Back Chaining - The Key to Reliablity

Back chaining is a concept foreign to many and counter-intuitive to most who first learn of it. We want to talk about it briefly here, because it is a very effective way to build highly reliable behaviors and it is one of the key techniques that any TAGteacher should understand and apply properly. A reliable behavior is one that looks the same each time the subject performs it. For example, with forming the letter "E", we would consider the behavior to be reliable if the child drew the letter the same way every time and the letter was drawn correctly.

Back chaining involves teaching a skill starting at the end and working back to the beginning. For example we would teach a child to come down the ladder to the climbing structure safely before teaching him to climb up it. This way we know that once he climbs up he will be able climb down. To do this we would place the child on the bottom step and work on taking one step down to the ground until he is confident with that. The we would place him on the second step and work on coming down two steps. After a few steps he would be confident with coming down and we could start working on going up and then coming back down. By teaching the last part first the learner is always moving toward the part of the skill that he learned first and with which he is most confident. The gymnast that learns her balance beam routine from back to front will not be worrying about moving toward the part of the routine that she has practiced the least, she will be confident that she is less likely to fall as the routine moves forward. The pianist who learns the last part of the piece first will be moving toward the part he has practiced most and with which he has the greatest confidence. Karen Pryor has been tweeting lately about her experiences with a choir director who understands back chaining and has been applying it most effectively. Follow Karen on twitter and look back through her choir posts for a play by play description of this back chaining application.

We have posted a video at YouTube that shows a very simple application of back chaining. This is the formation of the letter "L". We taught the right to left stroke of the bottom part of the letter first using a template that already had the down stroke completed and with red and black dots to guide the cross stroke. The tag point is "red to black". The child is to draw a line from the red to the black dot thus completing the letter correctly and with the pen stroke going in the correct direction. After practicing this until he was confident, the next tag point was also "red to black", but this time completing the dots created the down stroke of the L. Notice in the first trial with down stroke he goes on to finish the letter without any instruction or prompting. Because he had learned the last part of the letter first he naturally went on to complete it by doing the behavior that he was first taught (i.e., the cross stroke). This is a very nice demonstration of the power of back chaining.

Many of you have already seen our famous high jump video. This is a very complex skill that involves simultaneous rotation about two different axes and incorporates the transfer of power from the run to the jump. How could we teach something this complex backwards? Watch the video again (or for the first time) and see back chaining in action with a complex skill.

To learn more about back chaining, check out our recorded webinar:

Tweet

MAKE it Happen

By Theresa McKeon

The most productive tag points are those that cause what you want to happen. For example if you wanted someone to jump to a certain height, tagging at the correct height would not be the best thing to do. By the time the athlete gets to the correct height, the muscle movements that caused the jump are long past. A better tag point would relate to the preparation before the jump so that you can tag something that actually causes a higher jump.

Example #1:

Coach David thinks his gymnasts need to speed up their vaulting run. They have previously timed their runs and he would like to see them beat their old times. Coach thinks through the running process and creates a tag point from a behavior that would cause the athlete to run faster and therefore produce a faster time.

"Ok, we need to speed up these sprints. Pumping the arms properly will cause a cascade of actions that speed up a run. To get the correct arm pump, the fist needs to rise to the level of your cheek. During our next set of sprints, let’s tag the point when the fist is level with the cheek. I've set up two cones 15 feet apart. This is where we’ll tag the runner for 'fist to cheek’. When everyone has a total of 30 tags we'll time the sprints again and see who improved enough to beat their old time. The person with the biggest reduction in time wins all the money in my pocket." (When my coworker used ‘pocket money’ incentive, he rarely had more than lint in his pocket. Everyone knew it was just for fun, but somehow it still added a little excitement.)

"Ok, let's try the sprints again. The tag point is…fist to cheek."

David did not use the tag point "run faster" or "complete the run in 5 seconds" because the first of these is ill-defined and both of these are end results and would not affect the key movements that will cause faster running.

Example #2:

Miss Sara, a math teacher, decides to use a bit of TAGteach with Matt, one of her students.

The teacher’s first thought is to make the tag point… correct answer, which is what she ultimately wants. After thinking the process through, she decides to create a tag point that will cause the correct answer. In Matt’s case, he understands adding, but occasionally forgets to ‘carry over’ which leads to an incorrect answer. Miss Sarah believes that if Matt circles the carry over number, he will be more likely to remember to include it while solving the problem.

Miss Sara gives the tagger to Matt and asks him to tag her first. “I’m going to perform this addition problem and when I need to carry over a number I’m going to write that number on top of the proper column.

The tag point is… circle the carry over number.” Matt correctly tags when his teacher circles the carry over number. Matt feels a sense of accomplishment and Miss Sara has assessed that he understands the instructions. Now Miss Sara gives the tag point to Matt. “Perform the next three math problems and if you need to carry over a number, the tag point is…circle the carry over number.”

In this scenario Matt learned how to get the right answer and was reinforced for learning the process that would produce the proper product.

A video example:

Watch this video of a boy learning to tie his shoe. He has had lots of frustration with this in the past and the traditional way of teaching has not worked. His biggest problem is making the loop too big. There is no point in saying to him "the tag point is make a smaller loop". If he knew what was meant by a smaller loop he would have been taught this easily before now. I gave him the tag point "string at elbow" since placing the end of the string at his elbow would cause the loop to be the right size. This is a good example of the type of tag point we are talking bout here.

Tweet

High Jump video

We have posted our classic high jump video to YouTube. This illustrates some of the basic principles of TAGteach. Note the self assessment and absence of frustration when they miss the tag point. This video shows rapid learning of a complex skill without ever pointing out mistakes. It also provides a good example of backchaining... starting with the last part of the skill and gradually adding pieces to move toward the completed skill.

Tweet