Teaching interactions is a "naturalistic" teaching strategy developed by the Autism Partnership to help children with high functioning autism or Asperger's Syndrome to learn new social skills.
Autism and autism spectrum disorders are distinguished by a lack of social skills and difficulty in new social situations. The teaching interactions approach involves identifying the skill, establishing the rationale paired with modeling and role playing the skills.
Define the Skill
Children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders and Asperger's syndrome often have a broad range of behavioral deficits. These behavioral deficits impact their social and academic success at all ages, but it becomes clearest in the "tween" years and into early adolescence. These are also the years when these children have a desire to fit in and to belong. With the drive for inclusion, the importance of helping students on the spectrum to succeed in general education classrooms is vital. Also, the fact that many of these students have academic skills that will permit them to pursue higher education and employment, means that the investment in teaching social skills is an essential investment in their futures.
Define the skill you will work on with a clear understanding of what the replacement behavior will look like. It is often good to define Social Skills positively, in terms of what you want to see, rather than negatively, in terms of what you want to see disappear (or extinguish.)
Examples:
- Skippy will stay calm in stressful situations. Calm will include a)quiet hands (no stimming,) b) a voice in a normal range and normal pitch and c) using appropriate eye contact.
- John will use appropriate pitch and eye contact when speaking to peers.
- Janet will wait and take turns in conversations with her peers.
Establish Rationale
Rationale is the underpinning of student buy-in. The motivation for changing the behavior is based in the rationale.
Why is it important for Skippy to stay calm? Skippy wants to take art in a general education classroom, but he won't be able to do it if he can't stay calm when he is teased or when he needs to do something stressful.
How about John? John wants to make friends, but kids steer clear of him because he gets so excited that he tends to scare them away.
As for Janet, she wants to eat lunch with typical peers in the lunch room, but they steer clear of her because she butts in and she doesn't stay on topic.
Having a conversation with the particular child, or with a group (if it is a skill deficit they share) is vital to motivate them to actively participate in the work of changing behavior.
Describe and Demonstrate the Desired Behavior
What does the behavior look like, feel like and sound like? You start by describing it for the students: i.e. "Where are your hands when you are calm? Yes, in your pockets is good or by your sides is good. How about on your face? Yes, you're right. Not on your face."
Demonstrate by role playing the situation. You might want to have your students identify the situation that causes the stress: meeting a girl the student likes, say, or having to answer a question. When you are done modeling how to have the conversation, debrief the students: "Where were my hands?" "Where did I look?"
Practice - Role Play
Once you have modeled the interaction, you need to bring a student up to "role play," the same or a similar situation. You can be the other side of the interaction or you can have a peer (typical or disabled) play the opposite role.
Let your students play out the whole drama: don't interrupt too early. After all, we expect our typical children to learn from failure -- why wouldn't we ask the same of our students with disabilities?
Evaluate -- Feedback
Evaluation does not serve the purpose of "grading," but of teaching. How did your student do? Did he or she remember all the pointers you presented in your model? Did he or she keep their cool, speak clearly, make eye contact?
Make sure that self evaluation is part of the closure and evaluation. You will be teaching students to evaluate their own behavior. Typical children have difficulty with this, though they do it constantly and informally. Children on the autism spectrum are tone deaf, unless they are explicitly taught.
Why not also teach peer evaluation? The best way to create effective "evaluators" is to structure it carefully. Start by asking for "strengths." "Who can name something positive about John's role play? Good eye contact? Yes, Emily. Good pitch? I agree, Jamie." Pair that with "Who can name an area that could be approved?" You'll note that it is not pitched terrifically negatively, as your purpose is constructive feedback, not peer bashing.
Tape and Review. One way to help students see themselves is to actually, literally help them see themselves. Videotape (okay, it's digital, but what is the verb for that?) Once you've made a digital recording, you can review it with just the student in the role play, rather than the whole class. Perhaps you can save them and have student's in succeeding years evaluate earlier student's performance. Be sure, however, that you have parents' and students' written permission to store and reuse their videos.
