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  • Making Slope Less Complicated

    Slope is the rate of change associated with a line. This is a challenging topic especially when presented in the context of a real life application like the one shown in the photo. The graphed function has different sections each with a respective slope. One aspect of slope problems that is challenging is the different…

  • Documents for Task Analysis Presentation – DADD 2017 Conference

    Here is a link to a Dropbox folder with the documents I will address in my presentation. (Note: documents will not be uploaded until Jan 19, 2017.)

  • Webinar on Task Analysis of a Math Topic

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/xzbigmobozgx2n2/Webinar%20Task%20Analysis%20for%20a%20Math%20Topic.mp4?dl=0 folder link

  • Documents for Webinars on Supporting Students with Autism in Math

    Link to Drop Box folder for webinar on Task Analysis Link to Drop Box folder for webinar on Making Math Meaningful (note: the folder is not populated with handouts with excerpts shown on the video. These documents will be available in the folder by Oct 16.

  • Targeting Gaps in a Math Topic

    A key to intervention for math is to drill down into a topic to see which step is causing a student problems. This is a big reason why ongoing progress monitoring is vital to intervention. In this case a student in a previous session had occasionally added the percent to the dollar amounts – the…

  • Assessment for General Curriculum Math Topics

    In special education there is a tool called a task analysis. It is a formal approach of identifying the steps taken to demonstrate mastery of a skill. For example, putting on shoes with Velcro straps involves the following steps: get shoes, sit on chair, match shoes with feet (right to right), insert foot into respective…

  • Shaping Behavior

    Shaping is a term in special ed which basically means to train a student to incrementally follow through on a sequence of substeps to accomplish a task. B.F. Skinner coined a different name for this which he called operant conditioning. The top photo below shows “Skinner’s box.” The pigeon was placed in the box and…

  • Homework as a Challenge Part 1

    In another post  I describe a former 7th grade student of mine who was classified as having asperger’s and tested at a 1st grade or kindergarten math and reading level. He was not doing his homework. His science teacher explained that he was prompting the student to copy the homework. The student’s guardian explained that she…

  • Shaping Critical Thinking and Self-help Skills

    Below is an example of a puzzle I use to train students to make an effort and to think about problems. I have found that many students not only have a learned helplessness when it comes to math but they have been trained to follow steps mindlessly. Following a task analysis approach the first step…

  • Task Analysis

    A teacher friend of mine in the ASD community shared an anecdote for me to share. Her son had trouble figuring out perimeter. He was counting the squares and didn’t want to count the corner squares twice. The solution? The squares were pieces of sod to fill in the inside while the outer sides of…