
Teaching materials for Interdependent (Group) Contingency
These teaching materials are designed to teach students to understand Interdependent (Group) Contingency through simple tasks, then systematically generalise their skill to different settings and people.
Teaching objectives:
- Develop understanding of an Interdependent (Group) Contingency (when everyone in the group finishes, everyone gets to play.)
- Increase students’ awareness of the environment and the activities of others.
- Facilitate social interaction
Prerequisites:
- Basic contingencies (understanding the relationship between work and reward).
- Basic compliance and learning how to learn behaviours (sitting still, listening to teacher’s instructions, tolerate delay of reward when other group members don’t finish).
- Basic awareness of others in the environment
Preparation:
– Prepare one set of materials for each student involved in the group, at the beginning phases, there should be minimal materials along with easy instructions (e.g. put the pen in the cup).
– Towards the later phases, the instructions can be presented in the form of classroom-based activities involving more materials such as a science experiment, an art and craft activity, or a worksheet.
If the student is not doing the action:
– You may prompt other students to tell the student to complete the instruction
– You may highlight that you cannot remove the card because not everybody did the action.
Extension Practice:
If the student is able to understand the group contingency with simple actions and less preferred materials, we can increase the difficulty of the presentation, for example:
- Vary the position of the student, for example, position the student sit next to his peers instead of in a circle.
- Increase the number of items on the table
- Increase the number steps required to perform the instruction
- Use instructions that involve out-of-chair tasks
- Increase the distance between the teacher and the students.
- Increase the duration of the practice.