[Music] today's jargon term is Task analysis now this is one of these things that you know we've all heard the word task we use this in our everyday language right we've heard the word analysis and we've used and heard that uh put these two things together we think we understand them but really why do I have to stop my day to hear about this this is such a life-changing thing turns out when we're dealing with an individual on the autism spectrum and we want to teach them something that they're having a hard time with this is a very big deal and can be lifechanging okay so let's take a look at our actual definition a task analysis is the process of breaking down a complex skill or series of behaviors into smaller teachable units all right that's not a bad definition makes a certain amount of sense let's move on to our working definition task analysis a list of all of the individual steps a child or an individual has to take in order to complete a task or a sequence of behaviors all right if let's stop and think about this because I'm a former teacher and I always used to think when kids would come into my classroom I began to think of them as wonderful little lumps of Swiss cheese you know they had certain things going on but then there were holes and sometimes in our kids we can the holes are so visible you can see through them right and if you're asking somebody to do long division but they never ever learn to do multiplication what are the chances that you're going to be successful at teaching the long division it's really going to be an exercise and frustration for absolutely everybody and when you're doing long division and they don't know multiplication it can become evident very quickly oh if they don't know the multiplication this isn't going to work right but what about all those other tasks in life that you just go I just don't know why they don't get it and it could be something as simple as brushing teeth it could be something as complex as riding a bicycle it could be as complex as figuring out how to participate with a group of friends outside on a playground right these are all skills that take a certain amount of steps to be able to do and do well and the thing about it is is if there's one little thing in the middle that is gumming up the works it makes the whole thing shut down and doing task analysis on something is a way of stepping back and looking at it listing all of those different steps because then you can have a teaching moment and go and like literally checking them off if we're talking about uh brushing teeth and going okay what are the steps involved in brushing teeth you you're standing there at the counter and you know different people do this in different ways by the way some people grab the tooth toothbrush uh and the toothpaste and take the cap off of the toothpaste first first and then put it on some people wet their toothbrush first right uh different things for different people but if we've got a child who is not managing being able to brush the teeth by themselves and we discover all right they can go to the sink they can turn on the water they can wet their toothbrush they can take the cap off of the toothpaste but it's the squeezing the toothpaste tube at the same time as they're putting it across the toothbrush the squeeze and the push that's the part that they don't have and they can't get it so they get frustrated because they can't move on to the next step and then we get to the frustration to the point where they're having the Tantrum stop and think about all the really good things that they already have they already know how to actually do the brushing they know how to clean the toothbrush they know how to spit they've got all that together but they can't get to the good stuff because there's one step in there that's blowing the whole thing it's so easy as a parent to just get into the frustration with them and go they just can't brush their teeth when in fact if if we were able to look at the task analysis we would be able to figure what to teach ah so often when we get overwhelmed with what a child is missing or what an individual is missing that we we're we're like I don't know how to teach this to them I I you know maybe they're not teachable that thought certainly occurred to me on a very very dark day that I looked at my child and I went I don't know what to do maybe he's unteachable this doing a task analysis brings it back to a point where we can think like Educators we can think like teachers we can get to a posit it also helps you to realize man look you know this is a 15st step process it's not an easy thing and when you check it off wow my child can do 11 of these 15 Steps suddenly it feels more doable and when we take just one little slice out of the task and we say what we need to do is work on that squeeze and that toothbrush that's manageable and if if we take it outside of working on brushing teeth put it someplace else and have a tube of something and have the child squeeze it and make it really rewarding like maybe getting a tube of paint where they're not having to deal with all the other sensory things but having this the tube of paint and having them squeeze it on and their favorite color now we're giving them tons of opportunity if you think about it you know how you maybe if you're doing really good toothbrushing you're you're getting three opportunities a day to squeeze that may not be enough but we get the child and we've got all these tubes of paint and we've got them squeezing squeezing squeezing and it's really reinforcing because there's color and they get to do things with a color that comes out maybe we're going to get a 100 squeezes in in a 10minute time period now the child's building up the muscle and understanding and getting the fluency of it then we can plug it back into the toothbrushing and suddenly we see man this child can brush their own teeth and they get the pride of that right it makes it possible so the task analysis it's that list of steps that we break a behavior down into and once we do that then we have a way to teach the Swiss cheese [Music] right