One thing I’ve practiced over the course of my career is teaching skills minimally. For example, if you want to teach a student how to use a microwave, you might bring them to the kitchen and walk them through the steps with an actual microwave. And while for some students this might be great, for others it could be a disaster. There are so many opportunities to for distraction and error – especially since you will be trying to teach many skills at the same time. Instead, I would try to teach all the skills needed in a more minimal, discrete environment. At a desk in your classroom you can teach time concepts, reading package directions, and rules for basic safety. After a student masters these, then you can take all of these skills to microwave and your students will be more prepared.
Today’s free autism resource helps teach the skill of finding and watching YouTube videos and tweeting about them. You will need a device connected to the internet to watch the YouTube videos, but the tweeting is all done offline. After your student watches a video in the category, they will write the name (or description of the video). They then have 140 characters (one character per box) to write their message about it. This is a great way to introduce your students to the concept of Twitter, without having to worry about the possible repercussions of actually posting to social media.
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