(mellow music) - Hey, y'all. It's Ayo here. Let's talk about chaining. When we go through the process of completing a task analysis, we're breaking down the task that is challenging for a student, or is comprised of multiple steps, and we're putting it into smaller, more manageable sub-skills that a student can master.
All tasks, processes, and behaviors that we undertake are just a collection of smaller steps that we link together just like a chain. Imagine if you were making a sandwich. If you can get the ingredients and get the utensils and cut the sandwich, it's all for nothing if you don't have the knife skills to spread the peanut butter. Mentally, you should envision each of the steps like a link in a chain.
And as a student learns a step in the process, a link is added as the student continues to chain the behavior. In instruction, chaining is the process of systematically teaching all of the steps within a skill or task. Forward chaining means we teach the students from the start of the task and then we model the remaining of the steps. Backwards chaining means we model the starting steps of a task and the student learns the last step first.
As an example, with an assembly task, we could use forward chaining or we could use backwards chaining. In this situation, if we were to do forward chaining, we would grab all of the materials necessary to complete the task and the student would complete the first task by sorting the paperclips into small and large and we would continue the rest. So we would get the card and say one large, two small, one large, two small. Put items in the baggie.
Finished. By taking over and modeling the rest of the steps, we slowly train our students through an example of what the remainder of the steps look like. Backwards chaining is a little bit different. Backwards chaining means that the student is gonna start at the tail end of the process as opposed to learning the first step first.
So in this same situation, the student's responsibility is to click the finish button and do the last step first. So the person who's supporting them is gonna get the clips. They're gonna sort them. They're gonna point out that they're getting the order card and they're gonna be the ones that are going to assemble it.
One, two. Put them in the baggie. And the student would be responsible for hitting the button and indicating that the process is finished. As the student assumes more responsibility, the next step in terms of backwards chaining would be to have them put the items into the baggie.
We continue this process until the student is doing all of the task in totality. And that's how we use chaining along with task analysis to get our students to learn a more complex process or skill or series of skills and become more independent. The modeling that we do while we're teaching a student how to complete this is really important in terms of acquiring skills. So how can you use forward or backwards chaining along with task analysis to support your students?
When it comes to forward or backwards chaining, which one should you pick? Well, easier tasks, or tasks where a student might already have some of the underlying skills, works better with forward chaining. And more challenging skills, or skills where a student is more likely to have undesired behaviors, backwards chaining is going to be more effective, and that's because a student is allowed to finish a task and get praised or reinforced when they learn the process from the back to the front. So as you help differentiate to meet the needs of different students, consider how you can use forward and backwards chaining and which one is gonna be most effective for your students.
Remember, the goal here is that our student become more independent. So as you're going through the process of forward and backwards chaining, make sure that you're always pushing the student to acquire another step in the process. As you differentiate with students to teach them new processes and skills, consider how chaining can hold students responsible for different parts of a process at their own level and connect them to more complex tasks, concepts, or skills. I'm Ayo Jones reminding you to stay strong and teach on.
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