FIRST THINGS FIRST (PAT)

How many times have I heard one of my students say this? Sometimes, I get all caught up in some new lesson plan, and I forget that I have failed to review the basic concepts being taught in the lesson.

Let's start at the beginning. First things first.

In the Pops Spedster Model for delivering adaptive instruction, everything tends to based in the most simple concepts that are taught earliest in life. Color identification, shape identification, object discrimination, gestural discrimination all need to precede things like numbers and math, letters and reading and abstract thinking of any sort.

So, at the beginning, we have colors. What colors will our kids most likely generalize over a broad system of teaching environments? I think the first colors we need to teach are red, yellow and green. These can then be used to teach all sorts of skills from street safety to sequencing.

Next we have shapes. In the Pops Spedster system, the first three shapes are the circle, the square and the hexagon. Hexagon? Wow! That seems complicated for our kids. But if we relate these shapes to the first three colors, we have a system that will generalize even more to the functional skills we need to teach.

Let's associate the circle with the color green; with the concept of "go"; and with the concept of "first". Let's associate the square with the color yellow; with the concept of "proceed with caution"; and with the  concept of "second" Let's associate the hexagon with the color red; with the concept of "stop"; and with the concept of "third".

So, with three simple colors, we can teach street safety skills, beginning number concepts and survival vocabulary words like "go", "stop" and "caution". Obviously, at this point, we need some beginning assessment work also.

What would prevent someone from recognizing the color green? A sight impairment? Perhaps, the lack of expressive language to communicate any understanding of the concept in the first place? A hearing impairment?

What would prevent someone from expressing a recognition of a shape? An orthopedic impairment? A cognitive processing impairment?

What would prevent someone from decoding the word go? A cognitive impairment to that part of the brain that processes lexical symbols?

Like my students say, 'First things first." Probe, assess and theorize (PAT)  before we even begin to instruct.

Pops

    GO                            CAUTION                        STOP