We know the goal of independent work systems is to help students build independence. Both the way these work systems are set up and the strategies we use within them are key to helping our students build independence. It is important that we use effective, evidence-based practices within these independent work systems.

When teaching students how to work independently, we must provide the appropriate amount of support to help guide the student toward independence. In this episode, I walk you through 5 strategies for teaching and supporting the systems in your classroom. We’ll discuss the importance of nonverbal prompting, waiting students out, how to get students back on track, why you should fade out your presence, and when to provide reinforcement.

04:49 - Why you should only use nonverbal prompts during independent work

08:20 - Tips to help wait the student out to build independence and initiation

11:23 - An effective way to use a nonverbal prompt to get students back on track

12:17 - The importance of fading out your presence 

13:14 - Why you should only be providing reinforcement once all their work is completed

Show Notes: http://autismclassroomresources.com/episode203

Resources:

• Check out my TpT store for Independent Work Resources
• Watch the Independent Work Systems Webinar
• What are Prompts? 5 Main Types of Prompts in a Free Infographic
• Get My Book: Building Independence: How to Create and Use Structured Work Systems - Future Horizons Publishers
• Shop my Book: Building Independence: How to Create and Use Structured Work Systems on Amazon (Affiliate Link)
• Join the Autism Classroom Resources' Free Resource Library
• Get more information about the Special Educator Academy
• Join the Free Facebook Group

If you're enjoying this podcast, could you please take a quick moment to leave your review on Apple Podcasts? It would mean the world to me and will help spread the word to other special educators. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You're listening to school counseling simplified a podcast with easy to implement strategies for busy school counselors. Here's your host, Rachel Davis from Bright Futures counseling.

Let's play a little game of would you rather school counselor edition? Okay. Would you rather spend your weekend planning a group? Or spend your afternoon sitting in irrelevant PD? Yikes? Or would you rather be the only counselor with no one to collaborate with? Or to spend hours searching online for engaging activities? All of these options are pretty bad, right? But unfortunately, they're all too real. But what if I told you I had a solution for you? What if I told you I had access to hundreds of school counseling lessons groups and activities? Counselor specific trainings on the topics you need most? And a community of like minded school counselors to support you? You would say yes, please. Well, that is what impact is all about. Impact is my monthly membership for school counselors. And it helps you with all of these things, you get access to hundreds of resources, that's unlimited free downloads, log in and get what you need right away to every single resources in my store. We add new resources each and every month, we're adding a new middle school and elementary resource each month. And some of these are bonus impact exclusives. Meaning that you can get resources just for members. You can request resources that you need and easily search so you can find exactly what you're looking for. And let's talk about the trainings, counselors, specific trainings on the topics you need most. We do these each and every month as part of our copy with the counselor series. Impact members get to join for absolutely free, you earn PD certificates, and you get exclusive access to a members only things like the ultimate small group experience and our summer Summit Conference. In the community, y'all this is possibly my favorite part of impact. I so look forward to jumping on these calls, to getting to know counselors who are similar to me, and also completely different. It's so fun to hear from your experiences and your challenges. And everyone brings a unique perspective to the table. We have an exclusive online community. And we even have a cool app where you can chat with other counselors and these community circles. We have our monthly calls, like I mentioned twice a month, and we share wins troubleshoot tough cases, and just talk about what it's like to be a counselor because so often we are on our own island at our school sites. So if any of that sounds like it's for you, I would love to see you inside impact. Go to stress free school counseling.com/impact To solve all of your counselor probs. All right, let's hit today's episode, you're listening to another episode of school counseling simplified. So before you listen to this episode, please go back and listen to last week's episode. Because this month, or these first two weeks of the month, rather, I'm talking all about indirect and direct student services, and how counselors can support our students both ways. Now, indirect is kind of like the back end of the direct. So today, I'm going to dive into these direct student services. But I really encourage you to listen to last week's episode all about the indirect Student Services first, because I think that will help you before we did this episode. Okay, so I'm so excited about this. I've been referencing this Aska PDF, of course, we'll link to it in the show notes. But it's basically the professional standards and competencies for school counselors. So we're talking about these counseling behaviors. And then I broke them down into direct and indirect services. Because I have a lot of counselors asked me about how to measure this and what's indirect and what's direct. And I'm just gonna break it down the importance of it and giving you some ideas, and some tangible things you can do to make sure that you're delivering the best services possible to your students. So direct services, this is the good stuff, right? This is the fun one on one are you to small group are you to whole class, just with the kids, helping them teaching them counseling them and that's what we're here for. So you're gonna love this one. Now, if you listen to last week's episode, these behaviors are the same behaviors, but we're talking about the direct side of them now. Who wants to have a coffee with me? It's time for our February coffee with the counselor training and I cannot wait to see you there. This month's topic, I'll be sharing how to advocate without a headache, my 11 secret strategies for advocating for your role as the school counselor. This is so exciting. I love this topic. We talk about advocating a little bit but we usually just scratched the surface and I cannot wait to dive deep with these top secret strategies for you. Thank you to everyone who came out for coffee with the counselor last month. It was our first one we had an awesome turnout. Great conversations. Thank you to all of you who were there. Let's do it. Again. I cannot wait to have coffee with you. For the price of your Daily Star V's run. You can have Councillor specific training designed specifically for you. Plus a live q&a opportunity to chat with other counselors. It's going to be a great time save the date because this one is on February 28 at 6pm Eastern to sign up go to stress free school counseling.com/coffee See you there. So the first behavior it says the counselor Should design and implement instruction aligned to the ask the students standards mindsets and behaviors for student success. And that should be via large group classrooms, small group and individual settings. Now before we were talking all about, like the lesson planning aspect of it, now we're talking about the actual implementation. So this would be, it says to, you know, demonstrate the pedagogical skills, including a Culturally Responsive Classroom, classroom management strategies, lesson planning and personalized instruction. So two things here, Culturally Responsive Classroom management strategies, and then the personalized instruction, the classroom management strategies, you want to make sure that you are, you know, managing behaviors, but doing so in a culturally responsive way. And I'm glad that they brought this up. Because sometimes those blanket strategies aren't going to work, right. So what I recommend you do, because a lot of times as school counselors, we didn't get a classroom management class in grad school. So I would go to the teachers see what strategies are working well for them, do a little of your own research, develop your own strategies, and kind of do a hybrid of the two, but don't sleep on asking the teachers what they're doing that works well for their class, because the kids are already used to their classroom management style. So if you can kind of mimic that when you're in there, I think you'll find a big success with that. And then of course, we always want to make sure that it's culturally responsive, and respecting the needs and differences of our unique student population. So think about, for example, your small groups, if you're doing a small group with anxiety, then you might want to have a more subtle approach when it comes to some classroom management skills, like perhaps a earning points on the board or sticker chart kind of thing may be very anxiety inducing for those students, whereas for some other students not experiencing anxiety, it might not be a big deal. So you want to be mindful of who you're working with, and how you can tweak your classroom management style for them. Same goes with personalized instruction, especially in those one on one sessions, you want to make sure that you're customizing your lessons. I mean, obviously, I sell school counseling lessons. And there's you can use them with all kinds of different students. But I know when I purchase something, or when I create something, I like to start with that. But then I always like to tweak it to meet that unique student's needs. Because you know, they have their own learning style, their own preferences, things like that. And then you can it says use a variety of technologies in the delivery of lessons and activities. So I love this one. I agree. Anytime I can use boom cards, I find them super engaging, they're really fun. We just had a training in last for my impact numbers at the end of last year, all about how to use digital resources like boom cards. So I will link to some IBM cards in the show notes are really fun, it's a great way to do like a self grading little mini quiz or to just like hype up student engagement in a small group or class lesson. But technology across the board, you can resist it, but it's here, so I recommend embracing it instead. Another behavior that this mentions is to provide appraisal and advisement again, in those large group classrooms, small group and individual settings, so providing appraisal and advisement. So how can we directly do that? One way is through assessments. So this is saying to do like a career inventory or to use an assessment to help students figure out their abilities and their values. And then to help them understand how their academic performance relates to the world of work, family life and community service. So we're just trying to tie that piece together for them. And helping them understand the importance of post secondary education and training as a pathway to a career. So this would be you might be thinking this sounds like high school counselor jargon, I don't know about this. But even at the elementary level, you can do a career exploration lesson to help them understand the importance of post secondary education. So like, you know, been like college and career lesson you can do like a bulletin board with colleges that the teachers went to, that's always kind of fun to do with the big map of your state or of the country or even the world, anything like that, just to kind of get the gears turning. This document also says that counselors need to provide short term counseling in small group and individual settings. So you might be thinking dad, yes, this is the direct student services piece. But let's break that down a bit more. It says to provide support for students during times of transition, heightened stress, critical change, or other situations impeding student's success. So not only do we want to look at that referral data based on discipline referrals, or look on referrals that we're getting directly from parents or teachers or students themselves, but also keep your eyes and ears open to times of transition, heightened stress periods, or anything else that

would impede student success. So if we can be preventative and proactive and kind of say, Oh, I see this kid's parents are getting divorced. We're not seeing any problems yet. But let's not wait to we're seeing problems. How can we intervene or a classmate In this classroom has passed away. That's some heightened stress, how can we go in and support this class. It also mentions demonstrating techniques to support students who have experienced trauma. So the indirect version of this point was to know all about the, to communicate the adverse childhood experiences and have a trauma informed approach and communicate that to parents and teachers. But we also need to demonstrate techniques to support students who have experienced trauma. So educating yourself on how you can best support these students, and again, with these kids, and maybe where how you would typically do something, or your normal delivery of an activity may need to be tailored to fit their unique needs. So it kind of goes again with that customizing, you know, the personalized instruction. And lastly, when it comes to, you know, providing that short term counseling via small group and individual settings, you want to meet the needs of the individual group or the community yet before, during, and after the crisis response. So it's saying here, you know, having that preventative approach, making sure that we're kind of getting ahead of problems, but also doing it if there is a crisis, how can we support students be a small group and individually during a crisis, and following a crisis after a crisis has ended? How can we continue to support those students in one on one, so all of our one on one counseling, when I say, you know, supporting them, or demonstrating techniques, what I mean here, this is where you're doing the actual bread and butter of counseling. This is where you're doing the discussion cards, or the dice game or the Jenga. This is where you're doing, you know, the interactive coloring sheets, or making the flip books or journaling or playing the board game to answer questions. These are the actual counseling activities that are taking place, you just want to keep in mind, how you want to customize those, and how you want to make them trauma informed, and personalized. Alright, guys, I hope you found that helpful. Those are just some strategies when it comes to implementing your direct student services. To do a little recap for you guys. Whenever you were teaching in a classroom, small group or individual setting, you want to remember to be culturally responsive in your classroom management strategies, and use that personalized instruction. You also want to be sure to integrate technology into your lessons as well. Then when it comes to appraising and advising, you want to be able to use an inventory or an assessment to help students understand their abilities, values and career. And you want to help them understand how their academic performance correlates to a future the world of work, family life, community service, and so on. You also want them to understand the importance of getting post secondary education and career. You can do that through career exploration. And then finally, when it comes to providing the short term counseling in small group and individual settings, you want to be on the lookout for those times of transition, heightened stress, trauma, critical change or a crisis. So I hope you found this helpful. And again, coffee with the counselors coming up at the end of this month, we're going to be talking all about top secret ways to advocate for your role meaning things you may have not thought of before so some obvious or dare I say direct and indirect ways to advocate for your role. So I think you guys are gonna love it. I hope to see you there at a stress free school counseling.com/coffee To save your seat. Okay, talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to school counseling simplified. You can find the links from today's episode in the show notes. If you'd like to connect with Rachel, she's on Instagram and teachers pay teacher's at Bright Futures counseling. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss any episodes of school counseling simplified. Talk to you next week.