The How to ABA Podcast

We recently sat down with Lisa Gelberman, the founder and creator of Literacy Decoded. For the first 15 years of her career, she taught in an elementary school and then went into special education. She became a resource teacher where she pulled kids out for specific subject areas, and she eventually started teaching an ASD community class. There, Lisa began her ABA journey, where she used techniqu...

Errorless teaching is an instructional strategy that ensures a student responds correctly. Here, we discuss why errorless teaching is important and how we can use it to benefit our learners. It’s essentially a way to prompt before a response so that an error is not made. In other words, the prompting happens right after the instruction, even before the learner can make any kind of response, so the...

Reinforcement is one of our most common and useful tools, and it’s just as important to know how to fade reinforcement. Reinforcement involves presenting a preferred item or activity that’s delivered after a positive response to increase the future likelihood of that response. One of the biggest misconceptions about reinforcement is that offering something to a learner will make them want it every...

For many, the beginning of a new school year can be an exciting time. For others, it evokes fear and worry. Here, we discuss the best ways to help our learners with autism transition back to school. New classrooms, new faces, and new noises can be a challenge, along with intimidating social situations and unrealistic classroom demands. Not every family sends their kids to structured programs throu...

Trips to the doctor or dentist are hard for any kid. They’re especially tough for our learners with autism and other delays. Here, we dive into how to make these experiences easier for these learners and their families. A lot of the kids we work with may need multiple medical procedures, which sometimes creates an avoidance to anyone touching them or coming close. Desensitization to the experience...

Kids with advanced language skills may be ready to have conversations with others, but how do we teach these skills? Here, we’re diving into what conversation skills are and how we can best teach them to our learners. Authentic conversations go beyond simple questions and answers. If we want kids to benefit from conversations and form genuine relationships, we must help them understand that true c...

In ABA, we use lots of different assessments to determine our learners’ strengths and where they may need more help. Here, we cover the most common ABA assessments and how to know which one to use. The purpose of assessments is to provide us with a starting point and create a baseline. When you’re clear on where you’re starting from, you can then create a successful intervention. Assessments also...

Through effective prompting, we’re able to help our learners succeed. Here, we dive into the hierarchy of prompting so we can use it in the best way possible. We use prompting in our everyday lives, like when we use calendar invites to keep us on track and remember important events. In the world of ABA, prompts are a way to guide our learners to the correct response. Prompts come after the introdu...

ABA is an evidence-based, effective approach for teaching skills, especially for individuals with autism. Here, we’re diving in deeper and discussing what ABA is. There’s a lot of information out there about ABA, some of it true and some of it not. ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis and it’s really just breaking skills down into smaller components. Then, a type of reinforcement is used to ma...

In ABA, a task analysis can be used to break down larger, more complex skills into smaller steps or actions. This makes them more manageable for our learners. To run our business, we use a project management system to make sure everything runs smoothly. It functions like a task analysis in that anyone on our team can follow the same steps to keep things consistent. In the field, skills like hand w...

According to the latest data from the CDC, one in 36 children is diagnosed with autism in the United States each day. Worldwide, one in 100 is diagnosed. In the late 90s, the numbers were more around one in 1,000, and people weren’t quite sure what autism was. To put it simply, autism is a different way of thinking and viewing the world. We’ve encountered some amazing people with autism throughout...

Play is a skill that a lot of our learners need to be taught. It doesn’t come as naturally to kids with autism or other developmental delays. Some children don’t like natural play because it’s unstructured. Here, we discuss how to teach play and the best way to help learners develop these critical skills. Teaching play skills is essential to success, as children learn so much through play. Many da...

In this very special 100th episode, we’ve rounded up some of the best professional advice our guests have ever received. Whether it’s building a community around you, learning to regulate yourself and staying calm in the moment, or fine-tuning your communication skills, being a BCBA requires constant learning and growth. We’ve hosted some amazing ABA professionals on our podcast; many of them have...

Some students have difficulty learning words and manding with flash cards at a table. Sometimes the natural world is a much better learning environment, and that’s where incidental teaching comes in. Incidental teaching is a strategy that uses ABA principles to provide structured learning opportunities in the natural environment, and it’s all about motivation. Through incidental teaching, you util...

As ABA practitioners, we have many teaching procedures in our toolbox. Here, we’re discussing precision teaching, which is also called fluency-based instruction, and how we can use it to benefit our students. Many of us remember having to memorize multiplication tables in elementary school. While it was an intimidating task, chances are we still know all the tables by heart as adults, because we l...

BCBA Steve Ward has been working as a behavior analyst since the mid 1990’s. As the lead behavior analyst for a center school, Steve conducted more than 100 functional assessments and wrote behavior plans to address a wide range of behaviors. He has also worked as a consultant, where he has designed programming for a wide variety of repertoires, including verbal behavior, daily living skills, and...

As students become more proficient at manding and move to an intermediate requesting phase, their mean length of utterance should increase. The types of mands they use should also expand. Intermediate learners are those who can use phrases of three or more words. When a student moves into a more intermediate phase, we often focus on pre-academic skills and forget to expand their manding repertoire...

BCBA and play consultant Kaylin Moss is one of our members. She works in the field of early intervention and natural environment teaching. Kaylin started her career as a teacher at a local charter school for children with autism. She was inspired by the behavioral analyst at the school, who was a big resource and began looking into her line of work. Kaylin then began education for behavioral analy...

Functional assessments are the gold standard of behavior analysis. They’re the best technology we have to show the effectiveness and the function of our antecedent and consequence manipulation. Conducting functional assessments in a school setting comes with its own set of unique challenges, and behavior analyst Matt Cicoria is joining us at our next live CEU event to cover just that. The event ta...

Shane Finkelstein is one of Shana’s original ABA clients from 20 years ago and is here to talk about his experience with autism. Ever since Shane was young, he had several social problems and was having trouble fitting in with people outside his family. He was diagnosed with autism at the age of two, which is also when he began ABA therapy. ABA helped Shane develop good social skills as well as a...

Erin Porter is a family autism coach from Ontario, Canada. As a teacher, she noticed some gaps in the school system and began to fill them in. She also noticed there was a parental piece missing, so she applied everything she knew about teaching and programming to supporting parents who have newly diagnosed children with autism. Erin helps parents fill in their own gaps while they wait for funding...

Functional communication, or FCT, is a way to decrease problem behavior through teaching effective communication skills. Shira once had a student who had a ton of language. He would talk all the time in sentences and communicate what he wanted to do, but he didn’t request things. He sometimes engaged in negative attention-seeking behavior but didn’t know how to appropriately get attention. She tau...

In preparation for a CEU event we’re hosting all about how to use AAC devices, we are rebroadcasting our Linggo episode with Ling Ly Tan and Jane Button.  They are from Linggo, a company that makes communication accessible for people who have difficulty speaking. Linggo is an assistive technology that supports the learning of language, speech, and literacy skills through an AAC (augmentative and a...

BCBA Kat Savino is the Community Manager at How To ABA. If you’re a member, you’ve likely seen Kat in our community, Q&A sessions, and our journal clubs. Kat was one of our first podcast guests and as we learned more about her, we realized we needed her on the team. You can get to know Kat through our membership community board, where she connects members with available resources. Kat also doe...

Dr. Alan Schnee is a Ph. D., BCBA-D, consultant, author, and speaker. Dr. Schnee began his career in the early 90s in the Boston area, where he trained as a pediatric psychologist. A colleague and friend of his had a son on the autism spectrum. This friend brought in consultants to work with her son, and she was astounded at his progress.  The experience inspired Dr. Schnee and his colleague to ju...