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| Preparing for Adulthood: Skill Assessment and Design of Vocational and Life Skills Programming for Young Adults With Autism |
| Friday, May 25, 2012 |
| 4:00 PM–7:00 PM |
| 302 (Convention Center) |
| Area: EDC; Domain: Service Delivery |
| CE Instructor: Elizabeth Martineau, M.Ed. |
| ELIZABETH MARTINEAU (Nashoba Learning Group), STEPHANIE DANIELS (Nashoba Learning Group), JESSICA TILLEY (Nashoba Learning Group), HEATHER M. REGO (Nashoba Learning Group) |
| Description: Teenagers with moderate to severe autism who have received quality ABA school programming generally develop a strong repertoire of skills. As those students reach 14 years of age and above, it is critical that programming be geared towards building those skills into routines that will allow them to obtain employment and live as independently as possible as adults. Although there is a substantial body of research to assist in teaching early learners, there is significantly less documented work to assist practitioners in designing vocational and life skills programming for older students who still require individualized ABA instruction. At Nashoba Learning Group (NLG), we have developed a curriculum for teaching vocation and life skills that has allowed our students to significantly increase their employability and independence. Our curriculum utilizes well researched ABA techniques, such as task analyzed instruction, incidental teaching, discrete trial teaching, and stimulus fading to build linked routines of skills essential to success in adulthood. This workshop will review NLG's vocation and life skills curriculum, the intake process, and the skills that we assess and teach. We will demonstrate how to modify teaching procedures for students' varying skill levels and supervision needs, including three case studies of students performing skills at different levels. We will review NLG's vocation and life skills assessment tool and how we use it to identify skills to target and to measure progress over time. |
| Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this workshop, participants should be able to:
Design integrated vocation and life skills programming for teenagers with autism
Create learning objectives for students for vocation and life skills
Teach specific skills using task analyzed instruction
Adapt teaching procedures to students' varying skill levels and supervision needs and complete a portion of NLG's vocation and life skills assessment for a presented student |
| Activities: Participants will engage in a variety of activities throughout the workshop. We will begin with an overview of NLG's vocation and life skills curriculum and assessment tool. Participants will engage in a structured activity, such as completing a task analyzed activity in the role of a student or adapting a task analysis to address differing student ability. Participants will watch a video of a student completing vocational skills and will complete the corresponding portion of NLG's vocation and life skills assessment. |
| Audience: This workshop is designed for BCBA level teachers and clinical directors, as well as program coordinators. Presenters will assume that participants are familiar with a variety of ABA techniques and with individualized curriculum design for students up through the teenage years. Participants should have a strong interest in developing individualized programs for teenagers and young adults with autism that result in the students achieving job readiness and as high a degree of independence as possible. |
| Content Area: Practice |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |
| Keyword(s): Adulthood, Employment skills, Life skills, Vocational skills |