Caught Modeling Core

change. Our workplace consistently struggled with staff turn- over and staff participation, so we knew there had to be some- thing that enticed the teachers and staff. Having worked in the field of Autism, in a school-based setting for ten plus years, I knew positive reinforcement was going to garner the best results. This discussion led to a mem- ory from my childhood of a program that was implemented throughout grade school entitled “Caught Being Good”. When a student was caught having a preferred behavior, a ticket was given to that individual student. These same tickets would then be saved up and used to purchase items, such as: stickers, fold- ers or pencils from the “school store”. The program I participat- ed in during my elementary education was a Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS), which was a program used to achieve important behavior changes. Simply put, PBIS is a gen- eral term that refers to positive behavioral interventions and systems used to achieve important behavior changes. Therefore, it rewarded good behavior to encourage others to have good behavior as well. These two ideas gave rise to the PBIS initiative “Caught Modeling Core”. Our PBIS program was a bit different than the one used throughout my education because it was de- signed for the school staff, rather than for students, whom most PBIS are utilized. Colleen and I sat down with our administrator, who was previously a speech-language pathologist (SLP), and laid out the framework for structuring the initiative. Since it was after the ATIA conference, we knew we were running short on time before the end of the school year, so we wanted to implement a quick three-month initiative to track the use and modeling of Core Vocabulary across different activities and settings in our school. I know that there has been multiple conversations within the AAC world about how to classify and what to call this concept. Do we continue to classify it as modeling or do we call it Aided Language Input? For our “Caught Modeling Core” initiative we called it modeling (to simplify the terminology for our staff) and defined it as, “pointing to an icon on a core board or activating a button on an AAC device, while saying the word”. This defini- tion did not require the student to respond, rather it was just the adult showing the student. We printed this definition on a small, pocket-sized laminated card and provided it to each one of our teachers and staff members. We confirmed that our administrator as well as our fellow support staff, which included: Occupational Therapists, Certi- fied Occupational Therapy Assistants, and a Music Therapist, would all be assisting us SLPs, to watch and keep track of the teachers and staff who are modeling Core Vocabulary to their students. We informed our administrator of our plans for having staff incentives and that these incentive costs would be covered by myself and Colleen. We outlined the duration of the “Caught Modeling Core” initiative, explaining that we would hold this ini- tiative from March until mid-May, even though we knew spring break would come in the middle of this. From our experience,

we know that the teachers in our school rarely get to eat lunch outside of their classrooms or without students, so we wanted to have a meaningful incentive for our winners. We decided on the following prizes: (1) a restaurant gift card for the individual who modeled the most and (2) lunch that was provided by Col- leen and myself, for the classroom that cumulatively modeled the most. Not only was lunch going to be provided, but Colleen and I were to trade places and let the teachers and the class- room staff enjoy lunch in the workroom, while we sat with their students for that period. We also knew there would be staff hesi- tations, so we planned to combat those with extra trainings and core vocabulary meetings. To introduce our “Caught Modeling Core” initiative to the staff, we had the teachers and staff fill out a survey that includ- ed questions regarding their knowledge, familiarity and level of comfort in regards to Core Vocabulary and modeling. In the survey, we also asked them how many activities throughout the day that they were currently modeling core vocabulary to their students. We told the staff that this survey was their invitation to an ice cream social. Once the survey was completed, the teach- ers and staff were able to turn it in to receive their ice cream. Our related service staff was generous enough to serve the ice cream to the staff, since they were going to help us keep track during our program. While the teachers and staff were eating their ice cream sundaes, Colleen and I explained the “Caught Modeling Core” initiative and the reasoning behind it. We explained the definitions of Core Vocabulary versus Fringe Vocabulary by us- ing the ice cream sundae analogy that Aldrich, Dubovsky and Katzen used. Research tells us that Core Vocabulary makes up

A fun group lesson

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