9. Providing Individualized Support

Imagine there are learners in your program who struggle to engage in certain activities, follow directions, or complete specific tasks, even with some basic supports in place. Or maybe you have needed some extra help learning something new, like a new recipe, sport, or hobby. Everyone needs extra support at some point, and it’s likely that learners with identified disabilities require additional help to participate in inclusive programs.

This video talks about how we can provide individual support for teens and pre-teens who need it. We’ll talk about three different strategies:
1) How to provide good, clear instructions
2) Ways to provide the right amount of help
3) How to use positive feedback

We provide individualized support to help our learners fully participate in our programs’ activities and routines, especially when these are new skills they need to do. This could be teaching a learner how to use a padlock independently during swim class, or supporting a student learning the routine of finding and getting on the bus after school. We also provide extra help when a learner acts in a way that limits their participation, such as using physical behaviors like hitting or kicking, leaving the group, or not following directions.

We start by reflecting on the directions we give our students and making sure that they understand the expectations. Providing really clear instructions that let learners know exactly what they need to do is important. Good instructions help everyone be more successful and independent, and prevent behaviors that are challenging. Good instructions are short, clear, focused on behavior that we can see, and stated positively.

By “positively,” we mean telling the learner to do something, like “You can use your tablet in 10 minutes when it’s independent work time,” rather than telling them to stop doing something, like “Put that away!” Good instructions also give learners clarity on what exactly they’re supposed to do. For example, in a seventh-grade art class, the instruction “Please get your sketch pad and pencils out of your locker” is much clearer than “Gather everything you need and get ready for class to begin.” The second example doesn’t tell the learners exactly what they should do. Another example: a camp counselor telling a group of kids “Wait until the person in front of you is at the red line” is clearer than “Stop, wait, it’s not your turn yet, hold off on going until the person in front of you is done.” Clear instructions are an important way to help learners be successful before we need to provide more individualized support.

Now let’s talk about different ways we can give teens and pre-teens the right amount of help so they can be successful with a certain task or activity. By providing the right amount of help, we’re teaching learners exactly how to participate in certain activities or routines. This is called prompting. There are many ways we can use prompting in secondary programs.

We can verbally remind specific learners of expectations for a certain activity, like telling a student that the bell to leave for third period will be going off in 5 minutes. We can use gestures, like pointing to where a learner can find their materials, or pointing to what will be happening next on the visual schedule. Sometimes we model or show how to do something, like how to check out a book at the library or play a new game. We can also use pictures or photos to show a learner a list of things they need or the steps in an activity. For example, for art class we could show the student a checklist of paper, paints, and paintbrushes.

These examples all provide different levels of help and different ways to use prompting. Of course, our goal is to help students learn new skills while encouraging them to be as independent as possible. We should take a step back and let them do things on their own once they’ve learned a skill.

Now let’s talk about how we can celebrate our learners when they do the right thing. Positive feedback is one of the most commonly used and most effective strategies when working with teens and pre-teens. Positive feedback happens when we celebrate after a learner followed the directions or engaged in an activity as expected, and it increases the likelihood that they’ll do this again in the future.

The most effective positive feedback is called behavior-specific praise, where we directly name what a learner is doing. For example, a PE teacher saying, “I see how Isabella is carefully carrying her hockey stick back to the bin,” or a soccer coach saying, “Great job, Leonard, you’re staying with the group.” Behavior-specific praise is an easy-to-use strategy where we tell learners exactly what they’re doing correctly. Other examples: “Khed, way to wait patiently for your turn to answer,” or “Isabella, I love how you’re using your quiet voice in the library,” instead of a more generic statement like “Good job.”

Sometimes positive feedback can also involve specific items paired with behavior-specific praise. For example, Elena is working on making it to her fourth period class on time after lunch and earns a ticket for the monthly school raffle when she’s in class and ready to go before the bell rings. Her teacher is very mindful in using behavior-specific praise, saying things like, “Elena, I see you seated at your desk and ready to go. You earned a ticket,” specifically noting exactly what she’s doing.

Sometimes we use several of these individualized support strategies at the same time. This can be helpful for learners who seem to need even more help to participate after one of these strategies doesn’t seem to work. For example, Leonard is having a hard time at soccer practice. While he really likes soccer, he struggles to do drills with the rest of the team and participate during the whole practice. After talking with Gordon, Leonard’s dad, the coaches plan for some individual supports for Leonard.

First, they reflected on how to give really clear, concise directions and use pictures of each drill to help Leonard understand what to do. Gordon shared that Leonard is really successful when people show him exactly how to do new things, so the coaches made sure they always demonstrated each drill and had Leonard follow teammates who could do the drills independently. This way he had several different models of what to do.

Finally, Gordon thought that they could always have a special activity planned after soccer, like visiting his favorite comic book store or stopping for ice cream on the way home. With these things in place, Leonard began participating the whole time. The coaches noticed these things also seemed to help a few other players, and were so proud to see Leonard being more successful during practice. There weren’t huge strategies to implement, but rather small things they could easily add in that helped create an inclusive space where Leonard could participate much more independently and have more fun.

We know that some learners in our programs will need extra help to participate and access some activities, routines, and settings. We can use specific strategies such as providing clear instructions, giving the right amount of help, and using positive feedback—or several of these things altogether. All of us need extra help at one point or another. What could this look like for the learners in your program?