Community Lessons
Objective: Participants will give examples (Bloom's Taxonomy Comprehension), participants will choose items from a larger list (Bloom's Taxonomy Analysis), participants will design data sheets (Bloom's Taxonomy Synthesis), Participants will evaluate their understanding (Bloom's Taxonomy Evaluation)
Once the students head out in the community you will help them transfer what they learned in the classroom into the community setting. Being in the community gives students a chance to respond to real life situations. As the teacher and now job coach it is your job to teach the student to become independent. The point is for the student to need you less and less over time. The less you have to do the more independent your student is.
Working in the community gives students a chance to learn not only how to work but how to be a part of it. All of these lessons will have been worked on in the classroom already. These tend to be goals on a student's CAPS (Comprehensive Autism Planning System), now they will use them in a non-scripted design, transferring the skills that they have probably worked on for a few school years.
Being in the community you can teach students about being a customer:
Shopping List
There are different ways to have students shop. From a simple list to a larger list
A simple list would be a single item with a picture and the word.
Your student is not able to read and can stay focused on task for 5 to 8 minutes. The class will be making pizza bagels tomorrow. The ingredients are:
- Frozen bagels - aisle 14
- Cheese - dairy at the end of aisle 12
- Sauce - aisle 3
- Plates - aisle 7
--Create a shopping list for your student, from the above ingredients. The student should only look for and pick up what he/she can handle.--
Waiting in Line
Shopping is done and now it's time to go wait on line. The same student is with you. The line has 4 people in front of you and 2 of them have large orders.
--What options do you have? Remember that the purpose of this task is to teach the student how to wait in line.--
Money
The student has made it to the cashier. In the classroom he is able to independently make whole dollar amounts up to $25. The student struggles with rounding to the next dollar. The total is $16.79.
--How can you help the student complete the task?--
Working
- Work tasks are demonstrated in the classroom, the best that they can be. Each new skill, students are shown the skill by observing a teacher doing it at the location.
- Students are split up to different sections of the work location.
- A task list is created prior to going in the community so that the student/s have a visual to look at when needed.
- Teachers should also have a task analysis to collect data on the student.
- The steps on these sheets will vary depending on the student/s.
The first sheet is for a student with minimal support. The second is for a student who can read but needs prompting, and the third is a task analysis,to mark the students ability to do each step.
Your class works at a grocery store. The student you are working with will be bagging groceries today.
--Think of the steps and create a task analysis using the blank form below. When you complete the task analysis, so to the store and bag the groceries as you listed the steps.--
--Did you forget a step?--
File:Blank task analysis sheet.doc
"Work systems assist in increasing independent performance, task completion, and on-task behavior among individuals with autism"(p 229)