Ms. Thomas wanted to make sure Jackson respected personal boundaries across settings. She knew Jackson struggled with personal space in the cafeteria, during transition periods, and during gym class.

Ms. Thomas operationally defined two objectives to determine generalization lessons had been effective:

 

• When talking to a person outside of his immediate family, Jackson will remain at least four feet away on 9/10 opportunities.
• When Jackson is talking to someone and they lean back from him, Jackson will take one step back from the person on 9/10 opportunities.

Next, Ms. Thomas decided on an instructional setting and method for this lesson. Each week, Ms. Thomas and Jackson’s speech language-pathologist (SLP) co-taught small group social skills lessons. Ms. Thomas decided these small groups would be ideal for teaching personal space lessons.

During VOISS training, Ms. Thomas learned that role play was an evidence-based strategy for teaching social skills to groups of students. Ms. Thomas would prepare scripts with defined roles and settings for personal space instruction.

 

• Instructional Setting: Small group
• Instructional Method: Role play

Ms. Thomas identified a generalization tactic that would help reinforce the skill. She would train Jackson’s paraprofessional to help prompt and reinforce these skills. The support strategy, prompting, paired well with the generalization tactic.

 

• Generalization Tactic: Train others to prompt and reinforce
• Support Strategy: Prompting

Ms. Thomas’ Lesson on “Understanding Personal Space and Boundaries”

 

Creating the Role Play

Ms. Thomas decided it would be useful to script some of her instructional delivery. Role play requires specific roles for players, situations, and scripts for players to follow, similar to a short play. She decided the role play would first focus on Jackson standing four feet away from peers. When Jackson mastered that skill, the role play would focus on teaching Jackson to take a step back when someone leaned or stepped back during a conversation. Ms. Thomas observed conversations that occurred among same-age peers, and wrote several scripts based on these conversations. Each script specified a setting and roles for each player. Additionally, Ms. Thomas used some of her classroom budget to purchase four pool noodles. She cut each noodle at 48 inches (four feet).

The lesson began with Ms. Thomas explaining to the students what the role play entailed. She had invited three other students into the small group instruction. She gave each student a script and a noodle. She explained that the noodles would help the students maintain a four-foot distance from the people they were talking to. First, the students took turns playing roles in three different scripts, which focused on talking while maintaining an appropriate distance. After the students practiced each role in each script once, Ms. Thomas had them practice each role without the noodles. She gave them corrective feedback when they entered each other’s personal space.

Next, Ms. Thomas provided scripts for role plays where one player moves / steps back because they’re uncomfortable. Ms. Thomas and Jackson’s SLP modeled one scenario. Then, the students were each given a script and assigned roles. The peers rehearsed the scripted scenario a couple of times while Jackson waited and watched. Ms. Thomas explained when it was appropriate for Jackson to move away. After the peers rehearsed the scenario, Jackson played the role of the individual who needed to step away. Ms. Thomas gave Jackson feedback throughout the scenario, and taught Jackson a gestural prompt for backing up from his friends. She placed both of her hands in front of her (palms facing outward like a stop sign hand signal), and moved her hands backward to communicate to Jackson that he was too close to his peers.

 

Recruiting Support from the Paraprofessional 

Following the lesson, Ms. Thomas met with Jackson’s paraprofessional, Mr. McBride, to train him to prompt and reinforce Jackson. She explained that Jackson was working on respecting personal space during social interactions. She showed Mr. McBride the prompt Jackson had been taught and encouraged Mr. McBride to use the prompt to prime Jackson for social interactions and to correct him when he was too close to peers.