Since completing VOISS lessons, Rico was consistently able to say he was “sad” or “angry” when he received a letter grade he did not like. However, Ms. Rao thought it was important for Rico to identify other, more pleasant emotions. Specifically, she wanted Rico to identify his emotions when he felt happy or excited. 

Because Rico needed to learn new responses (i.e., identifying when he was happy or excited), Ms. Rao was focusing on response generalization. She operationally defined an objective to determine the generalization lesson had been effective:

• When Rico experiences one of 15 pre-taught scenarios where he would likely feel happy or excited and an adult asks him to describe how he feels, Rico will label his emotion in 4/5 scenarios per emotion.

With her objective operationally defined, Ms. Rao was ready to determine an instructional setting and method. Her instruction needed to be tailored to Rico’s unique needs, so she decided 1-1 instruction would be best. Although Rico received most of his special education support during general education classes, he did have one class period every other day allocated to social skills instruction. This class included peers with and without disabilities, and Ms. Rao was able to pull Rico for 1-1 instruction as needed. As she wanted to explicitly detail different situations where Rico was likely to feel excited or happy, she decided to use direct instruction to teach these skills.

• Instructional Setting: 1-1
• Instructional Method: Direct instruction

• Generalization Tactic: Teach multiple examples
• Support Strategy: Reinforcement

Ms. Rao’s Lesson on “Recognizing Emotion”

Preparing Multiple Examples

In order to teach Rico multiple examples, Ms. Rao wrote up 15 short vignettes prior to the lesson. These vignettes typified various scenarios in which a middle school boy might feel happy or excited. Although she included scenarios outside of the school setting (e.g., feeling happy after getting a new pair of shoes), she focused on situations which could occur at school because she could collect data on these situations. 

Carrying Out the Direct Instruction Lesson

Ms. Rao began the 1-1 direction instruction lesson by defining “excited” and “happy.” She explained that when you are happy, you feel good and generally pleased with what is happening in life. She told Rico that, often, people say they feel happy after something good happens to them. She told him he might feel happy after receiving a good grade on an assignment. Similarly, Ms. Rao explained that feeling excited is a lot like feeling happy, but is often used to describe a more emotional version of happiness. She also explained that a person often feels excited when they’re looking forward to something. For example, Rico might feel excited the week before an upcoming vacation.

Ms. Rao then read six vignettes. For each vignette, she described the emotion she would feel and why she would feel that way. She explained why she knew she would feel one emotion over the other. Next, Ms. Rao and Rico talked through five vignettes together. She emphasized details in each of the vignettes that would help Rico identify the targeted emotion. Finally, Rico read the final four vignettes, identified the appropriate emotion, and described how he knew which emotion was appropriate in each scenario. Ms. Rao provided immediate corrective and reinforcing feedback. After reading through the vignettes, Ms. Rao and Rico brainstormed other situations where he might feel happy or excited. They talked about why each situation would elicit the specific emotion.

Reinforcing the Skill

Because Ms. Rao co-taught several of Rico’s classes and provided lunch duty several days a week, she would be able to provide token reinforcement when Rico correctly named his emotions. After observing one of the targeted situations, Ms. Rao would discreetly pull Rico aside, remind him of the situation (e.g., “I saw you got a 100% on your pre-algebra quiz!”), and ask him how he felt. If Rico responded by naming a pleasant emotion (e.g., “happy,” “excited”), Ms. Rao would give him a token. If he responded by either naming no emotion or naming an unpleasant emotion, Ms. Rao would provide corrective feedback.