SKILLS Play & Leisure CPD & Parent Course 
Effective Methods to Teach Play & Leisure Skills to SEN Learners 0-22 years of age

This online course will present how to teach the foundational skills to promote more play in your student’s life.
Play provides an avenue for children to learn about their natural environment and develop new skills.
These skills can be essential to their development: how they complete daily living activities and how they interact with others. Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder sometimes require additional support and consideration when learning new skills. Using play as a vital resource to learn can enhance the education they receive from guardians, educators, and other adults in their lives. The importance of developing rapport is emphasized and taught as a foundational skill for play. You will learn how to teach different types of play, how to teach play, and how to further develop and generalize those skills (e.g., in different environments, with different activities, with different people).
Play opens up a world of opportunities for students—both fun and educational.
View Play & Leisure Skills Curriculum - we will be working on a few IEP goals and skills from it during this CPD course.

Title: Using selected best evidence-based practices to teach Play & Leisure Skills to ASD Learners.

If:

• • you want to find out how a SEN teacher, a mainstream teacher, a special needs assistant, a therapist or a parent can effectively support an ASD learner in acquiring foundational and more advanced skills to help them get ready for pre-school or primary, post-primary or special school
  • you want to implement the most effective selected techniques that are both attractive and motivating for your ASD learner to encourage them to collaborate with you, while learning not only school readiness skills, but also the important skills in other inter-related areas, such as: motor skills, receptive and expressive language, social emotional skills and play and leisure skills
  • you consider it important to diversify the long-term therapeutic and educational processes and use comprehensive methods to target multiple areas with your child or pupils/clients
  • you want to get confidence in how to effectively and correctly modify the activities, techniques and goals by gradual implementation of various elements of evidence-based practices in your work or life with a SEN learner
  • you always do your best to adjust the activities and a level of difficulty, based on your learner's unique learning profiles and their individualised needs.

If one or more of those statements applies to you, take part in this meaningful and practical certified online training, during which you will learn how to smoothly implement best solutions that are easy to implement in the classroom, in the clinic and at home.

This online training on How To Teach Play & Leisure Skills Effectively is divided into 2 forty-minute blocks to allow for the most effective use of the training time while having your questions answered by a an expert SEN teacher who is a therapist, an education & behaviour consultant and a mother of an ASD child.

This training is for you if you want to get important knowledge on how to shape your practical teaching skills. Additional questions you may have can be addressed via email, a live chat during the course or during your 1-1 online consultations.

During your online training on Using effective methods to teach Play & Leisure Skills to ASD Learners, you will find out about:

• Prerequisites to develop Play & Leisure Skills - core skills
• How to skilfully select therapeutic and teaching methods and what are they that will best help in work on Play & Leisure Skills
• How to expand the learner's skills onto a few other related areas while still focusing on Play & Leisure Skills
• How to skilfully apply teaching techniques and select activities to allow for the generalisation of skills
• How to select IEP goals and measure progress
• How to troubleshoot and effectively search workable solutions during your activities with your learner.

Detailed course programme:

• challenging behaviours and its functions
• motivational strategies in the classroom and in 1-1 work
• individualised motivational contracts with pupils
• significance of ongoing attention and approval provided to a pupil throughout the day 
• the significance of proactive activities.

A practical part of each SKILLS course will relate to creating behavioural contracts, motivational systems and proactive activities that are important to effectively teach specific SKILLS in your selected course/s. We will find out how to easier teach specific skills if we have the right system in place in our classroom or at home.

Part 1

• The impact of a neurodevelopmental delay on the development of sensory motor functions, cognition, social emotional learning, language and social communication - why the early childhood stimulation of those areas is crucial in setting up any ASD learner for the best possible success in the school years and in adulthood
• Common deficits in ASD and related neurodevelopmental disorders and how to effectively target those deficits
• Warning signs in the dysfunction of neurological processes that lead to insufficient school readiness that impacts all other areas of development
• How to skilfully select some of the evidence-based practices to address SEL skills and match them to your learner's unique profile.

Part 2

• Stimulation of play and leisure skills development based on implementing selected core and main activities and matching IEP goals and procedures to address the development of those skills
• Examples of IEP goals and selection of best educational and therapeutic strategies to stimulate the skills in a hierarchical sequence
• Useful activities and suggested materials as supportive components of any quality  lesson /session at home, in school or in the clinic
• Troubleshooting and examples of how to best resolve problems that may arise during a session / lesson
• Collaboration between family home and school / clinic - how to better carry out joint intervention activities to enhance generalisation of skills in a naturalistic setting and in the community
• Selected ready lesson plans from the list below to teach the following skills:

Area: Core
1 Completing Activities with a Beginning and End - Younger
2 Completing Activities with a Beginning and End - Older
3 Doing Activities for Increasing Lengths of Time - Younger
4 Doing Activities for Increasing Lengths of Time - Older

Area: Independent Play
5 Looking at Books
6 Watching Television Appropriately
7 Completing Puzzles
8 Following a Photographic Play Schedule
9 Building Models
10 Using Playdough
11 Completing Connect-the-Dots
12 Completing Mazes
13 Completing Colour-by-Number-Worksheets
14 Doing an Art Project

Area: Group/Peer Play
15 Taking Turns
16 Initiating Play with a Peer when Instructed
17 Following Play-Related Instructions from a Peer
18 Joining Ongoing Play with a Peer
19 Playing Follow the Leader
20 Playing Hokey Pokey
21 Playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey
22 Playing Musical Chairs
23 Playing Simon Says
24 Playing Board Games
25 Playing Freeze Dance
26 Playing Charades
Area: Pretend Play
27 Engaging in Pretend Actions
28 Pretend Play (Figures/Dolls)
29 Playing Dress-up
30 Role Playing with Puppets
31 Having a Tea Party