How to Keep Your Kids Learning While at Home: Session 114 with Amy Evans

In these unprecedented times of social isolation, public education has made a rapid shift towards a distance learning model. It's probably not a surprise that outcomes will vary for students based on myriad factors. If you'd like to become more involved in your child's educational progress to ensure your child's success, then this is the podcast for you!

Amy Evans, who is an expert in Instructional Design and Precision Teaching, joins me in Session 114 to discuss how setting up brief practice sessions with your learner can really enhance not only skill acquisition, but retention too (which is, in my experience, an often overlooked outcome measure).

Long story short, the goal of this conversation is to provide parents practical tips based on what we know about learning, using readily available materials (ie, stuff that’s downloadable). We did our best to keep the jargon to a minimum, as I am hoping that this podcast will reach an audience beyond my usual listeners.

Amy tutors children individually, and is offering these services at a 50% discount during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also recently launched a business that will train Behavior Analysts to bring Precision Teaching and Fluency-Based instruction to their practices, so to learn more, click here to get on her email list to learn more.

To that end, your help will be greatly appreciated. If you find this information helpful, please feel free to share it with friends and colleagues! If your acquaintances are not podcast listeners, I'd like to use this as an opportunity to let folks know that every podcast I've published gets posted to YouTube in case that's a more convenient medium.

The best part about this topic is that there are so many freely available or inexpensive materials out there for parents to use. Here are links to materials we discussed (and some we didn't; and a huge thanks to Amy for finding all of these resources!):

• A general web page with links to free resources that are available during school closures: Amazing Educational Resources.
• University of Oregon sites (per Amy: good place to go if you need to know where to start with your child’s skills:
  • easyCBM.
  • Resources (Big Ideas in Beginning Reading).
• The Maloney Method (Free Assessment + first 10 lessons).
• https://www.learninga-z.com/.
• One Minute Reader Fluency App and Audio-Supported Books
• Math Worksheets | Free and Printable (good downloadable materials with lots of practice opportunities).
• The Math Worksheet Site.com (great for timings - easy to configure, and tons of response opportunities).
• Khan Academy | Free Online Courses, Lessons & Practice
• DeltaMath
• EdReady™ Application Home

If you want to take a deeper dive into Precision Teaching, or if you're looking for other CE topics, Central Reach has opened up their online library to all BCBA's at no charge through April 30th. As with Amy's services noted above, this is not a sponsored plug; both CR and Amy are offering free or highly discounted services to support the field, and I'm happy to share these resources. For more info, go to centralreach.com/business-continuity.

In case you were worried, we still do have sponsors for this episode though. Session 114 is brought to you by the following:

• The ABA Marketing Minute with Rich Brooks. Digital marketing guru and two-time guest Rich Brooks and I have teamed up to provide listeners with 60-second micro-lessons in digital marketing. You'll hear the first installment later in this broadcast, so I won't spoil it here, but let's just say the message should parallel a lot of what we should strive for in our clinical practice.
• The Virtual Verbal Behavior Conference. Yes, when the going gets tough, the tough go online. Instead of cancelling this year's VBC, Session 112 guest Kelle Rich putting the entire program online. The Virtual VBC is scheduled for April 2nd and 3rd, but will likely be available afterwards in recorded form. Also, I just learned that Dr. Vince Carbone has been added to the speakers' list! For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, his time was suddenly freed up. I hope you're able to check it out.
• Last but certainly not least, I've been getting tons of great feedback on Steve Ward's appearance on the show. If you like his style, The Applied Behavior Analysis Center is hosting a webinar with Steve on June 16th, 2020. ABAC is offering a 20% discount on this event as well as other offerings to podcast listeners. If you're interested in checking this out, go to abacnj.com and use the code ABACBO20 at check out.