Natural Doesn’t Mean Unplanned: The Art of Intentional Play-Based Teaching

Hi, it's Shaina here. Before this episode starts, I'm popping in with a quick reminder about our upcoming CEU. It's on Thursday, January 22nd, from 12 to one Eastern time, and it's called from bribes to buy-in, applying reinforcement systems that actually work. Reinforcement is a cornerstone of effective ABA, but when it's misapplied, it can fall flat or even feel like bribery. In this CEU event, Shaina and I are going to dive into how to create meaningful reinforcement systems that grow with the learner from simple one-to-one reinforcement to complex systems like behavior contracts and self-management tools. We'll teach you how to build reinforcement systems that foster real, buy-in, promote independence and lead to lasting behavior change. You'll earn one learning CEU for ACE, QABA, and IBAO. To join us live at this event, or to watch the recording asynchronously, go to howtoaBA.com/ceu. See you then. - Hi, I'm Shira Carpau, and I'm Shaina Gaunt, and we're board certified behavior analysts. At HowToABA, we provide practical resources, community, and support to ABA professionals. In each episode of our podcasts, we will be having real conversations with real people sharing real stories about ABA. - We'll share relevant strategies and actionable tips that will make us all better ABA practitioners. It's the ABA content you need that you're not going to learn in a textbook. - When you think of play-based learning, you might imagine free play and letting kids take the lead, but here's the truth. Natural doesn't mean unplanned. Let me say that again, natural does not mean unplanned. Behind every playful moment is an opportunity for intentional teaching. So we're diving into how to strike the balance between child-led exploration and purposeful instruction. So who has ever planned a birthday party before? When I first became a parent, I used to think, oh, birthday party, okay, so you just invite kids over and have a cake and open presents. Well, that lasts about seven minutes. What do you do for the extra two hours? It's, you know, you really do need to plan when you're inviting kids to your place, especially younger kids. And having a birthday party, you know, you're planning games or you're inviting somebody else over to plan the games or doing something. So I guess my point with that is that, you know, it's always about intention. It's not just a free for all, like, hey, come on over and just do whatever you want. It's about, hey, we've got to be able to plan this stuff. And it's the same thing when we talk about free play and ABA teaching. Right, 'cause you are thinking about what would be fun for them? Do these kids like magic? Do they like sports? And then you're planning accordingly. And I think one of the big misconceptions is that, you know, we're supposed to be doing what's fun for the child and does that mean that they just get to do whatever they want? And it's a complete, you know, free for all. And they're just bouncing from activity to activity while the therapist is following them. And that's really not what we mean when we talk about play-based learning. I was gonna say that actually gives me anxiety when you think about it, like, if you've got a child, who you haven't planned a session for. And yes, you're following their lead, but they're jumping from activity to activity and you don't have any goals set in place. Like, she scares me and I find that that's not effective either. Right, there really is a balance between following the learner's lead and creating and contriving opportunities for socially significant goals. And this may be different if it's a student you're just meeting for the first time. Those first few sessions, you may be following their lead a little bit more than you would ultimately. But the goal is that you're able to create and contrive opportunities for these IP goals or treatment goals and skill acquisition programs to be embedded throughout the things that your client or your child really, really loves. And the question is, where do we get these goals from? So, yes, you're playing with a child and you're following their lead a little bit but trying to embed your goals. Well, what are our goals? Remember, we're behavior analysts. So we should be doing assessments. So obviously, you're going to be doing an assessment with the student and finding out where they're strengths and where their weaknesses are. And based on that, that's where you can develop goals. I think I've said this before but I often find it helpful that if you are in a therapy environment, you can have a whiteboard in the background as you play. So all you need to do is glance up at the whiteboard and you can see your goals. And that makes playing a lot more natural is that you can glance up and go, oh yeah, that's what I'm working on. Sometimes I use different colors of markers as well. So certain goals are in red, certain goals are in green. That kind of thing as well are certain students if you're working with more than one student. So you can color code that. Sometimes I have notes beside me or sometimes it'll just be a matter of, okay, I've read this right before I've gone into the session with my client so I know exactly what I'm doing. - We love the early start Denver model as an assessment for younger learners. So if you start with that assessment, it would really help you define a lot of play-based goals. We also have a whole section in our free membership in the BX resource. That includes some videos and resources on assessment. And I also want to mention not to forget to assess preferences and reinforcers because so often one of the challenges with doing something play-based is, well, they're not into anything that I'm offering them. And we really need to be creative and not just thinking about toys, but thinking about activities and songs and fun and all of these things that maybe they can access otherwise. So really thinking about motivation and preferences and your assessment of goals. And we talk about contriving motivation, but along with contriving motivation means contriving the environment. So making sure that in your environment, you've got toys that are put away so that you have to, the student has to access the adult to get the toys. Or you can follow the child's lead to a particular toy, but there's not 50 toys out so that the child gets super overwhelmed as well. So you want to make sure you're contriving the environment a little bit so that you're the deliverer of good things that the child's only seeing one or two toys at a time that those toys get rotated often. And I'm even going to go one step further and say, you know, as a therapist, I bring in a bag with me. So I'm bringing in a bag of things myself so that I'm paired with good things and oftentimes I'm seeing a student, students will go right for my bag because they want to see what's in it and what I've put in that day. So what does that mean for the therapist or the one who's actually playing with the learner? And it really is a fine balance between, you know, the therapist having an agenda, like I have to get these targets done. So I'm just going to, you know, be directive versus like responding to the learner. And that really is like an attunement. It is something that comes with practice because you're balancing following the child's motivation and maybe not always following their lead but following their motivation and things that they really like doing while also thinking about, well, I know that one of their targets is following instructions. So, you know, I'm, they're really interested in this toy. I'm going to throw in some instructions within this toy or they're really interested in these bubbles but I'm going to close it really tightly so that they have to ask me to open it. So those are some examples of what the therapist can do without giving a lot of, you know, strict directions but using their natural motivation to embed targets. Let me give you a few examples. I'm working with a baby right now. I'm sure you've heard me talk about my baby before. He's two now. So he's a little bit older and we can do a little bit more things and we're doing a lot more play that two-year-old would do versus like what babies do. So, for instance, he loves playing with a car ramp and, you know, he has a car ramp. What I do is, you know, make sure that the car ramp is one of the only things out in the session at, you know, at a time and, you know, he goes to the car ramp and we're working on making choice between two items. So, you know, he has, you know, he puts his cars down a couple times but then I catch them. I don't take the cars away from him but I catch them as they come down the ramp. Then I hold up both cars and say, "Which one do you want?" So that he can choose. And then, you know, we're working on making a point, making the choices, that type of thing. And then, you know, he's two. His attention span isn't, you know, forever. So, you know, he goes off to another activity or that's when I see him as he's, you know, his attention's waiting. I pull a book out of the bag. Remember, I'm bringing you bag of materials. I'll pull a book out of my bag. He loves looking at books. So we look through the books together and I label pictures. Sometimes I'll say point to this or point to that. But I really do need to balance the point too and then just labeling pictures and making it fun because if I put too many questions and demands in that book, like point to this, point to this, point to this, point to this, he's probably going to take that book and throw it at me. So, you know, instead I'll, you know, go in and I'll say, "Oh, look, there's a snake!" And I go, and I actually tickle him underneath his armpit. So you can do little things like that as well within play. Then he gets sick of the book and he, you know, bounces to something else. He might go back to the cars or, you know, in the meantime, as he's looking at the book, my 15th arm, because I'm like an octopus here, right? You know, takes away the car ramp and, you know, has something else out as well. You know, goes to that other activity or I pull out bubbles from my bag and we do the bubbles. Like Shira said, you know, I have the bubbles tight. So he's got a request open. He's now actually starting to say below. So, you know, opening the bubbles and I do a few freebies for him. I go, "Blow, bubbles!" And I go, "Blow!" And I blow and he pops and I go, "Pop, pop, pop, stop!" And then he's, you know, he's now saying, "Open!" And below, but again, a few freebies and then a few that I have to, you know, he's got to make a request for and a few more freebies. So you're bouncing back and forth between, you know, I'm asking for things and, you know, you know, requiring that demand, but I'm also giving some things for free to keep his motivation in there. - Yeah, so intentionality is a lot of things. Like Shira said, it's setting up the environment a certain way so you can pre-plan the activities that you're gonna work on. Maybe it's putting some activities high apps that they can't reach them or setting up the car ramp, but there's no cars. Those are intentional ways that you can do that. Also thinking about what those goals are in advance. So preparing what goals you're planning on working on, what materials you're gonna need for that. We've created a couple of options for data sheets, for sessions that are more natural play-based. One is our net data sheet. That's gonna be a freebie that will include with this podcast. And we also have another one we call our beginner data sheet, which includes some really great suggestions for those beginner goals when you're just starting a BA program. And the thing that we love with both of these is that you can prepare in advance what the goals are and then leave the data sheet alone. Never have to refer to it during the session 'cause it's rating scale and you're able to really get engaged and read the learner and attune to them and get involved in that play because it's very hard to keep stopping and starting when you need to attune to a data sheet. Let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about data and what that looks like. Shira mentioned that we are giving out the net data sheet. Well, what does that mean? Net is national environment teaching. We write some goals along the side of it. Those goals can be looser goals, they can be larger goals or they can be specific goals that are really broken down. And that's just a rating scale. That rating between one to three, rating between one to five, how well the student did that. And yes, it's subjective. But if you're the only therapist, you're subjective against yourself. Or if there's one or two therapists, you're subjective against one other person. Subject and data show that subjective data are better than no data at all. So that's fine and it just keeps that play natural. Another thing you can do is you can define two things that you actually want to quantify. And you can use tally counters for that. Confession, I am terrible with tally counters. I can use one tally counter very well. And you know, click for every spontaneous man that I hear, for instance. But if I have two tally counters, I usually manage that, especially if they're color coded. I know red means one thing in blue means another. No problem. Don't give me three. Don't give me four. Don't I can't do it. And if I can't do it, it means there's probably a lot of other people who can't do it either. So you know, stick to one tally counter, two tally counters max and then use something else. Chicken scratch notes are totally great too. Sometimes I have a blank piece of paper and I'll do some tallys on there for certain things. But again, just to make that play really natural. And there's so many goals that you can embed and play and the best way to think about doing that is through modeling. Like instead of making it a demand, like Shane has added there, you want them to ask for help to open the bubbles and they're not doing it, you'll just model. There isn't a lot of demands at this stage until they're ready for it. And then as you're creating routines, you can keep adding onto those routines. So you can work on communication, play, social skills, regulation, any of these things can really be embedded within play. We talk a lot about sensory social routines. It's a part of the, with the ESDM talks about and creating these little routines that are somewhat predictable and enjoyable. And then you can keep adding onto that. And they really help build things like reciprocity and joint attention. And these pivotal skills that can be built in play don't have to be memorized. They really become enjoyable. And then the learner can attend to so many other things and learn so many other things naturally. If they have some of these really basic beginner skills. So again, another confession. When I was younger, we did a lot of discrete trial teaching and this whole natural play thing wasn't really, you know, it almost said it was said like it's not ABA so don't do a due discrete trial instead. So I was, I don't know if you say I was raised in discrete trial. When I would get a beginner learner before, like I'm talking 20 years ago, you know, the very first thing I would do is try and bring them to a table or a chair, regardless of their age. And again, I'm not advocating for that anymore. But bear with me, this is 20 years ago. And you know, I'd have a student who's like a year and a half, two years old, sitting in a chair and they wouldn't like it and they'd be struggling. And I'd be struggling because I don't, that was tough. I didn't keep them in the chair, but they would struggle to get out and then I would chase them around on the ground and it was horrible. But when they were finally sitting, I would say to them, okay, do this and I would clap my hands. And then I would prompt them into airless teaching for them to be able to clap their hands and copy me. And you know, with discrete trial, we know that with enough trials and with enough prompting and prompt fading and reinforcement, differential reinforcement, you know, kids can do that, they can learn. So I would have students who would really learn imitation skills and learn following one step instructions. And they did it fairly well and I was able to, you know, color in a box on an assessment and say, yes, they can do this. But guess what? It didn't generalize away from that discrete trial. They couldn't do it with mom. They couldn't do in the classroom. And, you know, Shira mentioned these pivotal skills of joint attention and tracking and all of the sharing and that kind of thing and they couldn't do it. That wasn't fun for them unless I had a token by my eyeball and then they would look at the token and they would finally make eye contact with me that way. And I would say, good looking. Like, it was very rigid. You know, again, I'm gonna flip now 20 years later. You know, I'm now doing more naturalistic play, especially with really young kids. And the first thing we get is some of that joint attention and some of that shared play. And I don't do it by drilling demands. I'm doing it by following some leads, having some goals, but really creating that fun. I'm modeling, modeling, modeling. And I'm not specifically teaching imitation skills in like, I do this kind of way. And it was frustrating for me at first. It really was. I was really frustrated because I couldn't fill in that box on the assessment, you know, the baby I was working with at 14 months. I was modeling everything. And every time I said, do this, he wouldn't copy me. You know, he wouldn't do it. And I would say, okay, ready? Do this, copy me. And, you know, he wouldn't clap his hands when I did it. I would even do the verbal imitation stuff. Like, okay, do E, do A, wouldn't do it. But then, like two months later, you know what he does to me? He looks at me and he claps his hands. So I clap my hands back and then he puts up his hands. I put up my hands. He goes E and I said E and he says, oh, so it's coming. I watched him in daycare the other day. You know, he's in daycare now. And some person walked into the room. It was another teacher. He looked at the teacher and he followed her and he tracked her across the room. And then other kids got up to show this other teacher something. So you know what he did? He got up to and followed those other kids. So even though he doesn't and still to this day, if I say do this and clap my hands, he's not going to do it on command. But he has imitation because it's generalized. And he's doing what the other kids are doing. And like Shera said, he's got some of those pivotal skills of joint attention. He's watching what other kids are doing and he's tracking. So long-winded story. Yes, you know, sometimes when you're in this natural play, it can get frustrating because you feel like the kids aren't making the same gains that they might make in discrete trial. But hang in there because I can almost guarantee that those skills will be generalized faster. And they'll learn what's called those pivotal skills. And the pivotal skills are skills you learn and will lead to other things. I mean, our end goal here is learning in the natural environment. Our end goal is learning from a group environment. And if you can do that faster, then you can with certain other things. I'm not saying that discrete trial is like, I'm not saying don't do discrete trial at all. I think it's got it's time and a place. But not within 18 month old and not with a two-year-old. So stay with, stay the course and it'll happen. That's a nice story. Let's talk about some common mistakes or what not to do in play-based learning. So the first thing is we find adults tend to ask his a lot of questions. And especially with little kids, our natural inclination is to say, what are you doing? What are you playing with? What color is it? Because that feels like we're teaching them. But in reality, think about yourself. You don't want to be drilled with a lot of questions. It feels like a demand for a lot of our kids. They don't know what color their shirt is. They don't want to have to answer that. And so asking a lot of questions is what not to do when doing play-based teaching? Instead, our recommendation is comment, comment, comment. Just pretend you are a news broadcaster, narrating everything that's going on. And it really makes you be a little bit more creative in the things that you say. But it really helps with that relationship building. It's hard to do, especially if you're used to so many questions. Keep going, make those comments. Have somebody else sitting in the session and go, every time you say a question, because it's really hard to do it first. And along with asking too many questions, is what we call hijacking play. Again, hijacking play by asking too many questions, but also just by over structuring. And like, oh, I've got to get those goals. And I've got to get those goals in. And then all of a sudden, it looks more like discrete trial on the floor than it does play. And then again, free play doesn't mean a free for all. So really have those goals planned. So a free play or natural learning isn't that I don't come prepared. But really prepared your sessions. Be prepared with the goals that you want to run during that session. And then individualizing them. So it's going to be individual to your learner. Just because one learner really likes cars. Another learner might really like bubbles. And so using what they're interested in as opportunities for teaching as opposed to having one size that's all approach to teaching through play. Absolutely. So what we mentioned already, I feel like we're repeating ourselves here, but it really is important. Make sure to plan for flexibility. We want to make sure that we're not rigid during sessions. But that we can follow our child's lead. But continue to be flexible and jump from activity to activity. Really make sure that we're prepared for that. And something that we've done when there are multiple therapists was we would even just have a tracking sheet of the things that the toys or activities that the learner enjoyed. And maybe a rating scale next to it. I really tried row, row, your boat. And he wasn't so into it. But he really liked this sensory social routine. And that way, you can go back and forth and see what other therapists are doing and what is working. And with some therapists, play is hard. So as a BCBA, make sure that you're modeling some of those play-based therapists for the RBTs continue to do your BST, right? You're modeling you are giving feedback. You're having them jump in. I said that way in the wrong order, but that's OK. You want to make sure that you're continuing modeling and having them jump in and giving that feedback. Yeah, just remembering that, you are building relationship and that when you are engaging with them and learning with them, you're both building a relationship with them. And they are learning that this is fun. A relationship is worth it. And so really prioritizing that, that it doesn't have to be chaotic or hard for the learner, that you're really trying to build goals and teaching through that relationship with them. Absolutely. Check out another video that we have. It's episode 118 on Generalization and Maintenance. In summary, today, we discussed how to be intentional in play-based teaching. Thanks for joining today's conversation. Wherever you get your podcast, please go and subscribe, rate, and review, so others can find out about us too. For more from how to ABA, including free resources and ABA materials, visit our blog at howtoaBA.com and make sure that you're following us on social media for more practical tips and updates. (upbeat music)