A couple of weeks ago my Awesome Kindergartener brought home sight words that he had to learn. I thought for a moment about how I was going to teach him these 20 words. I decided to use the errorless teaching approach. I delivered the discriminitive stimulus (Sd) “What word” while holding up the sight word and if he responded incorrectly I repeated the Sd and gave the correct answer which he repeated. Before I start our first homework session with the sight words, I had to think of how I was going to motivate him to do this homework and to stay on task during our homework sessions. What reinforcers could I use? A lot of times people say things like “They are children they are supposed to do homework because you say so”. Let’s face it people, no one does or continues doing things that they are not reinforced in some way. For example who would put full effort in a job if not being reinforced for their work (paycheck, recognition, etc). My first thoughts were edibles and tablet, but then I started thinking about how he and I were both deprived of one on one time with each other. I mean mommy high fives and tickles are quite valuable on the reinforcement scale right since he spends so much time at school, ABA, Speech and Occupational therapy and mommy’s attention is divided between him and sister. So when he gets a correct response without a prompt he gets a high five and/or tickles along with some mommy silliness and very enthusiastic praise. If a prompt is used he gets praise or a high five. I also use time with a preferred object/actively as a reinforcer for staying on-task. He’s mastered 90% of the words on the list so far and his on-task behavior while doing homework has increased significantly. Once these individual words are mastered the next goal will be for him to recognize the words out of a field of 3 and then out of a field of five.
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