Week 1: Our own primary and secondary emotions

Week 2: Our children’s continuum of emotions

Week 3: How to respond to children emotionally, reasonably and wisely

Week 4: What we ought to assume about our child

Week 5: Finding wise responses/ The art of validation

Objectives:

By the end of this presentation participants will be able to:

·               Recognize the foundation building blocks necessary for learning

·               Demonstrate an understanding of strategies for promoting sensory regulation

·               Learn and practice activities to promote their student’s attention

·               Learn and practice tasks that promote visual and auditory processing

·               Identify and implement strategies for improved handwriting

By the end of this presentation participants will be able to:

1. Identify basic principles of functional behavioral assessment

2. Determine aspects of and variables in the environment that can set the occasion for challenging behavior

3. Implement varied techniques & strategies to identify the function of  a specific challenging behavior

Although many professionals can identify children’s deficits in all of these areas, what is lacking is a systematic structured approach to assess these skills and address them in a way that these skills can be learned and generalized to other settings. The purpose of this training session is to teach a systematic way of assessing the deficits of the individual, and to delineate a structured approach that can be used in individual therapy as well as in a group setting. The group needs to include direct instruction, modeling, practice of skills, coaching and prompting, feedback and problem solving and using teachable moments and unstructured play to maximize the learning process.

This course is designed to teach professionals such as BCBAs, special educators, speech language pathologists, social workers, and occupational therapists, the frameworks, concepts and strategies to enable them to better understand the social learning experience thereby, enabling the professionals to help others improve their social cognition and skills. Attendees will learn how to assess the social cognitive level of each child and how to establish individualized goals and treatment plans for each child to be addressed during individual therapy and in the group environment. Attendees will learn to assess the group members’ level of various modes of communication such as conversation skills, body language, facial expression, emotional regulation and awareness of themselves and others. They will learn how to structure a group to incorporate the different methods needed to affect behavioral changes such as, direct instruction, modeling, positive practice, coaching and using affective prompt procedures. In addition, they will acquire behavior modification techniques to ensure the smooth running of the group.

Course Objectives

Participants will be able to:

1. 1. Identify 5 components of running a successful group
   2. List 15 common skills addressed in social skills groups
   3. Complete an individualized assessment form
   4. Identify the 5 steps needed to effectively teach any targeted behavior or social skill
   5. Create and implement an individualized curriculum for a sample group
   6. List four components of teaching individual targeted skills
   7. Develop strategies to increase cooperation and foster a positive atmosphere within the group setting
   8. Teach conversational skills by looking at the various components of communication and targeting each skill individually

Participants will learn:

• An entire new perspective on Kriah, the skills necessary for each level of reading, and the relationship between each level
• To develop phonological awareness, step-by-step guidance in teaching, practicing and internalizing each level of reading
• How to conduct reading assessments, create a remediation plan, and track progress

Each participant will receive concrete ideas and exercise techniques on how to organize, focus and calm their client. The professional using these techniques will easily engage their clients in a productive session.

In this workshop, participants will:

1.            Learn to maximize sessions with sensory techniques and exercises.

2.            Understand the theory of sensory processing disorder and how to break down behavior  according to the 3 sensory systems

3.            Become familiar on how to apply sensory exercises according to behavior

4.            Learn how to utilize sensory aids and techniques according to behavior

5.         Understand how to apply emotional and cognitive techniques according to behavior

Objectives:

Attendees will be able to:

-Describe how to optimize engaging and visual elements of learning for students with social deficits.

-Demonstrate how to alter social skills teaching methods between individual, small-group and classroom-size settings.

-Demonstrate the use of several psycho-educational games and activities to promote social communication skills.

-Demonstrate the use of several psycho-educational games and activities to promote relationship skills

-Demonstrate methods to increase awareness of social cause and effect in children with social deficits.

-Demonstrate the use of several psycho-educational learning activities to promote awareness and regulation of emotions.

In this workshop, participants will:

1.            Explore neurodevelopmental constructs of memory and attention as fundamental to reading.

2.            Differentiate reading and spelling tasks in terms of memory and attention demands.  Gain practical techniques to address these areas.

3.            Learn to utilize student’s strengths to compensate for memory and attention deficits while simultaneously strengthening these areas of weakness.

4.            Plan lesson sequence based on cognitive and conceptual skills.

5.            Become familiar with the phonological processes underlying beginning reading.  Learn strategies to enhance phonological awareness and proficiency.