Creating Incidental Opportunities for Learning Across the Day

And we’re back! In my last post I gave some overall ways to create incidental learning opportunities–primarily to use incidental teaching. They allow you to follow the student’s lead and teach the skill within the natural context. This enhances generalization and increases instruction time within the day. However, incidental teaching only works if everyone working with the students knows what skills to target and how to create opportunities for the student to initiate and practice a skill. The time that students are with paraprofessionals in most of our classes is not time that can be wasted and the teacher is not the only one who teaches in our classrooms. Consequently, communicating the targeted skills and ways to create the opportunities is an important part of the chain. And let’s face it, there is not enough time in the day for constant meetings and updates. Lists of targeted skills and setting up routines for times of day are ways to be efficient with sharing information and assuring learning takes place across the day.

I have what I hope will be a cool idea for the upcoming week. Every couple days there will be a post with ideas for creating incidental opportunities for learning in a specific activity of the classroom day. At the end of the series, I will have a set of index card size reminders of skills to address during specific times. These will help to remind everyone of what skills are being targeted in specific areas or times of the day.