TEACHING GAME PLAY CONCEPTS

A BIG HELLO FROM ME AGAIN…….. SO CHEER UP, LET’S HAVE SOME FUN

We get fun by playing games; I mean any form indoor or outdoor, but why not the same for our children with autism and other related disabilities.

So let’s focus on teaching game play concepts:

When teaching students with autism to play games, some may be unfamiliar with game play concepts or rules; ex, rolling dice, moving pieces on the game board, and taking turns. These skills can be taught in separate or in discrete trail setting (Take up as a goal and work on in a therapeutic setting). The selected concepts should be practiced with other peers and siblings. Variety of visual strategies has to be incorporated to teach game play skills.

STRATEGIES:

1.  Priming- preparing students ahead of time by practicing game play skills in isolation.

2.  Select one game at a time- for ex, if you are working on snake and ladder consider to work on things like , rolling dice, choosing a game piece, moving the game piece while counting to different members, identifying numbers found in dice, also practice taking turn by passing an object back and forth while saying… moms turn my turn.

3. Teach one step at a time- find out steps in a game; consider teaching one step at a time.

4. Simple to complex- start with two people and then proceed to more people.

5.  Small steps- after practicing the game play concepts in isolation ->put them in use, start with simple game for short time( look @ child’s attention also).

6.  Make it fun- you can make game fun by incorporating child’s interests in to the game (include child’s favorite characters like Dora, Barney etc).

7.  Motivation- praise and reward the child, to make the game motivating for the child.

8.  Use visuals-since our children are visual learners use visual aids to facilitate the play, use visual cues to understand whose turn it is.

9.  Play with peers and siblings-once he masters the game play skills, it is important to practice them in natural setting. Encourage the child to play with his siblings and peers.

10. Social stories- are one best strategy to encourage proper play behavior and manners while playing with peers.

11. Modelling-proven to give best results for understanding rules and play behavior, the model selected to demonstrate the steps clearly in front of the child

so get  GOING......