The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Accessing and developing curriculum to meet the vast needs of children with autism is often an overwhelming task. For over 30 years the New England Center for Children has been researching and developing effective teaching programs for children with autism based on the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis. These teaching programs have been incorporated into a computer database called the Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia®. Considerations in developing curriculum from research to practice and the applications of the ACE® will be presented. This session will review the resources currently available for accessing or developing curriculum for children with autism. The scope of curriculum used at NECC will be presented from basic core skills through higher level social and academic skills. Issues in curriculum design will be discussed and examples presented from the Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia®. For today's educators working with children with autism, there is a wide array of commercially available curriculum and assessment options. Particularly in the area of autism, given the public awareness of the disorder, it is difficult to sort through all of the available published materials. Existing published curriculum often focus on teaching skills in a specific content area such as communication skills (Teach me Language), or for a specific age group (The Me Book, Behavioral Intervention for Young Children Autism) . Other guides provide information and protocols for using a specific teaching methodology (Activity Schedules for Children with Autism). Few of these curriculum guides fully address the complexities inherent in teaching children with autism across ages, abilities and learning styles. Children with autism typically have uneven patterns of development, resulting in a wide range of functioning levels. Many are easily distracted, have difficulty organizing information, and often fail to generalize and maintain what they learn. It is important for curriculum to allow flexibility for individual differences in learning profiles. A comprehensive curriculum, spanning skills for the very young to the vocational student, should include procedures for assessment and evaluation of student performance. Effective instruction must include the results of these assessments and offer guidelines for choosing appropriate skills based on age, learning style, areas of strength, and areas of need. Curriculum tools such as the ABLLS provides for assessment and instruction across many of these variables in a printed format. There are few curriculum guides which use computer technology to develop teaching programs for children with autism. Software such as The Discrete Trial Trainer uses computer technology but is designed for student use while allowing for some programming from a teacher. Most curriculum guides and assessment tools are developed as printed guides for educators to copy or develop materials from. A computerized curriculum design program which offer teachers the ability to develop programs to fit individual student's needs using state of the art teaching techniques is currently in development at NECC For the past thirty years the New England Center for Children has been involved in researching effective teaching procedures for children with autism. The curriculum protocols used are developed based on sound and systematic research conducted at the NECC or elsewhere, and published in peer reviewed journals. This research to practice model has been used to help refine the components of errorless teaching procedures, discrete trial training methods, task analysis, and incidental teaching models. The curriculum is designed using these procedures for a broad scope of skills and then translated into a computer program, the Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia® The Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia, or the ACE®, is a computerized database which holds curriculum spanning many academic and functional skills in a centralized location. Over 600 curriculum lesson plans provide step-by-step instructions to assess and teach skills in a variety of formats including discrete trial, task analysis, and incidental teaching. Each curriculum template is accompanied with a video clip demonstrating key features of the teaching procedures used. Data sheets and related materials such as pictures or worksheets are also included with every curriculum sheet. All documents, once modified for the individual, can be printed and brought to the classroom for teachers to use as they work with each student. This valuable teacher resource increases efficiency and decreases redundancy. Individual student performance for each skill is tracked over time as teaching programs are implemented. Teachers enter the data from each session into the ACE® and summary tables and graphic reports are generated. Monitoring student progress and making modifications to curriculum based on student performance is a critical component in providing effective education. Remote access to the ACE® allows clinicians, supervisors, and teachers to view curriculum sheets and student performance data from their workstations. This type of monitoring allows the supervisor to more efficiently spend time their time observing in the classrooms, problem solving and making curriculum modifications. This presentation will outline key features of curriculum design, assessment strategies, and commonly used errorless teaching procedures. Advantages and disadvantages of these procedures will be reviewed. The ACE® will be presented as a model for selecting and developing curriculum for children with autism. Data for student performance will be presented.

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