How I Used Burps, Farts and Fairytales to Teach Writing Skills

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Luca Canever, TAGteach Faculty

Everyone knows from their own experience that it’s not fun to do things badly. A certain amount of effort is required to gain enough skill with a new activity in order to get to the point that you start to see some progress and to enjoy the activity for it’s own sake. For some of us, for some activities, the motivation of future success is enough to get us past the initial frustration in the learning process where there is more failure than success. For others, especially kids who can’t understand why they need to learn something hard in school, there just seems no point in putting forth the effort to practice and get better. Here is my story about overcoming this problem of motivation and reinforcement with one student. I hope it helps you to discover how to instill joy in the learning process for your learners (or even yourself!).

Fluency and TAGteach: A Perfect Match

December 6, 2021June 4, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Luca Canever – TAGteach Faculty

What is Fluency?

Behavioral fluency is the competence of performing a behavior quickly and accurately. Do you know Olympics athletes? Or great artists? Or all the other people you admire in every field for their craftsmanship, because they do things that others can’t? We say that these are gifted and talented people. Truth is: Talent does not exist in nature and no one is born gifted. What these people have in common is their fluency in the things they do: the seemingly effortless execution of very difficult (for us) performances. Fluency is achieved only with years of intense practice: whether you want to win the gold medal at the next Olympics, or whether you want to become the next Leonardo. The only way to be successful is to practice with passion. (Scientifically put, “passion” is positive reinforcement).

Do You Know the Difference Between a Tag Point and a Pinpoint?

August 16, 2020January 29, 2023 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Joan Orr M.Sc. and Anne Wormald M.ADS, BCBA

TAGteach and Precision Teaching go together like ice cream and apple pie. Each makes the other even more awesome. Add TAGteach to your Precision Teaching and watch your acceleration lines soar. Add Precision Teaching to your TAGteaching and you’ll see exactly what’s working and what tag points are the most effective.

If you’re a TAGteacher and you’re wondering “what’s Precision Teaching”, visit Central Reach for lots of free information.

If you’re a Precision Teacher and you’re wondering “what’s TAGteach?”, visit TAGteach Online Learning for a free course on the Fundamentals of TAGteach.

What’s a Tag Point?

A tag point is the goal behavior in a TAGteach session. The teacher tags (marks) the desired behavior with a click sound (tag) when the behavior occurs so the learner knows the exact moment that they got it right. A tag point has four criteria (WOOF):

What you want: the tag point must be phrased in positive terms

One thing: the tag point can be only one behavior

Observable: the tag point must be observable

Five words or less: you must be able to articulate the tag point in five words or less