Mr. Zamarrón’s Lesson on “Identifying Consequences and Evaluating Responses to a Situation”

 

Preparing the Role Play

Mr. Zamarrón decided to script some of his instructional delivery prior to the lesson. He recalled that role play involved short scenarios with defined roles and scripts for each player, much like a short play. In order to teach multiple examples, Mr. Zamarrón wrote out 10 short scenarios involving a novel situation. Each scenario had four roles, with a defined role for Todd. Each script also included a role for the teacher, and the peers alternated playing this role. The scenarios focused on teaching Todd to pause when encountering a novel situation and consider the appropriate course of action by observing his peers, listening to his teacher, and following classroom rules. 

Mr. Zamarrón planned to have four students (including Todd) join in the small group instruction. He began the lesson by describing to the students what the role play entailed. He explained that sometimes we encounter new / challenging situations, and it is difficult to determine how to behave. He told the students that they would know what to do by following classroom rules (e.g., staying in line), listening to the teacher (e.g., staying quiet, waiting for directions), and watching their peers (e.g., if all of the class is seated quietly, it’s inappropriate to run across the hallway). 

The group practiced each role play two times. In each role play, Mr. Zamarrón prompted Todd to pause, and Mr. Zamarrón named the clues he would use to determine the appropriate action. For example, in a scenario where a classmate had a medical emergency, Mr. Zamarrón reminded Todd, “Your peers are all staying at their desks, waiting for the teacher to tell them what to do. Although there isn’t a classroom rule for how to act when a student is hurt, you should stay in your chair and wait for your teacher to tell you what to do. Getting up to talk to your friends could make it harder for your teacher to help the student experiencing the medical emergency.”

After each role play, Mr. Zamarrón asked the group to describe how they knew Todd took the appropriate course of action. He also described an alternative course of action and asked students to describe the consequences of that action.

After the lesson, Mr. Zamarrón led a brief discussion with Todd and his peers. He asked the students to describe other unusual situations that might occur, how they should behave, and the consequences of appropriate and inappropriate responses to these new situations.

Reinforcing the Skills

Mr. Zamarrón also briefly met with Todd’s teachers after school to train them to prompt and reinforce Todd. He described what Todd had learned and shared his token reinforcement system. He recognized that they could not provide reinforcement during or immediately after a novel situation. However, he encouraged them to speak to Todd when the situation had been resolved. He trained Todd’s teachers to describe Todd’s behavior and the situation (e.g., “There was a fire drill and you stayed with the class and followed directions”) and to ask Todd to explain why he knew to behave that way. When Todd performed both instructional targets correctly, his teachers could give him a token and provide descriptive praise (e.g., “You stayed calm and helped us safely and quickly exit the building”). When Todd collected five tokens, he would choose an option from his reinforcement menu, a collection of preferred activities and items.