Video modeling is a teaching strategy in which the learner watches a video of other people engaging in a desired behavior and then copies this behavior.  A child can watch a video of other children playing “Duck, duck, goose” and then be able to play the game.  Or an adult can watch a video of “How to cook spaghetti” and then follow the video to complete the task.

1. Use a video of someone else

In this approach, the learner watches a video of other people engaging in the desired behaviour and then imitates.  For example, in teaching a skill like “greeting a friend”, the child would watch the video of other children demonstrating appropriate greetings.

a) Use children of similar age. Research has shown that the video models are more effective when the individuals in the video most closely resemble the learner.

b) Include role play. It’s not enough to have the student watch the video, answer questions about it and then assume that they have the skill.  We call this the “train and hope approach” – not effective.  Instead, incorporate some role play in the teaching.  We love to include role play of both the wrong way and the right way to use the skill and make fun!

2. Create your own video

This is so easy to do with technology today.  It can serve two purposes:

a) Catch the learner engaging in the desired behaviour and videotape it to review with him as a teaching tool. If you want to teach your student how to wash his hands, get a video of him doing this appropriately and then have him watch it and imitate it.

b) Videotape the learner doing the skill, even if it’s not the right way, in order to provide praise and some constructive criticism. For example, we had taught a student how to answer the door appropriately.  In order to really hit the point home, we took a video of that student answering the door and showed it to him.  We reviewed it together with things like, “I love how you greeted the person at the door!  But you forgot to say ‘Come in!’  Let’s try it again.”

social language in two of the three activities. Video feedback and prompting were required in the third activity to effect a stable rate of increased social language.