Teaching Strategies
This type of prompting starts with the least amount of help and adds more only if the student needs it.
What is least-to-most prompting?
This happens when a consequence makes a behavior more likely to happen again.
What is reinforcement?
These three letters stand for what we look at when tracking behavior: what happened before, what the child did, and what happened after.
What is ABC (Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence)?
Being on time, using kind language, and following through on plans show this important work quality.
What is professionalism?
This teaching style uses short, structured trials with clear beginnings and endings.
What is Discrete Trial Training (DTT)?
A teaching method staff can use with students during learning including physical, gestural, visual, proximity, partial physical, etc.
What are prompts?
A child cleans up, gets praise or a sticker, and cleans up more often in the future.
What is positive reinforcement?
This type of assessment helps us find out what toys, snacks, or activities motivate a child.
What is a preference assessment?
This MaineCare service helps children with developmental or mental health needs build life and behavior skills.
What is Section 28?
Attention, escape, access to items, and sensory needs describe these four reasons behavior happens.
What are the four functions of behavior?
In this teaching method, you teach one step of a skill at a time—either from the first step to the last, or from the last step backward.
What is Chaining?
When we stop giving attention to a behavior, it may get worse before it gets better.
What is an extinction burst?
Counting how many times a child yells, how long it lasts, or writing down the trigger are all examples of this.
What is data collection?
Keeping information private and not talking about clients in public are examples of this.
What is confidentiality?
If a dead man can do it, it’s not a behavior — only actions that require movement or response from a living person count as behaviors.
What is the Dead Man’s Test (or the concept of reinforcing only observable behaviors)?
This teaching tool breaks a big skill, like handwashing, into small steps to make it easier to teach and track.
What is a task analysis?
Reinforcing every correct response versus only some of them describes the difference between these two reinforcement schedules.
What are continuous and intermittent reinforcement?
These daily records are required for billing in Section 28 and show what goals were worked on and how the session went.
What are daily progress notes with data?
Communicating with your BCBA, checking in with teammates, and following the same plan all support this.
What is treatment fidelity or teamwork?
This type of assessment helps figure out why a behavior is happening.
What is a Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA)?
This strategy means teaching a skill in the place and way it naturally happens — for example, practicing hand-washing in the bathroom instead of at the table.
What is natural environment teaching (NET)?
When a behavior stops getting reinforced, it might temporarily come back later — especially if it used to work really well for the child.
What is spontaneous recovery?
This type of data collection measures uses tallies to determine how many times in a day a behavior happened?
What is frequency data?
Before working with a student, ed techs should review the behavior plan and safety procedures. Doing so is part of this ethical and legal expectation under Maine DOE and BACB guidelines.
What is maintaining client safety and professional competence?
Types of Differential Reinforcement
What is Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behaviors (DRA), Differential Reinforcement of Other Behaviors (DRO), Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behavior (DRI), Differential Reinforcement of Low Rates of Behavior (DRL), Differential Reinforcement of High Rates of Behavior (DRH)