Once the skill has been broken down into tag points, we use the build process to incorporate the tag points into the complete skill.

Tag points are worked on one at a time using the point of success and the three try rule to guide the process.

In some cases it could take years to learn and perfect all the elements required for a complex skill.

For example a golfer might work on club position at the top of the swing as a stationary position, then with a slow swing or a partial swing and then with a full swing. In this way the tag point for the top of the swing position is gradually built into the full swing.

Sometimes the coach can take an element out of a moving skill and work on it in isolation.

A music or language teacher can take a particular series of notes or sounds and work on these individually outside the complete sequence.

Complex skills are always taught incrementally, where the level of difficulty is slowly increased over time as the learner gains skill.

Tagging these stationary elements in isolation from the skill helps the athlete go back to that position and remember it while executing a complex movement.

It is important to remember that during the process of building skills, a tag point is still only associated with one part.

For example, a gymnastics move may require straight legs, legs together, toes pointed and elbows straight. Each of these parts could be a tag point, but a tag point could never be a combination of two or more parts.

Eventually after repetition of the individual tag points the entire skill will come together with all the parts being executed correctly.

When putting individual elements of a skill together you may or may not include a tag point. You may just ask the learner to attempt the full skill based on the parts of it that they have learned without tagging any part of it. If you notice that some aspect could use improvement, then create a tag point to address this. You may tag this one aspect while the learner is attempting the full skill, or you may take it back out of the skill for more practice on its own. Regardless of what approach you use to build skills, if you are going to use a tag point, you only ask for that one thing and do not comment on any other aspects that might not be quite right. Eventually after working on various individual tag points you will find that the full skill just comes together naturally.

Let’s watch the high jump video again, to see a good example of individually taught components coming together naturally to for a completed skill. This is a different version than the one you saw earlier. It shows some slightly different parts of the training and has different captions.

Notice the the coach tags if the tag point was met, even if other aspects are incorrect. If the tag point is met you must tag. You can change the tag point for the next trial if it didn’t work out the way you expected.

For example, this athlete keeps losing the “arch back” tag point, even though she seems to have got it mastered. The coach does not withhold the tag for “bent legs” because the athlete didn’t do both arch back and bent legs. The tag point only ever has one criterion, even if other parts seem to have been mastered and you think the the learner “should” be able to do them all at once.

If you want to put all the aspects of a skill together, you can ask the learner to give it a try, but the tag point would never be “do the high jump”. You can ask the learner to try to put it all together without any tag point. If they miss something, you can go back to working on that tag point. The tag point must have a yes or no answer. If you try to tag a complete skill and they don’t get it, they have no way of knowing which part was right and where the mistakes were. They will have to ask you and then you are back to telling them what they did wrong.

Here’s another example of putting it all together. This video also demonstrates the most important goal of TAGteach, that is for the behavior being taught to become reinforcing in it’s own right. The child in this video at first did not want to go in the water (not shown in the video). He was afraid to go off the steps. By the end he is swimming by himself and pushing the helper away. It took a bag of Skittles to reinforce each step, but once he gained confidence the swimming behavior became reinforcing on it’s own and we didn’t need the candy anymore.