-: Hello, and welcome to an overview of
the PEAK Relational Training System.
Today, we're going to be discussing
this evaluation and curriculum guide
for teaching basic and advanced language skills.
My name is Jen Quaranta.
I am the Southeast regional coordinator for the ASD Network.
-: And my name is Abby Pfister.
I'm the Northeast Regional Coordinator.
Today's objectives are to describe
the components of the PEAK Relational Training System,
identify the four PEAK modules,
be familiar with the PEAK assessment materials
and basic steps to getting started,
and to describe the PEAK Relational Training System
that can be used as a standalone curriculum
or in conjunction with existing intensive teaching
verbal behavior programs.
As a reminder, it's just an overview.
So by the end of today's session,
some things we'd like you to take away from this is
that PEAK is an evidence-based language curriculum
that teaches learning to learn.
PEAK can be used to support language skills,
flexible thinking, sticking with it,
when things get difficult.
And practitioners have reported
that PEAK can be implemented in schools
without extensive training.
So objective one, describe the components
of the PEAK relational Training System.
PEAK was created in the spring of 2008 by Dr. Mark R. Dixon
in response to the growing need for contemporary,
comprehensive, and easy to use ABA assessment,
and treatment program for children and adults with autism
and other related conditions.
You're probably asking yourself,
so what does PEAK stand for?
PEAK stands for
the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge.
Some things that make PEAK different
or unique from other programs you may be familiar with,
is that there's a reliable administration
of the assessments.
which is called the PCA.
Jen will cover that later today.
It has a standardization of delivery.
which reduces the time and completion.
It has easy to implement programs.
It was developed so it could be used by
teachers, parents, caregivers, and behavior analysts.
Although PEAK was created
from a behavior analytic foundation,
instructions are written in a non-technical way
so that everybody can understand it.
Jen and I both have experience implementing it with teams,
working with paraprofessionals as well as teachers, SLPs.
So we know you guys can do it too.
There are over 736 different programs to choose from.
And like I said before,
they're based on the principles
of applied behavior analysis,
which we know is great for kiddos with autism.
And it is peer reviewed in over 30 papers.
So PEAK again, is that learning how to learn.
So the target students for PEAK
are about 18 months through the age of the teenage years.
It's an evaluation and curriculum guide for teaching
basic and advanced language skills
from a contemporary behavior analytic approach.
It utilizes DTT, those Discrete Trial Trainings,
to help students learn and generalize skills.
It's teaching everything.
We know that teaching everything a student needs to know
is time consuming, unrealistic, right?
So this really helps us to break it down
and to work on building that skillset for our students.
So don't just take my word for it.
Let's hear from Morgan Martin,
a teacher from Westside Community Schools,
tell us how she began using it.
-: Hi, my name is Morgan Martin.
I am a resource special education teacher
at Westside Community Schools.
I currently have a behavioral functional caseload.
So PEAK was introduced to me
through our behavior facilitator.
She went to the training
and brought back all of the training to me
and we've set up a program together
for one of my kindergarten students.
He came to me with a lot of gaps in his learning,
and we know students with autism will have that.
So we just decided to set up a verbal behavior program
for him and use PEAK.
-: So as you can see,
Morgan tells us that it's very teacher-friendly.
She was able to implement PEAK without having gone through
the formal training,
by working with someone who was formally trained.
So it's a team approach, right?
Not everyone has to have extensive training,
that we can get it up and going pretty quickly
for individuals.
So objective number two, identify the four PEAK modules.
The first module we're going to discuss
is the direct training module.
And this module is going to target the foundational skills
that help to build the more complex skills.
This module or book is going to be similar to the programs
we currently see ran when we think of mass discrete trials.
So a lot of the programs in here
are very similar to what we see on the ABLLS-R
or the VB-MAPP, such as requesting, labeling, imitation.
The learners are taught these skills using prompting,
positive reinforcement, as well as immediate feedback.
Some of the programs you'll see in this module
are turn-taking, imitating counting, simple drawings,
following one step directions, tracing, matching colors,
as well as matching items.
Here, we're going to watch it in action.
Teacher: Right, put with same.
No, try that again, that's green,
and what color is this?
Yellow, put with same.
Good, that's putting with same.
Here, put with same.
Good, blue and blue is the same.
Put with same.
That is putting with same, good.
Let's do another one.
-: Okay, so that was program 7B, matching colors.
And you can see in the direct training module,
there's one correct response,
and answers are directly taught to the student.
Seems very familiar, right?
We can be very successful with that training,
with those programs.
And also this video is from their YouTube channel,
which is amazing at helping and supporting teachers
or SLPs, whoever's implementing the program,
kind of understand it
and get that little visual model of how to do it.
Okay, here, we're going to see it implemented
into a classroom here in Nebraska.
So this is a kindergarten student,
he's going to go through the part
of the direct training module.
And this is program 7H, imitate animal sounds.
(teacher baas)
(pupil baas)
(teacher baas)
(pupil baas)
(teacher neighs)
(pupil neighs)
(teacher baas)
(pupil baas)
(teacher oinks)
(pupil oinks)
(teacher neighs)
(pupil neighs)
(teacher barks)
(pupil barks)
Teacher: Excellent job.
-: Excellent job.
-: So, see he's equally proud of himself,
telling himself excellent job.
So not only is he the cutest kindergartner ever,
he, as you can tell, he is thoroughly enjoying the program.
So the next module we're going to go into
is the generalization module.
So this is where we're going to teach our learners
to use skills in new and different ways,
in different settings.
And we're going to teach the child to extend
the skills that they've learned to new settings,
people, materials.
It's important for our learners with autism, right?
So that they are able to use their skills in different ways.
in this module book, I love Dr. Dixon's example,
pretend that you're staying at a hotel room, right,
And you need to set that alarm clock as the backup
to our phone alarms in case it dies or for whatever reason.
But although the clock looks different
than your alarm clock at home,
you're able to set the alarm
based on generalizing your skills.
So first you set the hour, where on our phones,
we just have to scroll it quickly with our thumbs.
Or if you are like me, I have like 17 different alarms
from all my snooze buttons
I can find the one that's most appropriate.
On the one at the hotel,
I have to first set the hour and decide what I want to use.
If I'm going to wake up and what minutes am I going to do?
5:00 AM, 5:15, 5:16.
Do I want to set it in advance?
There's people that like their clocks
to be 10 minutes ahead, I figured that out,
Jen's one of those.
I figured that out way too quickly,
then I just think I have longer time to sleep
or do something else.
So we have to decide, am I waking up in the AM or the PM?
Who has set that incorrectly before?
Not a good thing, right?
So to be able to generalize those skills of what hour,
what minute, what time of day I want to wake up,
as well as what sound do I want to wake up to?
Is it the blaring alarm, the beep, beep, beep, right?
Or is it a calmer tone so that I gradually increase,
I can pick music as well.
So I don't have to learn how to set the alarm
on every single clock that I come in contact to.
I learned it on a couple, I can generalize those skills.
I don't have to be directly taught,
and no one is there telling me great job, Abby,
you just set the hour, wow.
That's how you set the minute.
Great job choosing AM.
Oh, I love that song too.
No, I come in contact with the natural reinforcement
of great, now it's waking me up
so that I'm not late for my training
or not late for vacation.
That's that natural reinforcement.
So in the generalization
as well as the transformation and equivalence modules,
we'll cover those two next,
that's where we'll start to see some of the training
as well as the testing.
So during the training trials,
we want to make sure that we're providing that
quality instruction for this skill.
We need to ensure that we're providing immediate feedback
after each response, looking at the prompt hierarchy,
that we're varying it and meeting the student's needs.
Do they need a positional prompt?
Do they need me to vocalize it again.
So being aware of your individual learner.
And items are scored based on the number of prompts
and adjustments needed to evoke that appropriate response.
So it doesn't matter if I am prompting them vocally again
to tell them, oh, no try it again.
Or if I am pushing some of the cards a little bit closer,
that doesn't matter.
It's just how many times I have to prompt them
to the right answer.
Okay, and here we are,
we're going to watch the classroom train,
a training session in action.
And as you watch this, you'll notice that the teacher
does provide some direct teaching,
which helps make those corrections
during the training session.
And you'll also notice that she's using one color of bear,
working on that one-to-one correspondence.
In a couple more slides,
you'll see that when she is running test trials,
she's using multiple colors of bears,
that the kiddo has to distinguish
between the colors of the bears that he has to count.
And she'll describe that in her video as well.
And you'll also notice in this video
that the teacher is taking data
during the train sessions too.
And so that just helps us to see the progress
the student is making.
Teacher: Noah, Noah, count the red.
-: Red, red, red.
One, two, three.
Teacher: Good job.
Count the green.
-: Green, purple.
Teacher: Nope, count the green.
Show me, count the green.
One.
Noah, count the green, one, two, three, four, five.
-: Okay, so although you can see the student
engages in some silliness, that's our reality.
Every teaching session doesn't go perfect.
But again, most of this was due to that,
he was knowing that he was being recorded like,
oh right, look, they're watching me.
But it's exciting to watch the growth of the student
in such a short period of time.
So actually this student prior to implementing PEAK,
he would stand from the work area at the slightest break,
would stand up and go away from the work area
at the slightest break in instruction.
So it had to be extremely quick pace.
Now he's able to stay at the table
and wait while the teacher records the data
and gets the items for him for the next trial.
So that again, just reiterating,
we have to make sure the learning is fun for the kiddo.
As well as focusing on those skills.
So then in the test session, this is designed to assess
the individual's ability to generalize each target skill
that you're using.
So during this time,
you may be using the different materials
in training versus testing, each individual target skill.
It's important to remember that reinforcement and prompts
are not provided in the test trials.
And that can be really difficult.
But it's either a zero or a 10,
they either get it or they don't.
So just that's what breaks it apart,
those tests from those trainings
Teacher: For this one, I'm going to test
on the counting groups of items.
In the previous one you've see me training on it.
And on that one, I used one color at a time
and had him count.
On this one, the testing part,
I would give him two different colors
or three different colors and prompt to just count one.
So like, I'm going to say Noah, count the red ones.
And on this one, I can not help him out.
He's got to do it on his own
and I cannot give praise or anything.
So since he didn't do that, we'll take it away.
Noah, count the blue ones.
Count the blue ones.
Yeah, count the blue ones
-: This isn't blue.
Teacher: That's not blue, you're right.
Count, the blue ones.
-: One, two.
Teacher: So it's something we're still working on
for him, but that's how I would do the test then.
-: All right, and as you can see,
those test trials are a little trickier, right?
Because you're seeing without instruction,
now can the kiddo generalize that skill
that we just worked on?
So that is where they score a 10 or a zero.
They either have it or they don't.
All right.
So, and this program has a mix of test and train
that you will see.
The teacher has to know if she is training
and can provide some feedback or if it's a test trial.
And whether it is either correct or incorrect.
-: What do I do?
Teacher: Okay, you need to pick which does not belong.
Try again, nice job.
-: Those have circles.
Teacher: Those have spots, you're right.
-: But that's circles.
Teacher: Yep, spots or circles.
-: All those have circles.
Teacher: Which does not belong?
-: Ice cream doesn't belong.
Ice cream doesn't belong.
The ice cream.
Teacher: Hey, which does not belong?
Nice work.
-: Dog doesn't belong.
Teacher: Dog doesn't belong,
these are squares.
-: The dog has circles.
Teacher: Nice job working Andrew.
Ready?
Show me ready hands.
Which does not belong?
-: That doesn't belong.
Quack, quack.
Teacher: Which does not belong?
Try again.
-: Dog does not belong.
Teacher: Tails.
-: These have tails.
Teacher: They do, nice job.
-: The fork does not belong.
Teacher: Forks don't have tails, you're right.
-: Another really fun student and a little shout out
to the teachers and parents and students
for allowing us the videos.
It just makes it so much more meaningful.
So this was a great example
of why the generalization program is used.
We can't possibly teach every type of difference
that a student will encounter,
but we can teach them to attend to the information
and to make the categories on their own
as we heard Andrew do here.
So we're going to watch another example.
And this again is from their YouTube channel,
from the PEAK YouTube channel.
So again, another great resource
and just so that we can see another kind of program.
Teacher: All right, find shirt.
No, try again, find shirt.
Good job, that is the shirt.
Find pants, nice, those are pants.
Find, let me switch these up.
Find shirt.
Find pants.
Let's do some more.
Find hat.
Good job finding hat.
Find coat.
No that's hat, find coat.
Look at these again, where's the coat?
Good job, that is the coat.
All right, where's the cap?
Where's the raincoat?
Let's do some more.
Find pants.
No, that's a hat, find pants, good job.
Find coat, good work, that is a coat.
-: So as you can see from this video,
they're immediately working on generalizing the skill.
A shirt is a shirt is a shirt,
whether it has buttons or a pocket or a v-neck,
we're teaching the kiddo in this,
well the adult in this case,
that it's still a shirt and we're immediately
working on that.
You can see that there are test and train trials
intermixed in there.
So during that video they were training
shirts, pants, hat, and coat.
And then they were testing the button up shirt,
the cargo pants, the cap, the raincoat.
So you can see how quickly,
we're seeing how the individual student
can generalize those skills.
Each kind of shirt and each type of hat
and each kind of pair of pants.
So some of the programs in generalization are creativity.
So there'll be drawing different paths, identifying sarcasm,
beginning perspectives, problem solving,
so how to pack a container so it all fits.
We all have those kiddos that pack it,
if they had to put a game away at the end of recess time,
they pile it all in there, shut the box
and it's good, right?
So it's working on skills like that as well.
That audience credibility.
So given a scenario and who said it,
is the statement likely to be true or is it false?
Which there's many of us adults that could benefit
from that program as well.
It also works on games such as I Spy,
so tolerating failure.
I Spy something purple, the kiddo says the wrong thing,
it's going to be okay.
And working on that, we're not always going to get it right.
So that abstract component
that comes with the game of guess who
as well as that problem solving with tic-tac-toe,
how do you get three in a row?
Where do you want to play first?
Where do you want to play second?
So those are all built in there.
It also goes into academic skills such as sorting
and counting groups, matching letters and numbers
of various fonts and sizes.
Again, so we don't have to teach each individual A
depending on the type of print,
we start building that into the programming early, early on.
So as you can see here from the sample,
that generalization programs go far beyond
what we have traditionally thought about
in terms of generalizing across people or environments.
And it goes beyond that very, very quickly.
And as you see, just again from the sample here,
that there some real life applications
that our students often struggle with.
And so this is built into their programming
which is really a great component of it.
So now going into the equivalence module
and that is the blue book
that's where we're learning to relate concepts together
that have not been directly taught.
It encourages our learners to gain new knowledge
without being directly taught it as well.
And it teaches learners to attain new skills
from skills previously taught.
So that is really where we're starting to see
that ability of learning how to learn,
how can I relay what I've previously been taught?
So let me see here.
This is where we start to use our senses
to interact with the environment around us.
And it's not the same as generalization.
And we'll go into some examples here.
So this is what a lot of us love,
this is where we get the teach two, get four for free,
and who doesn't like freebies.
Particularly when we think about the skills
that our kiddos need to work on
and how are we going to fit that into a school year
in a limited number of minutes.
So we'll take anything we can for free.
So as you can see here, in this example,
this blue component with the solid arrows,
those are the trained relations.
Those are the parts that we're going to directly
teach our students.
So we're going to teach them that the fox written down,
the word fox, right, is this same as the spoken word fox.
And we're also going to teach and train
that the written word fox equals the picture of fox.
And then our kiddos are going to derive from that,
start thinking and learning about that learning,
how the other ones are related.
So spoken fox is the same as written fox
and a picture of a fox is the same as written fox.
And the spoken word fox is the same as the picture fox.
And the image is the same as the spoken word fox.
So that's a lot of foxes in there.
We're going to now watch a sample.
And this from their web,
sorry from their YouTube channel again.
-: What is it?
-: A rabbit.
-: Try again, Let's name it, it's a bunnerfly.
-: Bunnerfly.
-: What is it?
-: Bunnerfly.
All right, what is this?
-: Pig.
-: Let's name it, it's a cow wig.
-: Cow wig.
-: What is it?
-: Cow wig. -: Cow wig.
What is this?
-: A fish.
-: Let's name it, it's a doggish.
-: Doggish.
-: What is it?
-: Doggish.
-: What is this?
-: Cow wig.
-: Good remembering, that is a cow wig.
What is this?
-: Doggish.
-: Doggish, great.
What is this?
-: Doggish.
-: No, what was this?
-: Bunnerfly.
All right, what is this?
-: Cow wig.
-: Great, what is this?
-: Doggish.
-: Doggish, awesome, what is this?
-: Bunnerfly.
-: Awesome, and what is this?
-: Cow pig.
-: Let's try that again, what is it?
-: Cow wig.
-: Cow wig, good job.
Now, you get to draw.
Let me draw this up for you.
All right, oh yeah, you need a pencil too still.
In your first one, draw a cow wig.
All right, draw a doggish.
Draw a bunnerfly.
Draw a cow wig.
-: Okay, so you could see there the learner is experiencing
the same thought process, right?
The student was already familiar with rabbit or bunny
and a butterfly, so they could use those two
previously acquired skills to create the bunnerfly, right.
The bunny and the butterfly together.
So some of the examples of the equivalence programs
are the picture to picture.
So that's just matching the identical, the same.
Money, capital and lowercase letters,
vocal counting, money to monetary value,
synonym generalization, food groups,
as well as countries and continents.
Again, this is just a little sample of the programs
included in that module.
So next step and the fourth module in the group
is the transformation module.
So we know the individuals with autism
think about their own perspectives.
So creating learning opportunities
to show them that others have perspectives too,
is an important skill.
And that's where we're really going to focus on here.
That's where they learn to solve problems,
and to make decisions and to plan and execute actions.
It's teaching them and working with them,
how things are related to one another.
So some of the transformation programs
are picture to picture matching, larger and smaller.
So going, sorry,
going back to the picture to picture matching,
finding a picture that is different than,
a lot of times we're used to the same, the same, the same,
that our kiddos don't listen to language.
So switching that up a little bit too.
Going into what do, sorry,
larger and smaller, picture discrimination, what do I see?
What do you see?
That you and I, that again,
we see things that are different based on
where we're looking or what we have access to.
So as well as that auditory discrimination,
what do you hear?
So being aware of all of that.
So make sure during this video recording
that we're paying close attention to
the language the teacher uses
and notice that she varies what questions she asks first
as well as how the question is asked.
Teacher: Right, which one is bigger?
No, look again, which one's bigger?
That is bigger, which one's smaller?
That is smaller, nice work.
Let's do another one, which one's smaller?
Yeah, which one's bigger?
If this one's smaller then which one's bigger?
This one's smaller, find bigger.
Yeah, we have smaller and bigger.
Let's do another one, which one's bigger?
Yeah, which one's smaller?
Great job getting both of those right.
-: Okay, so in that model,
you could see that she varied What she asked first,
as well as the items that she used,
while still working on the same skill.
So as we wrap up this section,
we're going to hear again from Morgan Martin
on skills generalization.
-: The biggest change I've noticed
is he's able to generalize a lot of the material
he's learning through PEAK and use it in the classroom.
Just simple things like greeting people and the colors.
I mean, kindergarten is so language rich, anyways,
he's picking that up,
but PEAK gives them extra opportunities
to practice those things.
-: All right, now I'm going to let Jen take it from here.
-: And our third objective,
we are going to become familiar
with the PEAK assessment materials
and the basic steps we need for getting started.
So there are a few steps we're going to go through for this.
And it's basically, we're going to do our assessment,
identify our areas of needs,
target the programs that we want, gather our materials,
organize a data binder, and begin our instruction.
So when we begin, the first thing we need to do
is administer the PCA to our student.
What the PCA is is a test that allows us to see
the skills that our students have.
The best practice is to do it for all four of the modules.
But this really is a team decision.
If you have an early learner or a student
who is not going to be able to do as many of the skills,
you may want to decide not to administer all four of them,
just note that down in your testing materials
so that it is noted for later on.
If you need to do anything
that is outside of the standardization of it,
also make sure to document that.
We have some learners who just can't sit and attend
for very long, and so just write that down.
There's also discontinuation criteria within each module
that will help you know whether you need to continue
or to stop the administering.
Now, the PCA is scripted for you, which is very nice.
It helps with that standardization.
It can be administered by a variety of professionals.
So we can have our school psychologist help with it,
our teachers can help with it, and the way that it's written
they have the materials presented in there
so that there are some white boxes.
And they'll tell you that if the information
is in the white boxes,
you're going to present a student response book
that the student is going to be showing
their answer and things like that.
But if there's a black box for that question,
it tells you that you're going to remove the book.
And it's something that the student is probably
just going to be receptively listening
and following a direction or something of that nature.
But you don't need the book in front of you.
So the student book that I'm referring to
is this stimulus book here.
It is already created for you, it comes in bound books,
and you are using those for the various modules
of the testing that you're going to be doing.
The student will typically be doing something like
pointing to the materials that are on the page
or looking at the materials
and then giving you some information based on that page.
An important part of the PCA is the client booklet.
This is where you're just going to score
the student got the question correct.
Or that it was an incorrect thing for the student.
And you'll use these later
to get more of a final score for your student,
and then to help you with selecting your programs
for the student.
Now, the PCA, in addition, to having the area
where you are recording your pluses and minus,
has some additional tools,
these are optional tools for you,
they don't need to be used,
and not every team is going to find a reason to
use these when they are completing the PCA,
but they are nice tools to have.
One of them is the
PEAK Autism Symptom and Behavior Observation Summary.
What this really does is it looks
at those key characteristics that are often found
in individuals who have autism,
such as their social interactions, communication,
restricted and or repetitive behaviors.
After you've completed the PCA with your student,
you would answer these questions about the interactions
that you had with your student.
Now, this part they do recommend
is only completed by a BCBA or a psychologist,
because of the way that that would then turn into
helping with an educational verification
for special education.
The other part of it is a comprehensive,
the comprehensive assessment
would include a functional analysis part.
This is just where the team can document
any of the challenging behaviors
that were observed while they were administering the PCA.
And it may be helpful for a school team
if they need to have some behavior interventions in place
to make programming more effective.
Again, this is something that is optional,
I think I probably helped about a dozen teams
administer the PCA.
I have not used this with any of my teams yet
so I wanted to make sure you were aware of it,
but it's not something that you would absolutely need to do.
We're going to hear real quick from Melissa Luebbe.
She was so gracious to let me come
after I had done the training
and she's going to talk about our first time ever
administering the PCA.
-: Hello, my name is Melissa Luebbe,
and I am a speech language pathologist at Milford Schools.
And I had the opportunity to work with Jen
as we were beginning in assessment with a student
that we had some concerns about.
So Jen had just gone through an online training
and session with the creator of this assessment.
So she asked if I would help her give this PEAK assessment.
And we were just kind of learning together as we went.
So what we did is we worked with a student here,
he's a first grader and we worked for about
15 to 20 minutes initially.
And we did a lot of chunking with our testing
because the student was only able to sit
for those short periods of time.
So Jen and I did work together initially,
and then I did some assessment on my own.
And then Jen did come back and we finished up the assessment
and did the scoring together.
-: All right, so as you heard from Melissa,
we learned to do a lot of that together,
and we had to break it up for the student, right?
I want to let you know, as you first looking at this slide,
it might look a little bit overwhelming.
Remember, this is just an overview.
We're not going to show you exactly step by step
what you need to do.
So please like don't freak out about this.
But the results of our assessment are going to help guide us
in our program selection.
What we need to know is that in each of these,
in our direct training module
and each of the other sections,
we only are getting a small sampling of all the skills
that the student is supposed to do.
Remember Abby told us there's over 184 programs
in each of those books.
So there's no way for us to test all of those things.
In here, though, I'm able to see how many skills
that a student has and I'm able to continue
building from there.
Within the PCA kit,
you're gonna find this handy-dandy decoding sheet.
What this will help us do
is to figure out which of the questions
the student got correct.
And in our direct training
and in our generalization modules,
there is a direct connection between the questions
that were asked and the program and the book
that it corresponds to.
So if the student got it correct on the test,
we would assume that that is a program that is known
by the student and there's no need for us to teach
that program to the student.
So this will be a tool that you will be using
as you go from completing the assessment
to starting to build your program.
Again, overwhelming visually probably right now,
it will all make more sense to you guys later.
Is that after we have scored,
we have decided which of those items are directly related.
We can fill in another tool like this,
it breaks up those skills and it shows you exactly
how many are in each of the programs.
So of those 184 programs,
how many of those are related to verbal comprehension?
There's a 100 programs in that.
And so I only sampled 16 of them,
and I can determine how many programs
the student already knows and how many to teach
to the student.
Another nice thing that comes from this
is that if a student scored a perfect score on their test,
I can assume safely that all of those programs
in that column are mastered.
There's no need for us to teach those.
And I actually had a student just this week
that I was helping to score who had a perfect 16
in two columns.
It was great to see that we were able to skip
so much of the PEAK instruction.
We didn't need to target that for the student.
So the PCA has been a wonderful starting kit for us.
As we started to get to put programs into place.
Our initial programs are gonna help us
build our staff confidence,
especially those initial programs
as you are first getting started with PEAK.
We might pick some programs
that are going to be exciting for our students.
So when you saw Noah working on animal sounds,
it wasn't that it was a super important skill,
but we know he would have fun with it.
We knew we could run that program pretty easily
and we could build our staff confidence
that we could do this.
So it's okay to pick some easies as you're getting started
just to get that momentum going and things like that.
So our initial programs will come from a nice balance
of some easies and some hards.
It's real important that as we were picking out
those initial programs, we're going to vary it.
We're going to try to do it across all four modules
for the student.
Again, it's an overview, if you decide that you are
wanting to do PEAK,
we will help provide some additional guidance for you
because there are times where we're not going to pick
every book for every student initially.
But as we do it, we're going to vary the way
that we interact,
the way that the student is going to
respond to the materials.
And it's also important to consider prerequisite skills
for the student.
So if we have one where the student
is required to perhaps trace an entire sentence,
well, if they are not able to trace a letter by itself,
it doesn't make sense for us to jump to a bigger program.
How many programs we select for our learner
is really going to depend on the skills
that the learner has.
An early learner, one that doesn't have a lot of
previously acquired skills,
may have some limited communication.
We may pick only about five programs,
but for an advanced learner,
it's easy for us to put five to 10 programs in their day.
You'll also need to think about some of your limitations.
When are you going to be doing the instruction
with the student?
A student who spends more time
in a general education classroom
and doesn't get as much resource support,
you may need to pick only five
and decide who is running each program
during the parts of the day.
A student who spends more time in a self-contained classroom
may have more programs
because they have a lot of staff available
to work on that throughout their day.
So again, picking your number of programs
is going to be individualized.
Here, we're going to hear from Ashley
about how they decided to pick it
and their targets and how they got started in using PEAK.
-: So once we started implementing PEAK,
the student understood the nature of the programs
right away, he picked right up on it,
which goes to show how easy PEAK is not only for the adults,
but for the kids as well.
So we started with a couple of programs
that we knew the student would master really quickly,
and a couple that were more challenging.
And so this helped gain the buy-in of the student,
and just to show him and teach him how the process works,
and just the nature of the structure of PEAK.
And he mastered two of the programs really quickly
and is making progress on the other two.
-: Now, I remember the day that Ashley
called to tell me, guess what, he mastered some,
and it really wasn't that far
after we had started using PEAK.
And so it was great to have that team has some success
because they had struggled previously
to see some successes with the student.
So far we've shown a little bit about
how do we conduct the assessment?
We're going to decide on some programs.
Well, each of the books has a program,
basically every one of the targets
that we're going to do is call the program for the student.
And you're going to look in the book,
find the information about it.
Each programming sheet is fabulous.
This is the feedback I get the most from our staff,
about what they love about PEAK,
is that the sheet tells you exactly what the objective is,
the materials you're going to need,
it gives you teaching procedures in it,
and then it gives you an area for you to record
all the different stimuli that you are using
to teach that program.
One tip from Dr. Dixon is that you can also use this area
to highlight anything that gets mastered in your program.
So for example, if we were working on colors
and the student has mastered four of those colors,
I could highlight the four colors
that the student already knows
and add in some new items into the page.
And that will just help keep staff moving along
and making sure we're not doing the same things
over and over again.
Remember, our end goal isn't to necessarily teach
every possible response to the student,
but to get them to the point where they can generalize
when new things are presented to them.
So programming sheets are important.
And like I said, they will help you with your materials.
And so this is just a little closer up
of what that looks like.
So for this one, the student's working on object permanence,
and you're going to need some cups and preferred items
for them to look in.
Again, some feedback I had from teams is
with having this information
they were able to conduct the assessment early in the week
and over the weekend gather all their materials.
And by Monday they were implementing it.
So I thought that that was perhaps just one teacher,
but I've actually been hearing that over and over
from several teachers.
And so I really appreciate how easy it is
for my school teams to be able to implement.
Next, we're gonna hear from Morgan.
And she has some important tips for us.
Like, as you are starting to see,
you might have to gather some materials
or you saw picture cards in some of the previous videos,
there can be some logistics about organizing.
So she's going to give you a couple tips about that.
-: My biggest piece of advice would be to really
put in the time planning and organizing materials
because there's nothing worse than sitting down
in front of a kid and feeling like you don't have
what you need or missing things.
So I take a lot of time into organizing
and trying different ways to organize my materials
because it's not always just picture cards
and shuffling pictures, it's objects and test trials
and train trials.
So just organizing materials
so you know what you need with each trial,
in each session for the student.
-: All right,
and we have seen a variety of different things
as people are beginning to implement their programs.
But an important thing for you to know about PEAK
is that materials are used by programs.
So if we're working on one with money identification
and another student,
or another program is about color identification,
you're going to just want to organize materials
by the program, because unlike some other systems
that you may be using or programs,
the materials are used across learners in PEAK.
And so you don't have to create a new set of money
for each student who ends up using money
as a targeted program,
you would just pull those materials for the student.
Over time, programs are mastered and students no longer
need those materials, and so it'll be great
because you can just pass that on to the next student
who needs it.
Another important part of PEAK is data collection.
Now in here, you're going to see
that there are some differences from a program
like our intensive teaching
that we've been using with ABLES.
So again, I'm not going to go into great detail
about how you actually end up collecting the data
or giving scores to your student.
But what I wanted to draw your attention to
is the fact that we do have a program sheet for data
for every single program that we are running for a student.
Now, some of the other modules, besides the direct training,
you will be recording those train and the test
on the same data sheet.
But basically every time we are sitting down
with the student, we are running 10 trials of a skill.
So if I was doing coin identification,
I would hold up a coin, I'd hold up another coin,
I do 10 of those and then that program is done.
I collect data off of every single trial
and then record how the student has done on it.
So we will hear again, one more time from Morgan,
about ways that she has used her data.
-: The thing that I like about PEAK
is that all of the targets that I chose for his program,
while we were programming,
were intentional and they match his IEP goals.
So I'm collecting data through PEAK
and also it's progress monitoring data for my IEP goals.
-: So who doesn't love that, right?
You're collecting data, we're using our data
to make effective programming decisions,
but she can turn right around and use all that data
to help with her IEPs.
So another resource, again, that YouTube resource,
you will be able to use that to help you learn
how to set up a data binder.
And again, one thing that we love about our current
verbal behavior systems here in Nebraska
is the fact that we have kind of a universal way
that we are collecting data, organizing data,
and things like that.
And so we would love to have people
who are implementing PEAK
to have a similar way of doing their data.
This has a QR code that you can use
so that you'll be able to go later
and watch how to actually set up a binder.
And again, there's the one about
this is a way that it has been done in other settings
and then being able to see,
yes but how did teachers actually do that?
So, Morgan was gracious enough
to walk us through how she set up her binder.
And what I really love in here
is how she had previously mentioned about
organizing materials and you'll see how she organizes
materials for the programs that she's currently targeting.
-: I'm Morgan Martin from Westside Community Schools.
And this is just how I've organized my binder so far.
So I have a folder for each different section.
So I have a direct with all of my programs in it,
and I've paper-clipped all of my cards for each program.
So I have them easily accessible
and I'm not shuffling through materials.
Every time my student masters a program,
I put it in the according folder.
And then I have future items
that I might need for the next ones that I've planned.
I've just found that this way it makes it faster.
So I'm not shuffling through cards and materials
that it's all right there when I need it.
The things that have items with them, I keep all together
and labeled in different baggies.
So this would be a transformation 4B.
And then my generalization ones
to keep the test and train separate,
I am labeled those in baggies also.
-: Another part of our programming
is that we can have a performance matrix.
184 programs, we want to be able to see at a quick glance,
how many things has the student mastered.
And so I love that this is similar to programs
that we've done in the past where we just update
and color code it by year that they got the skill.
So I really do love these performance matrices,
and there is one for each of the four modules.
So to know that a program has been mastered
and ready to be recorded on that triangle
and moving on to another,
we generally think about three trials.
So three of those blocks of 10
with a score of 90% or higher.
But again, your mastery may just depend on the program.
For some programs like a coin,
there's only so many coins for the student to learn.
And so it's a pretty clear cut, like yep,
that program is done, we have taught them everything
that they need to know about that.
But for other things like a picture match,
you can go on and on and on with those.
And so at some point,
the team will have to make that decision,
that yep, if the student were to encounter something new,
they understand enough about this concept
to be able to learn the-
-: My name is Ashleigh Callahan,
and I am a school psychologist with ESU 4,
at one of my schools,
we had a kindergarten student
who he was new to the district.
He was presenting some behavior challenges
and we just needed to brainstorm some new ways
to present learning to him
in a way that would be appropriate
and in a way that would be meaningful to him.
And so we actually reached out to Jen
just for a behavior consultation
and she suggested PEAK.
And so she came out, helped us administer the assessment,
and then that very same day we score the assessment,
decided which programs the student was going to start with,
and then I was able to quickly look at the materials
that we would need and gather all those materials.
And most of the stuff was stuff
we already had in the classroom
or things that I could Google Images of and print quickly.
And so it was super easy to do that.
And then we just had to print the data sheets
and the program instructions
and put it all together in a binder.
And then of course the next step was teaching the para
and the teacher how to implement the programs.
And that was super easy.
We just kind of modeled it with them.
We did some practice programs and we did some sample scoring
and before we knew it, we were implementing.
So overall the process of getting PEAK rolling
was very fast for us.
It's very easy to pick up on for anyone,
even if you don't have a trained,
any background in standardized assessment
or anything like that.
And it definitely made it easier having support
from a person who has implemented it many times.
-: All right, I appreciate all the compliments, Ashleigh,
I'll pay you off later
but really I wanted you guys to understand, right,
that they didn't go through the formalized training
but because they trusted the process,
they did the PCA with me together,
they were able to see results.
So our fourth objective is just to describe
how the PEAK Relational Training System
can be used as a standalone curriculum
or in conjunction with existing programs
that you may already have in your school setting.
This program really compliments other things in the school.
Like I said, this can be used so that our students
are learning to be learners.
And it is used as a compliment.
It's not in place of the general education curriculum.
So that'd be really important for us to know.
They're still gonna receive
all the general education curriculum,
but we may also use this as a standalone
for those additional skills
that we're trying to teach for a student,
or you might combine it with some other
verbal behavior programs that you are already using.
Here's Stacy,
is going to tell us a little bit about
why she decided to use PEAK.
-: Hi, my name is Stacy Fossler,
and I am a ninth year special education teacher
here at Southern Elementary School.
And in my career here, I have had,
my first year I had one student on the autism spectrum.
And then now eight years later,
I have five on the autism spectrum.
And this will be my first year
ever implementing some kind of verbal communication program
with my students on the autism spectrum.
And I really wish I would have had this my first year
teaching with my student back then,
because I really think
he would have made some great strides with it.
I've just started using PEAK in January
with one of my students who is very low verbal,
pretty much was nonverbal when I got him,
at the beginning of the school year.
And he's very much gained a lot of verbal skills.
But I love this program for him because it tells me
what to do and how to implement it and what I need do
for each different part.
It makes it easy to follow, easy to track the data for it,
it does get confusing going from book to book to book,
but overall it has really been great for my student
and I plan on using it for my other students as well
that are on the autism spectrum.
And I will be doing, I mean,
they're all at different levels,
so I'll be seeing different parts of each book
as well with them.
So overall, I really do like the PEAK program,
and think it is benefiting my student.
-: All right, so she said she really just started in January.
So that's not that long ago.
We're only about four months into it
and she's seen the results.
Yes, it's hard at first to go between all four books,
but it's not so overwhelming.
She's already considering it with other students.
And I've had another similar experience
where we did the PCA for one target student.
And then the teacher decided, wow, I really love this,
I have some other kids who I think will benefit.
And one SLP, we did it on a Tuesday with her student,
and by Monday morning of the next week
she told me I have five kids.
And so she did it with five kids in just five days.
And I just can't imagine doing that,
but they are really seeing the success
of being able to do it.
So I love that.
So again, it is best if we can use all four of the modules
together for the student,
because each of them targets the way,
their approach to teaching and learning
just a little bit differently.
So we want to try to get all four books,
but sometimes we have to go slow to go fast,
to get our staff competence, to get our student competence.
And so we just encourage you to get started with something.
In mastered programs, we do want to think about that.
Generally speaking, if you're running just the PEAK program,
without any other additional programs for the student,
you may not do anything with those mastered programs,
once a skill's known, it's known,
they're going to be seeing that in their natural environment
and things like that.
But what we really appreciate is hearing from educators
here in Nebraska who are doing it,
and they've said, well I've taken some of those known skills
and I've moved them into independent work times
for my students.
And so we thought that that was a really great idea
of a way that you could take some of those known things
and then move them along another way.
Another way that you might be using it
instead of a standalone program
is blending it in with other programs.
And so for one of my school teams,
it was a nice fit because they've been doing ABLES
for a very long time.
And they were thinking about some of those advanced
verbal behavior things and the additional training for that.
And it just wasn't working for them.
They weren't able to do it as effectively
as they had done their regular programming.
So we decided that we were just going to put
one additional book into it and they were going to keep
the rest of their ABLES programming going.
And so they're adding the equivalence module,
that blue module, that's the one that Abby,
said to you, we're going to be getting those
free things for our students.
So why not begin doing that?
So again, the reasons why we're gonna target
some of the equivalence
is that it can lead to a quicker acquisition
of those targets for our students.
And it helps our students to really
think through relationships,
to understand how content is related to each other
and things like that.
And it facilitates their own thought process
so that we don't have to think about everything
that we need to teach to our student.
So remember, keep the learning fun, celebrate successes,
and pick objectives that are meaningful for you
and your students.
And you're going to see the best results.
We wanted to quickly share before the end of our session,
some additional resources that we have found helpful
along the way.
The first is the PEAK homepage
and that is going to give you a lot of information
and it'll give you links for how you purchase
some of the information.
They have some free resources that are available on there.
It's a great getting started spot for you.
Another one that I know Abby and I have used
quite frequently is just the Facebook page.
You do have to answer just a few, couple of questions
to keep out the people who really shouldn't be using it
but we put that group in there for you.
And people will post questions
and it's often a question that you've been thinking
but haven't asked anybody yet.
And sometimes people will share materials
that they've created as well.
So that is a really nice one for you.
We've shown you a couple of the YouTube videos
and that has been extremely helpful for us
as we've gotten started and as we've worked with teams.
So, I've pulled out some of them to help teachers
practice using the data and things like that.
So we would absolutely love for you to be able to
have those same resources that we know about.
I love theautismhelper.com and she has some modules
on PEAK in there.
And I've also found a few resources
for materials and things like that
on Teachers Pay Teachers.
It's kind of limited right now
for what's available on there.
but the best is our home grown,
so we only started the training kind of like statewide
with just a couple of people
who have shown some interest back this fall.
And then we had some teams get up and running
and starting their programs.
And now second semester, we're at a point where
we're meeting about once a month
and we're helping each other out.
And someone will say, hey, I was thinking about
doing this program and somebody in the group will say,
wait, I got those materials.
And so we've just started sharing with each other,
learning from our experiences.
So that has been something that's been helpful.
And hopefully we could continue to do that.
Our last is a sincere, thank you
from the bottom of our hearts,
for everybody who has helped us with learning to do PEAK,
to trust us to say like,
hey, I don't know everything about this,
but I want to learn alongside you.
And we have learned so much from them.
And thank you again to those parents
who allowed us to film their children in doing this.
So that we can all continue to learn from one another.
So thank you to the people who have
shared information with us and help guide us along the way.
So we will open up for questions and answers
but I also wanted to just give you our contact information
so that if you have any questions
you want to ask us directly after the session
you have that information.
So thanks for joining us today.
-: Thanks guys.