Our Goal

Discrete Trial Training (DTT) is a method of teaching in simplified and structured steps. Instead of teaching an entire skill at once, the skill is broken down and then “built-up” using discrete trials that teach each step one at a time. It includes presenting an antecedent, the child’s response, and the therapist providing reinforcement for a correct answer or a correction for an error. Trials may be presented in blocks of ten or twenty consecutively, allowing for learners to have more opportunities to practice the skill.

Intensive teaching is the use of a positive reinforcer for responses that are completely unrelated to that reinforcer. For example, if a child likes trains, the trains could be given to the child contingent upon the child performing a few tasks such as clapping, pointing.     

When teaching intensively we like to use positive reinforcement and not negative reinforcement. This means that we want our children working to “get” something from us. In order to do this we use a variety of proven and effective procedures such as Errorless Teaching, Variable Ratio, Mixing & Varying Instructional Demands, Interspersing Easy & Hard Demands, Fluency and Most-to-Least Prompting.

Natural Environment Teaching (NET) is a method of teaching for when skills are taught or generalized within the natural environment. For example, during DTT you might teach a student to receptively and expressively label colours of items at the table. Then, during NET the student would get to practice the skill by labelling colours of crayons that you’re colouring with or asking for colours of Playdoh that you’re playing with. NET is also very useful in teaching play skills and social skills to a learner while prompting generalization of newly acquired skills.