What would an adaptation be that worked for one of a teacher's special needs students that was surprising?

Question

What would an adaptation be that worked for one of a teacher's special needs students that was surprising?

Answer 1

I was asked to do a functional behavior assessment on an autistic 8 year old girl who was taking off all of her clothes and tearing everything from the walls in the classroom. No amount of punishment or discussion would stop the problem.

Since I know that autistic children learn primarily through the visual channel, I made up a visual If/Then chart as a basis for discussion of the behavior. I showed a girl throwing her clothes off on the "If "side and playground equipment with an X through it on the "Then" side. I did the same with tearing things off the walls.

In addition, I made an visual "If" for positive behavior and a visual "Then" of her favorite activity, bouncing on a huge blue ball.

I reviewed this with her on several occasions. When she took off her clothes, I had the teacher take everyone else out to the playground and went over the chart with her. She put her clothes back on but had to wait inside for the other kids to come back.

We had exactly one more incident and we responded the same. In addition, when she had a half hour of doing her work, she got to bounce on the ball for five minutes.

Voila! It worked. I never expect things to work that well, but in this case it worked perfectly!

Answer 2

When a student acted like he couldn't do anything, making him the leader brought out his willingness to participate & do the classwork.