I just found out that my son's kindergarten teacher (will be in Sept. 2007), uses TEACCH.
I don't know much about it. Can anyone give me a summary?
I know there is lots of info on the web, but I'd like to hear it from someone whose child has been in it.
TEACCH isn't a therapy - it's more or less a toolkit, set of evalations, etc. for educating kids with autism. The gist of it is that there's not "best" therapy or approach that will work best with all autistic kids, and that autistic kids present with all sorts of variable strengths and weaknesses, and as such, TEACCH's philosophy is to not cleve to some specific therapy or approach, but rather evaluate the child's unique profile and modify the child's environment and prescribe therapies in a way that address the unique profile of that child. This may mean discrete trials, if behavioral modification is required. It may mean traditional speach and language therapy, etc. It will probably mean picture schedules and visual learning aids, as TEACCH is big on visual learning and visual aids for autistic kids and scheduling to ease with transitions, etc.
Basically, ABA is an educational therapy and TEACCH is a philosphy. TEACCH can incorporate ABA-like discrete trials into a child's curriculum if it's deemed neccessary. TEACCH is about tailoring the environment and the education approach to reduce anxiety and stress levels within the child, and to efficiently teach academics to the child using his/her innate strengths.
TEACCH is not 'curative' - it doesn't seek to cure the autism or make the child act "normal". It's really a way to teach academic to a child who may have learning and behavioral differences (because of autism), as an alternative to a completely mainstream, academic approach.
For an example, my girls have picture schedules at their pre-school, and receieve traditional speach and language therapy, among other things. They do well there, but all accounts.
Does that make sense?
I worked as the teacher in a TEACCH classroom for 2 years and basically Ill give you a rundown of how my class room was set up and how it ran.
Each child was assigned a color. They each had a scedule tailored to the level of the child whether it be actual objects, actual pictures, symbols, or words to show the child each activity of the day.
The child was taught to "check" thier schedule with fading prompts and it worked very well for children who needed to know what was next and to stay on task.
There was a 1:1 area of the calss where I worked individually with each child every day teaching them new tasks such as matching, writing, color sorting, 1:1 correspondence etc. All od these tasks were made out of shoe boxes and file folders. At least the ones I had were made of that material. Once the child mastered the task it was put into thier color coded independent work station. They were taught in the 1:1 area how to follow a visual schedule and complete 3-4 tasks independently that they mastered in 1:1.
At my table during table toys each child had thier color coded placemat to show thier area.
We did the typical stuff you see too , story time, circle time and art activities. I felt the class was missing something like ABA and floortime. TEACCH by itself does not cut it, in my opinion. But it is a great philsophy and works best for thise children that get very upset when routines are changed.
Yes Fred ... thanks VERY much for that explanation.