Identify the child's skills. Look for strengths and areas that are less well developed. Compare your child with typically developing children of the same age and use the resources listed below for ideas of the skills to target.
Make a list of the skills that will require your help.
Decide which skills should be taught first. Consider which skills the child is starting to develop and which are most useful for promoting the child's independence. Students who see how the skills can help them personally are likely to learn them more quickly.
Select one or two key skills to teach. Don't be tempted to teach everything at once, which could overwhelm the child and frustrate the teacher because of the lack of progress.
List the steps that need to be completed for each of the skills chosen. The activities of daily living generally involve sequences of small steps so is important to identify each step to be taught.
For example, wiping a table : pick up antibacterial wipe : wipe table : throw wipe into trash can.
Skills have varying numbers of steps, and you should break down the target skills into as many small elements as necessary.
Teach the target skill using a technique known as backward chaining.
Physically help, usually by guiding the child's hands, through the entire sequence until the final small step is reached. Expect the child to complete this on his own, but you will probably need to guide the child through the first few attempts. Gradually help less and less until the child can complete the final step independently.
Do not tell the student what to do or offer a commentary as you teach because they should focus on the skill and not listening to you speaking. After the sequence has been completed you should give the student lots of praise.
Once the final step has been completed without help, the student should complete the final two steps on their own. When this can be achieved without help, the final three should be completed and so on until the entire sequence can be completed without help.
Correct any errors. Do not simply complete the task after an error. Rather, return to the step before the error was made and physically guide the child through the task.
Monitor progress. Create a data sheet that details the name of the skill being taught, a list of the steps required, space to record dates when the skill is practiced and comments and notes. Complete this daily to monitor even small degrees of progress.