the Insula showed lower activity in students with Autism

4. IA can’t be put into one small box
Body signals can be represented as too big, too small, or distorted.

Too Big: strong, overpowering, too many signals at once

Too small; muted, don’t notice until their too intense (hangry!), go completely unnoticed

Distorted: body signals are noticeable but not clear enough to give details about location or type.

Note: body signals can range on a scale! For example, Thirst may be represented as too small & Pain represented as too big. Then everything else as typical.

5. Interoception CAN be improved!
Check out the Interoception Curriculum. Body-Emotion-Action

Connect with Kelly: Www.kelly-Mahler.com also check out the Facebook group!