Instructional Booklet€¦ · In this booklet, we introduce you to some basic teaching methods ....

Instructional Booklet

Teaching with Flash Cardsby The Special Learning Clinical Team and

Tabitha Kirby, MA, BCBA

www.ever-learning.com

Teaching with Flash Cards: Instructional Bookletby The Special Learning Clinical Team and

Tabitha Kirby, MA, BCBACopyright © 2013 Special Learning Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner what-soever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For in-formation, contact Special Learning Inc. 500 N. Michigan Av-enue, Suite 300 Chicago, IL 60601.

www.special-learning.com

ISBN 978-1-939249-97-5


For all individuals with special needs who inspire us to reach toward a brighter future

for all.

– Karen Chung, Founder and CEO,Special Learning, Inc.


A Message from the Founders of Special Learning ......................... 4

How to Use this Booklet ................................................................. 5

Getting Started ............................................................................... 6

Lesson 1: Matching ....................................................................... 12

Lesson 2: Sorting .......................................................................... 16

Lesson 3: Receptive Identification ................................................ 20

Lesson 4: Expressive Labeling ....................................................... 24

Links for Learning ......................................................................... 28

Table of Contents

www.ever-learning.com8

Special Learning, Inc., an educational resource company and provider of mobile technology solutions, exists to offer every par-ent of a child diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities, a genuine chance to help their son or daughter attain an abundant and fulfill-ing life. Our products and services are developed by Board Certi-fied Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) in accordance with the evidence-based practice of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Therapy.

ABA Therapy is a scientific approach used to change behavior. It is derived from the principle that behavior is affected by consequences, and these consequences can be used to change behav-ior. For individuals with ASD, the focus of ABA is on affecting or changing behaviors that will allow that individual to achieve more independence.

More than five decades of scientific research have proven thattreatment based on the principles and procedures of ABAcan significantly improve the quality of life for children withASD. In many cases, with early and intensive intervention, ABA therapy can permit these children to mainstream into the typical classroom. Our extensive experience providing intensive behavioral intervention using ABA confirms what the research tells us.

We believe ABA provides powerful teaching strategies and have designed our Teaching Early Language Flash Card Sets around ABA principles.

This instructional booklet contains simple lesson plans and con-cept explanations in a user-friendly format that is designed to aug-ment your child’s ABA treatment and educational curriculum.

Special Learning is dedicated to becoming a global leader in autism solutions by empowering you with the tools and technology to help your child reach his or her full potential. We look forward to helping you and your child grow!

A Message from the Founders of Special Learning

www.ever-learning.com 9

The Teaching Early Language Flash Cards Set is designed to teach your child a variety of specific, foundational skills he or she will use throughout a lifetime. These skills include things like identifi-cation and matching of items your child commonly sees in his or her environment, and teaching your child how to request items he or she wants.

Effective Teaching

In this booklet, we introduce you to some basic teaching methods that are in line with ABA procedures. These methods may seem much more structured than what you are used to. Teaching with the methods of ABA typically requires lots of practice and repeti-tion, more intensive structure and routines, and plenty of guid-ance and reinforcement to make your child successful in each learning moment.

We believe you, as parents and educators, can be the best teach- ers for your child. However, with Autism, Down syndrome, and other developmental disabilities, learning usually takes place in a different way. Your child can often be the best teacher.

Each flash card contained in this kit teaches multiple skills that are clearly explained in lessons throughout this book. The les-sons are featured in a sequential order and are best utilized when introduced in the order given, as some later lessons build on skills acquired during the initial lessons. However, making use of the materials that motivate your child in the moment can provide ex-cellent learning opportunities. Therefore, each skill outlined in this book can be introduced based on need or as opportunity arises.

How To Use This Booklet


It is important to start each play lesson by first determining that your child is interested in playing with the materials that you are presenting. The flash cards in this set make it easy to incorporate a wide variety of skills during learning moments. Such skills include matching, receptive identification, verbal imitation, expressive labeling, requesting and more.

Teaching skills in what we call a “mix and vary” presentation can be an effective way to teach multiple skills. This means even though you may introduce items following the sequence provided, try to intermix tasks or ask a mix of questions across the different skill areas. This will help maintain your child’s attention, prevent rote learning and create a teaching session that is exciting and new.

Importance of Reinforcement

Reinforcement is the most important principle of behavior and a key element of effective teaching programs. Reinforcement is something given after a positive behavior. You can think of the reinforcement process as “delivering a reward” to your child.

For example, if he or she gets an answer right, you might say, “Great job!” Or, you might give them a high-five, a sticker, or a favorite treat. For children with Autism and other developmental disabilities, it’s important to make reinforcement a frequent occur-rence.

The more often you reward a child for the behavior you want to see, the more likely the behavior will occur again in the future. Without the use of effective rewards, it may be very difficult to motivate your child to learn. Over time, we hope to strengthen a positive behavior or skill so much so that it’s likely the behavior will occur in the future with or without the reward delivered.

Once you have established motivation and interest, you are ready

Getting Started


to teach!

Importance of Prompting

Prompting is another very important key to your child’s success. Prompts are guidance provided by a teacher to help ensure that the child is responding successfully, especially when learning a new skill. Prompts are artificial cues that provide assistance to the learner to help him respond correctly. The use of prompting must be purposeful and should be faded out as soon as possible. Why Prompt?

Prompting is an important step in the learning process. Typi-cally developing children learn naturally from their environ-ment through observation and imitation. When a child is asked to complete a task or answer a question and he does not know the answer, his natural instinct is to look to you for the answer. Prompting is an easy way to provide him with the correct response the first time so that he can learn to do it on his own next time.

For example, if someone were to ask you to count to three in Rus-sian and you didn’t know the answer, you would have to look it up or ask someone the first time. This is what you are doing with your child. You ask him or her a question and give the answer immedi-ately so that he or she can learn to answer correctly the next time asked.

How do I Fade Prompts?

When your child is learning a new skill, he or she will most likely require a lot of prompting. However, as time goes on, your child will require less prompting to be successful.

For example, when you first ask your son to put on a shirt, he may need you to pick up his hands, place them on the shirt and assist in pulling it over his head (physical guidance). You may also need to help guide his hands, one after the other, into the arm holes.


Next you would help him grab the bottom of the shirt and pull it down around his torso, check after each step to see if your child is able to complete that step correctly. After multiple presentations of this skill, he may only require for you to help pull the shirt down around his torso, after he first completes the other steps inde-pendently. Once he acquires the ability to pull the shirt down, he may only require a gestural prompt while dressing. As you start to feel your child participating more in the steps, reduce the level of prompt and start to fade the prompt for those steps all together. Over time, the command, “put on your shirt,” will control the response of putting the shirt on without the need for additional prompts.

Types of prompting

• Physical Guidance: Use of physical contact to help your child respond correctly. There is a continuum of physical prompts that range from hand-over-hand to simple guiding with slight touches. As a rule of thumb, you should always use the prompt that is the least intrusive to your child. For example, holding his hand to force his hand movement is more intrusive to your child than tapping your child’s hand in the direction it should move.

• Modelling: Acting something out to provide a physical model for your child to imitate from or copy.

Instruction

“Hit the red ball”

Child Response & Prompt

Parent reaches over and uses her hand to

get the child to hit the red ball into the hole.

Reinforcement

You did it!Way to go!

Instruction

“Clap”


Parent demonstrates clapping and child

claps.

Reinforcement

“You did it!” and give the child a peice of candy or a token.


• Gestural: Pointing or gesturing toward the answer to help your child respond correctly. These prompts include point-ing, tapping the table, looking at the correct response, and so forth.

• Vocal Verbal: Prompts that include using a “say” cue, voice

inflection and other verbal cues. A verbal prompt can be the entire answer like “blue,” or just part of the answer like “bl.”

Keys to Follow when Prompting

1. The ultimate goal of prompting is to have the child indepen-dently respond correctly without any prompts.

2. Prompt at the same time or immediately following the instruc-tion given or question asked.

3. Always start by giving the answer in a very obvious way with a lot of reinforcement when the child gets it right, even if prompted. As quickly as possible, fade out prompts so you are only providing rewards when the child responds indepen-dently.

4. Do not allow for repeated failures. If your child is having

Instruction

“Touch the dog,” and parent points to

dog.


Child touches dog.

Reinforcement

“That’s right!” and give the child a high

five.

Instruction

“What is it?”and parent says,

“tree”.


Child says, “Tree.”

Reinforcement

“You’re so smart!” and tickle the child.


trouble with a particular target, help by prompting him or her with the correct answer and provide reinforcement for trying.

5. If the child is having trouble, give a lot of prompts so the child feels successful and doesn’t get frustrated with learning new skills.

6. Beware of inadvertant prompting. Children with behavioral and developmental disabilities are very good at picking up on cues such as eye gaze, smiles, and sudden change in your behavior to help guess a correct response. Pay close attention to maintaining neutral facial expressions and body language until your child has finished giving his or her response. For ex-ample, when giving the instruction to your child, “Touch bird,” make sure that you don’t accidentally glance or shift your eyes toward the bird. Instead, continue looking at the child or in a neutral direction.

7. Always end the lesson on a correct answer, whether it be prompted or not. This keeps the lesson positive and reinforc-ing for your child.

Importance of Target Selection

In order to provide the best learning environment for your child, you must choose and teach lessons carefully to ensure that the different things you are teaching do not cause confusion. This is especially true in target selection.

For example, if you teach your child the word ‘duck’ first, your second target item should be as different from the first item as possible. It is easier for your child to learn ‘elephant’ after learn-ing duck than it would be to learn ‘goose’, ‘bird’ or ‘dog’ after. You want the second item to not look like or sound like the first.

Additionally, when you are teaching a new item, make sure the most recently learned items are not in the field of view of your child until he or she demonstrates the ability to learn the new


items with other items in view.

For example, if you just finished teaching ‘tiger’, do not add tiger to your child’s field of view right away when teaching the new tar-get, ‘bear’. Because your child just practiced selecting the ‘bear’ as recently as the day before, chances are your child will select it again based on habit if it is available. In order to prevent errors, do not have the ‘tiger’ available for your child to choose until the ‘bear’ is learned well. Then, you will want to make sure that your child can discriminate between all previously learned items includ-ing the newest one, ‘bear’.

Importance of Individualizing Lessons

Each lesson identifies prerequisite skills that your child should have before teaching that lesson. Additionally, each lesson pro-vides ways to simplify the lesson and ways to make the lesson more difficult. This is important to be able to continue to challenge your child in a healthy way. Make sure prerequisite skills are met. If the lesson as it was provided originally is too difficult, follow the suggestions for simplifying the lesson. If the original version of the lesson is too easy, try using the suggestions for expanding the lesson and making it more challenging. Additionally, if there is a next step lesson in this book, the lesson will tell you which lesson should be taught next.


Matching is an essential skill your child needs in order to learn what objects go together. This skill also teaches your child how to pay attention to detail, or what we call, “discriminate.”

There are several steps to matching that can be followed to break the skill down from easiest to hardest. We first like to start with matching identical items to identical items. This means the items you are matching are identical in every way: color, shape, size,and so forth. For your convenience, we have supplied two identi-cal examples of each object/animal.

Next, you will move to teaching non-identical matching. This allows your child to increase generalization skills. For your conve-nience we have supplied three different examples of each object/animal. Simply have your child match the object/animal to the non-identical object/animal.

Prerequisite Skills

• Sitting• Attending• Fine motor ability to hold, reach, and place a card, object or

picture

Keys to Follow

1. First, start with identical matching and then expand to more difficult matching concepts as your child is ready. Some possible identical matching objects to start with can be: toothbrushes, shoes, socks, sponges, blocks, books, scissors, crayons, dogs, cars, etc.

2. This lesson can be done in play but may also benefit from more structured set ups, which will require you to minimize what objects and toys are out and available in your child’s view. Sitting at a table free of anything else besides learning

Lesson 1: Matching


materials may provide the best learning space for your child away from distraction.

3. When presenting items for your child to match, try to have more than one item in the field of view, but no more than three to start. For example, if matching ‘dog’, you could have pictures of a ‘snake’, a ‘cow’ and another ‘dog’. You want to encourage your child to discriminate and pay attention to detail so he or she knows to match the dog to the dog even though there is a ‘dog’, a ‘snake’, and a ‘cow’ in his or her view.

4. When giving your child an instruction, it’s best to keep the language very simple, clear and concise. For example, you might say, “Match dog,” and hand the card to the child to match. You can also say, “Make a match,” and hand the card to the child.

5. Make sure to remove all cards from the field of view after your child responds, whether correct or not. When you present them again, make sure not to put the cards in the same places or same order. This assures that your child is choosing based on the card, not on its location on the table, which is a very common guessing technique for kids with Autism and other developmental disabilities.

Conducting the lesson

1. Using your Special Learning flash cards, lay out several in your child’s view to get started. To simplify, start with only the target item in your child’s field of view. The target item is the object/animal that your have selected to teach. Teach the target item by itself to build success before adding additional items to your child’s field of view.

2. Hand him or her one picture to match to the corresponding object/animal and say, “Match.”

3. Your child matches the picture to the correct object/animal picture.


4. Reward your child for correct matching with praise, snacks and

a high five.

5. You can repeat this lesson several times with different objects/ animals and with both identical and non-identical, throughout the same day.

6. You can repeat these basic steps with additional pictures in the flash card set. It is recommended that when you start with one picture of an object/animal, use that same picture of that object/an imal in future lessons until your child can reliably and independently match that picture. Because you have three different pictures of each object/animal available, you will want to teach each one over time so you are certain to teach your child to generalize. Until then, start slowly to increase the likelihood of success.

Simplifying the lesson:

If you find that your child is having difficulty understanding or learning after several days of attempting to teach matching with only one or two choices, you may need to decrease your expecta-tion or change the materials you are using. Here are some ways you can do that:

• Use real objects instead of pictures. Using objects that stack inside each other (e.g. cups, bowls, plates, spoons, etc.) can help make the response clearer to your child.

• You may also be able to help your child be successful by simply having only one item to match to on the table. After your child has matched one item by itself several times in a row, increase the number of choices on the table. Do this system-atically and increase by one item after each correct response

Individualizing the Lesson


up to a field of three choices.

• Make sure the choices of items in the field of view are clearly visible to the child as separate choices.

Expanding the lesson:

If you find that your child has mastered all possible items in the set, you can increase the difficulty of the task or move on to the next step. Here are some suggestions:

• Have your child match non-identical pictures.

• Have your child match one of the pictures with an object that is non-identical. For example, if your child is matching ‘cups’, have him or her match a picture of a ‘cup’ to an actual ‘cup’ that is different than the one shown in the picture.

Next Step: Sorting


Sorting is a prerequisite math skill. Sorting is the beginning step for children in learning relationships between objects based on their attributes. In addition, children must use logical thinking and apply rules in order to sort items.

In general it is easiest to teach sorting by limiting the match area to a set of clearly marked borders with a pile marker. A pile marker is just a card of that category that shows your child where to stack the like items of that category. For example, if your child were sorting dogs, trees, and cars, layout a dog in one space, a tree in another and a car in yet another space. As your child learns what sorting is and becomes more successful, fade out the pile marker and he or she should sort with three empty spaces provided.

Sorting can be taught using a variety of non-identical objects and a variety of colors, shapes, categories, sizes and patterns. For the purpose of this booklet we are teaching your child using flash cards. Therefore, your child should sort any “group” there are flash cards for. As we progress, we will discuss how to teach your child to sort non-identical objects and to categorize them.

Prerequisite Skills

• Attending• Sitting• Matching – identical and non-identical• Fine motor ability to hold, reach, and place a card, object or

picture

Keys to Follow

1. Remember to start teaching with items that are not similar in any attribute. Attributes are specific characteristics about that object/animal. You should use three very different objects/categories. For example, if you are teaching your child how to sort dogs, don’t add pictures of other animals until he or she

Lesson 2: Sorting


has mastered basic sorting by characteristics.

2. This lesson can be done in play but may also benefit from more structured set ups, which will require you to minimize what objects and toys are out and available in your child’s view. Again, sitting at a table free of anything else besides learning materials may provide the best learning space for your child away from distraction.

3. You must have at least two groups to sort between. You can start with up to three groups and systematically increase to more groups once your child has learned to sort several items.

4. To start teaching, we recommend you select only two or three target groups at a time. Allow your child a high level of success so he or she can earn reinforcement as often as possible. As he or she demonstrates independence in responding, intro-duce one or two more groups to rotate the sorting between.

5. Initially, provide your child with one card each time you give an instruction. Once he or she is able to sort successfully, be-gin providing the whole pile of items to be sorted and give the instruction only once when the pile is initially presented. For example, once your child is able to successfully sort each dog that you hand him, give him the whole pile of dogs at once and say, “Sort.”

6. Remember to repeat lessons multiple times throughout the day and week.

Conducting the Lesson

1. Using your Special Learning flash cards, select four items each from three sorting groups. For example, if your child is sorting non-identical objects, you could select four different animals, four different shapes, and four different numbers. At the be-ginning, lay one card of each group on the table or floor as a pile marker of where the piles go, as well as what goes in each


pile.

2. Hand one card to your child and say, “Sort.”

3. Your child sorts the card into the group it belongs to.

4. Reward your child for correctly sorting each card at first. Fade reinforcement eventually by waiting to give the reward after all cards are sorted. For example, at first reinforcement would be given after your child sorts each individual dog. Once he or she is sorting from a pile, reinforcement will be given after the entire pile has been sorted.

Simplifying the Lesson:

If you find that after several days of attempting to teach sorting two or three groups, your child is unable to sort, you may need to make the changes in stimuli or expectation of response. Here are some ways you can do that:

• If your child is trying to sort three groups, decrease to two.

• Look at all objects again. Determine if there may be a similar attribute between objects of different intended groups that is confusing the child. Think from your child’s perspective. A hint that items may have shared attributes may be that the child always puts one picture in the wrong pile, even after much prompting. Color of an item is an attribute. Check to make sure it doesn’t seem like color sorting from your child’s view.

• You may need to use objects instead of flash cards or even a mix of both. For example, have your child sort actual spoons instead of pictures of spoons, or a combination of actual spoons and pictures.



• Put out two pile markers from each group.

• Have your child sort two items each of two groups.

• Change to saying, “Match, sort,” instead of just, “Sort.” Be-cause “Match” was the language used most recently with a very similar response, it may need paired with this new word.

Expanding the Lesson:


• Have your child sort up to 6-8 items each from 4 separate groups

• Have your child sort advanced items such as sub-categories, by color, by size, by shape or by attributes (e.g. round, pink, has a tail, etc.)


Receptive language skills, or the ability to listen and to under-stand, are an early part of a child’s language development. We specify some of these skills as following directions and learning the names of things in the environment. Children usually learn these skills before they are able to expressively label objects intheir world. Receptive language skills also facilitate attending skills and help develop abstract reasoning.

While receptive language skills begin with both following direc-tions and identifying basic objects, our lesson plans focus on receptive identification only.

The object label is the most basic form of receptive language that can be taught to a child. This means your child learns the name of the item. If a pig is presented in front of your child, he or she may be asked to “find the pig,’ or simply told “pig” while pointing to the pig with the goal of pointing to or tapping it as well.

Receptive identification skills involve asking a child to gesture toward an item, touch it, pick it up, or go and get it from another room. This does not include having your child vocally say the name of the label, which is a different skill that will be covered in a dif-ferent lesson.

Here are some examples of receptive identification:

A. There is a ‘dog’, ‘cat’ and ‘cow’ on the table. You say to your child, “Give me the dog.” Your child’s behavior response should be to choose the dog from the animals presented on the table by picking up and handing the dog card to you.

B. There are pictures of a ‘bowl’, ‘couch’ and ‘flower’ on the table. You say to your child, “Touch the couch.” Your child’s behavior response should be to touch the couch.

Lesson 3: Receptive Identification


Prerequisite Skills

• Attending• Sitting• Matching

Keys to Follow

1. Remember to start with items that are motivating and com-monly found in your child’s everyday environment.

2. This lesson can be done in play but may also benefit from more structured set ups, which will require you to minimize what objects and toys are out and available in your child’s view. Again, sitting at a table free of anything else besides learning materials may provide the best learning space for your child away from distraction.

3. You may present only one object in your child’s view to elimi-nate the possibility of errors; however, we encourage you to present an object in the field of view with other objects to strengthen learning. For example, if you are teaching your child to identify ‘pencil’, start with just the picture of a pencil out on the table. Then add other pictures so the child must learn to differentiate what a ‘pencil’ is.

4. If you have more than one item presented in your child’s view, and you are teaching more than one label at a time it is important to rotate randomly through the objects you are asking your child to identify. For example, if you have a ‘dog’, ‘cat’ and ‘duck’, you should ask for ‘cat’, then ‘dog’, then ‘duck’, in no particular order. Additionally, be sure to remove all the cards after your child’s response, whether correct or not. When presenting them again, do not to put the cards in the same places or same or-der. This assures that your child is choosing based on the card,


not on its location on the table.

5. Remember to repeat lessons multiple times throughout the day and week.

6. To start teaching, we recommend you select only one or two objects/animals at a time. Allow your child a high level of suc-cess so he or she can earn reinforcement as often as possible. As he or she demonstrates independence in responding, intro-duce one or two more animals/objects into his or her learning environment.


1. Using your Special Learning flash cards, lay out several in your child’s view to get started.

2. Ask your child to, “Find the elephant,” or any card of your choosing.

3. Your child touches, picks up, taps, or points to the elephant picture. Any of these responses are fine if you tell your child to “find” something. However, you will want the precise ac-tion you ask for. For example, if you say, “Give me cow,” your child should pick up the picture of the cow and give it to you. If your child only taps or points to the cow, that should not be counted as a correct response. So, carefully choose what words you will use beforehand so you can anticipate the ex-pected response.

4. Reward your child for correct identification with praise, snacks and a high five.

5. You can repeat these basic steps with additional pictures in the flash card set. It is recommended that when you start with one picture of an object/animal, use that same picture of that object/animal in future lessons until your child can reliably and independently identify that picture. Because you



have three different pictures of each object/animal available, you will want to teach each one over time so you are certain to teach your child to generalize. Until then, start slowly to increase the likelihood of success.

Simplifying the Lesson:

If you find that even after several days of attempting to teach a receptive label with only one or two items present, you find your child still does not understand and hasn’t learned the item, you may need to decrease your expectation or change the materials you are using. Here are some ways you can do that:

• Use real objects instead of pictures. For example, use an ac-tual car instead of a picture of a car.



• Have your child find the object in a book or on a paused dvd instead of in front of him/her at the table. You can pause a DVD in the middle of a scene that shows the target object/ani-mal and have the child find that item.

• Have your child find the object within the community. This is a great way to do Natural Environment Teaching (NET), a suc-cessful ABA method.

Next Step: Expressive Labeling


There are two different ways a child understands how to label items in the world around them. First, a child is able to identify the item using receptive identification. The second skill a child is able to use is expressive labeling.

Expressive labeling as a whole provides the foundation for build- ing language and providing children a way to communicate and interact with others. This also increases awareness of the world around them and leads to conversation and interaction with oth-ers.

An example of expressive labeling is that your child sees a zebra in the book and says, “Zebra.” Another example is pointing to a zebra in a book and asking your child, “What is it?” and your child says, “Zebra.”

If your child has already developed clearly identifiable vocal speech, an effective teaching strategy would be to teach labeling at the same time as receptive identification to make learning more natural, rewarding and motivating.

Prerequisite Skills:

• Sitting• Attending• Receptive Identification

Keys to Follow

1. If your child gets overwhelmed easily and/ or discrimination is difficult, you may want to start with materials that are less distracting so that you and your child only focus on the actual item you want to practice labeling.

2. Vocalizing may be a more difficult skill for your child, so be sure to bulk up on the rewards and build in lots of motivation

Lesson 4: Expressive Labeling


when teaching.

3. Utilize the help of professionals when working on articulation and clarity in your child’s vocalizations. Forcing a child to vo-calize a word perfectly to earn a reward can cause frustration and problem behaviors if articulation is difficult for him or her.

4. If your child is unable to vocalize a word successfully, start by reinforcing for the closest attempt at saying the word. As your child begins to get closer to saying the word, only give reward for the best attempt. For example, if the correct answer is ‘pig,’ reinforce your child for just vocalizing the ‘p’ sound at first. Once he or she is able to say “pi,” only reinforce when “pi” is vocalized, and so forth.Remember to repeat lessons multiple times throughout the day and week.

5. As in other sections of this booklet, we recommend you select only one or two objects/animals at a time to start teaching. Allow your child a high level of success so that he or she can earn reinforcement as often as possible.


1. Using your Special Learning flash cards, lay out several in your child’s view to get started.

2. Point to the cat, or another card of your choosing, and ask, “What is it?”

3. Your child says or signs, “Cat,” or even just the ‘C’ sound.

4. Reward your child for vocalizing and labeling correctly with praise, snacks and a high five.

5. You can repeat these basic steps with additional pictures in the flash card set. It is recommended that when you start with


one picture of an object/animal, use that same picture of that object/animal in future lessons until the child can reliably and independently label that picture. Because you have three dif-ferent pictures of each object/animal available in the set, you will want to teach each one over time so that you are certain to teach your child to generalize. Until then start slowly to increase the likelihood of success.

Individualizing the Lesson Simplifying the Lesson:

If you find that even after several days of attempting to teach imitation of one or two very dissimilar words your child is still not learning, you may need to make the instruction more clear or de-crease the expectation. Here are some ways you can do that: • Have a real object or picture present when asking your child to

label it.

• Decrease from expecting full words to just sounds. For exam-ple, if you are teaching your child to label a tomato, you can accept the initial ‘t’ sound as a correct response at first. Once the child is able to say more of the word, like ‘to’, then rein-force that as the correct response. This should continue until your child is able to give a response that is closest to the word itself.

• Use immediate prompting by saying, “What is it? (say label).”



• Have your child respond with more than one word/sound in a row (e.g. “The car”)


• Have your child respond with a sentence (e.g. “It is a car.”).


At Special Learning, we strive to provide you with the most com-prehensive solutions to give you the best chance to help your child

attain an abundant and fulfilling life.

Throughout this booklet, we have outlined some specific lessons you can use to teach your child about the world around him or her in a fun and positive manner. We hope that you find these lessons

useful and practical in your home or school setting.

As you begin to use these lessons with your child, you may en-counter questions that you don’t find an answer to in the booklet. You can find answers to Frequently Asked Questions and even post

your own at our special learning resource page for teaching:

www.special-learning.com/teaching_faq

Thank you for bringing us along on your journey toward a brighter, more successful and independent future for your child!

Links to Learning


Special Learning’s Teaching Early language Flash Card sets help teach basic language to young learners in a fun and easy format.

Choose from any of our downloadable sets:

We are expanding our library of early language. Upcoming titles will include food, clothing, body part, locations, community help-

ers, and many more.

To obtain additional information about upcoming titles, or to pur- chase additional sets as we add them, visit

www.special-learning.com/store

• Shapes• Numbers• Letters• Colors• Animals• Pets• Farm Animals• Jungle Animals• Aquatic Animals• Reptiles• Zoo Animals

Instructional Booklet€¦ · In this booklet, we introduce you to some basic teaching methods ....

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