TAGteacher Tale: Out With the Rules, In With the Tag Points!

By Gwen Hunter

I recently convinced staff at a new program for families with children who present with a gamut of behavioral challenges (ADHD, OD, autism spectrum, etc.) to try TAGteach. After a few telephone conversations they invited me to come and observe their most challenging class of 6 kids. Wow, it was chaotic and, frankly, dangerous. The following week I met with staff after school for a couple of hours, passed out info on TAGteach. They were excited. This class was the following day so I asked them to make a list of the behaviors they didn't like below each student's name. Then we went over each item, added an = sign next to each, and came up with behaviors they'd like instead (what a helpful tool this is! Thanks for teaching it.) These became tag points. I gave them taggers and we decided on tictacs for primary reinforcers. They then split up the kids so that each of us would have two to tag. I was really nervous about this as in the past I'd only tagged when working one-on-one with a student plus I didn't know these kids, but we decided to approach this as a learning experience - which it certainly was!

Only two kids showed up - two were on a camping trip and the other two, twins, were at an appointment with their mom. The boy who showed up had only one 'negative' behavior on his list: "he hates to move," so his tag point was "adventure try." The girl who attended had several behaviors on her list: "launches herself," "unsafe," "interrupts," "loud voice." We did not come up for tag points for unsafe and body launching, but "raise hand to talk" and "level 3 voice" were tag points.

The teacher did a beautiful job of describing TAGteach and tag points. The girl was tagged for raising her hand and darn, it didn't feel right to not tag the boy who was sitting listening, so he was tagged for 'eyes on teacher.' This was a good way to deal with a possible inequity, where the child who has behavior issues gets lots of tags, while the child sitting quietly gets none. After explaining and demonstrating tag, the teacher asked the kids what they wanted to do. The boy was tagged for suggesting setting up an obstacle course (the kid who hates to move!), and he and the girl brainstormed ideas. The girl got lots of tags for "level 3 voice" and together and under their direction, we set up a challenging 10-part course involving pillows, swings, hammocks, a squeeze cow that shoots balls, a target, and a slide. WOW! The boy demonstrated the route first, which involved lots of moving! Tag points for the girl that addressed safety became obvious during this activity: "feet first," "ask adult for help," "warn when starting," "wait until B has finished." At the end of the hour, the boy reached into his pocket, pulled out a large handful of tictacs, looked up and me and said, "Look at all the tags I got!"

There were no behavior problems during this class, and after the kids left the staff was incredibly excited about the effectiveness of TAGteach! I pointed out the 'rules' list on the wall and suggested they change it (it was called Rules and involved lots of 'NO…."). Staff immediately took it down and replaced it with a list called TAG POINTS!

Tweet

How to Introduce the Tagulator

Here is a video that shows how to introduce the tagulator to increase teaching efficiency. This child has up until now received a reinforcer after each tag. Sometimes it has been stickers, beads or melon pieces, but he is most interested in Skittles. It is often disruptive to the smooth flow of a lesson to stop and eat a Skittle after each tag. The tagulator provides a great way to reinforce without stopping to deal with the primary reinforcer. Lear is 4 and this is his introduction to the tagulator. Notice that he has no problem with the drastic reduction in the number of Skittles he is getting. Formerly he was getting 1 Skittle per tag, now he is getting 1 Skittle per 10 tags. Clearly it is more about the game than about the candy for Lear now.

He sometimes wants to stop and count remaining beads to see how far he still has to go to get a Skittle, but he does not object to the the 10X reduction in Skittles. The tagulator is fun too.

Note how matter-of-fact the teacher is here. She doesn't cajole or ask him if he wants to use the tagulator, she just tells him that this is what we are doing now and then she does it. She has a good history of reliability with Lear and he likes and trusts her. He also respects her because she sets the expectations, she is clear and she is consistent. Lear is tag savvy and is very clear on the concept of TAGteach.



If you want to know more about tagulators and see a video showing how to make one, please see our previous blog post. You can also buy them in the TAGteach store.

Note: the teacher in this video is Joan's daughter Anne Wormald who has been tagging and been tagged since 2002 and is our newest Level 1 certified TAGteacher. This video is part of her Level 1 project.

Tweet

TAGteach and Handwriting

Writing is a basic skill and something all kids struggle with to one degree or another. Every parent has seen the frustration of a child trying to make the letters look right, but not quite managing it, the inexplicable repetition of the same error over and over. The child knows it is not quite right, yet can't seem to change what he is doing. Drawing attention to the error in order to help correct it often results in floods of tears.

TAGteacher Madeline Gabriel sent us two short videos that illustrate how she used TAGteach to help her sons with their writing. In the first clip, the tag point is "pencil to the line" and the child is self-tagging. This is a great way for him to develop increased focus and interest in the task. He knows exactly what he has to do and he can see when he does it right. This is a good tag point.



In the second video we see another tag point, this one to help with letter formation. Andrew was creating e's with a big loop and becoming very frustrated. Here's what Madeline had to say about the situation:

The thing we worked on was lower case "e". I was amazed that we were able to come up with a tag point of "that way" to help him feel how to draw his straight line across and then immediately go "that way" (up and to the left) vs. the little tiny extra poofing out to the right he was doing.

It's hardly any difference in pencil movement, but it makes ALL the difference in keeping the shape of the letter in proportion. We did it by me holding over his hand holding the pencil and making the movement together with a tag as the pencil went "that way."

Andrew could articulate to his dad exactly what the tag point was and I could clearly see him move his pencil very deliberately.

Just FYI, I'm really not a terribly picky mother! I know to some people this may look like nitpicking, but I meant it to show how precision doesn't have to be hard. It's just as easy for him to do it "correctly" with TAG and he's very confident and proud about his e's now.

I mostly leave him alone to do his own thing, but I had to start tagging again when he started saying, "I hate e's! I'm really bad at them!" and he had ten pages with lots and lots of e's. I was seeing hours of erasing and crying stretching out before me and I'm definitely not into THAT!

See the images below to see the problem with the "poofing" out to the right that was causing misshapen e's:

Together they decided on the tag point "that way" which means "move to the left right away after drawing the horizontal line". This is a great tag point because it causes the movement that results in a correctly drawn e. There is no point in using the tag point, "draw a good e" because if Andrew could do this he would, he just doesn't know how. We discussed tag points that "make it happen" in a previous blog post.



The above provide two good examples of creativity and good tag points that help the learner focus on one thing and be successful.

Tweet

Tagging for Creativity

It's 2:45pm and the dancers are descending - their giggles ring in the stairwell. My 9yr old Intermediate Jazz Class starts in 15 minutes and as I'm rushing to pull myself together for class, the phone rings. Our Ballet teacher is having car trouble and won't make it in today to teach her scheduled Tween Ballet class (which runs in our adjacent studio at the same time as my class). It's too late to try to find a sub. So, looks like I'm taking both classes - NOW. That's 28 dancers in one studio with li'l ole me - oh, and the two groups are not anywhere near the same level. I'm either looking at mayhem, martial law or..... you guessed it, TAG!

So, into the studio the dancers bounce and I begin the warm-up - throughout which I'm thinking fast and furiously to try to come up with something unique. But nothing is hitting me. We've done so many versions of our traditional TAG exercises and, since this is the week following our Holiday Performance for which they've all worked very hard, I really want to come up with something extra fun and special and then it hits me...

Our dancers LOVE to choreograph and, in fact, we often use it as a reinforcer. But I find that many of the dancers struggle with the creative aspect. Many dance styles, especially Ballet, and even Jazz to a large extent, have a set vocabulary and dancers are trained to perform them "just so". So, when asked to switch their behavior and suddenly "be creative" they can feel unsure of how to proceed. As a result they tend to regurgitate the "steps" we have presented in class, sometimes verbatim, sometimes rearranged a bit, but most often very identifiablly - as opposed to creating new shapes and connections which is the essence of true choreography. But, how to TAG for this???

"Tap, tap, tap" - nope, no one's tap dancing today, that's the tapping of my dog, Eevee, at the door signaling with her paw on the glass that she wants to come in to watch class. As I ignore her she begins to throw every trick in the book to get my attention and is coming up with new things I haven't ever seen. And, it hits me... "101 things to do with a box" the fabulous clicker training method of inspiring creativity in animals. That's what I need to try with the dancers today! And I'm off...

I break the dancers up into pairs: one older dancer with one younger. "The tag point is: make a new shape or connection. Once you have 8 tags (new moves) that we've never seen - switch and your partner will begin." The kids dove in. They were immediately having a blast AND coming up with some really interesting movements - fantastic!

After they all succeeded in getting their 8 tags, I encouraged them to work with their partner to combine all of their "new moves" into a short piece. Years ago Theresa (our TAGteach originator) had taught me the theatre game "yes, and" which has ever since been a staple here at the studio. The game instructs that when a partner has an idea the response must always be "yes, and" (as opposed to "no" or "I don't want to do that" or "that's stupid"). This way, instead of a partner's idea being thwarted, thereby inhibiting creativity, confidence and participation, each idea is validated and built upon. Naturally, the tag point for the collaboration portion of today's activity was "yes, and".

The pieces were amazing, the kids were all completely involved and the class productive. When I asked the older girls if they'd minded dancing with the younger kids today they replied "Are you kidding? That was awesome!" And, so, from a potential disaster of a teaching day came, instead, a new post Holiday Performance tradition. TAG!

Questions about how to use TAG in a dance environment? Contact: beth@tagteach.com OR beth@tagdance.net

A Dancer's Dream

222 Beacon Street

Marblehead, MA 01945

director@adancersdream.net

Tweet