Massed trials is also known as discrete trial training. It is a very effective way of teaching skills to children on the autistic spectrum. It also works well with children with severe cognitive disabilities. You present the child with several pictures, and ask them to touch the correct picture, say of a stop sign. You prompt by pointing, and then reward every 2 to 6 correct responses, a method known as "errorless teaching." For more disabled students you may want to prompt hand over hand.
First, of course, you start with an IEP goal. What particular skill does the child's ER show as a need? Letter identification ? (a great skill for which to use massed trials.) Identifying safety signs?
For this particular teacher made assessment, the IEP looks like this:
When present with a field of four safety signs, Jason* will correctly identify 18 of 20 (or 90%) by pointing to the requested safety sign, 3 out of 4 consecutive trials. (My student can name them, but I use the cards with the prompt, "Mike*, give me the stop sign." Mike hands me the card and says "stop sign.")
After you have chosen the particular things you will be learning (in this case safety signs,) go to Google Images and find pictures of the things you want. I prefer this to any pre-made materials, because much of published special education drill materials use art that was created 20 to 50 years ago. One of the long range goals for children with disabilities should be generalization of skills, or seeing they are able to transfer that new skill to real life situations.
Once you download the pictures you will use, drop them into a program like Indesign or Microsoft Word, and resize them so they will fit on a 3" x 5" card. You can either mark your documents with marks for where you will cut them, or you can cut the pictures out and glue them to 3" x 5" cards (what I did here.)
Laminate the cards.
After you cut them out, present them in fields of two or three, depending on the child's ability, and increase them until the child can meet the target of choosing from a field of four.
* Not the real names of the children.
