Pyramid USA Clinical Director and Consultant, Catherine Horton, MS, CCC-SLP, BCBA, CAGS, offers some helpful tips for success with visual schedules that can be applied in the classroom or at home.

It’s that time of year again! Summer is drawing to an end and the new school year is approaching. Educators have probably spent countless hours of their vacation time preparing materials to ensure a successful start to the school year. This probably includes a variety of pictures that are needed for expressive lessons such as PECS, as well as pictures required for receptive lessons such as following a visual schedule.

Teach learners what the pictures mean

When I was a new Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) graduate, I learned about the importance of creating and implementing a visual schedule for my students. However, I made one critical mistake. I believed that simply hanging up a schedule in the environment would have a magical effect on the learner’s behaviour. This, of course, is false! In order for visual schedules to be effective, we must first teach our learners what the pictures actually mean. So, prior to hanging up those schedules, start with lessons that focus on Single Picture Direction Following. Present the learner with a picture and say, “Go here/there” or “Do this”. If the learner moves to the designated area, the learner is demonstrating correspondence between the picture and activity/location. If the learner doesn’t independently move towards the designated area, consider physically prompting the student to the location. As always, these prompts should be systematically eliminated as soon as possible.

You might also create a larger 8”x 11” version of the picture direction so that the student can affix the smaller version onto the larger version. Once the student arrives in the area, feel free to vocally label (“You’re right! It is time for lunch!”).

Note that it’s important not to label the picture when you are providing the initial direction, as we want to be sure that the learner is responding to the picture and not what we are saying. Imagine if I said, “Go to lunch” while showing the picture. In that case, I have no idea if the student is responding to my spoken direction or the picture.

Given the Single Picture Direction Following lessons, we ensure that the student is responding to the picture, which is an essential prerequisite skill to success with independently following a visual schedule.

Schedule following

Once your learner is independent in following a variety of single pictures, next we can teach schedule following.  There are lots of different schedules that work in various ways. One of our favorites is the Visual Schedule Kit. With this schedule, the learner places the picture of the current activity in the black rectangle at the top of the schedule. Once the activity is complete, the student places the picture into the “finished box” at the bottom of the schedule and then places the next activity picture at the top. This process repeats across the day. The Visual Schedule Kit also comes with additional Activity Boards, so that picture choices are easily embedded throughout the day.

We hope these reminders are helpful for a successful start to the school year!

Written By Catherine Horton, MS, CCC-SLP, BCBA, CAGS

© Pyramid Educational Consultants

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