Martha: Does anyone have any questions or comments?

Theresa McKeon: While we are waiting for comments to come in I’d just like to say that I thought it was fascinating how the child was so in tune with what the tag was that he was actually playing around with his Mom. He looked up and said “tag me” and she said “OK” and he said “ha, ha, I wasn’t there yet”. This is not a bad thing. What this shows is the the child knows unequivocally what he is supposed to do and that is what we want.

Comments from participants:

Joan: (reading from chat) The teacher is using the clicker, not a lot of words.

Joan: This is a great observation and you’ll see that in pretty much all our TAGteach videos the teacher is very quiet.

Theresa McKeon: And the fact that at the beginning of that, the student was marking (tagging) Keri first. Max was tagging Keri first, which is brilliant.

Joan: The other thing I thought was really great about this, was the focus. There was intense focus from both the teacher and the learner. She was giving 100% attention to Max. Even when she had her daughter on her lap she was giving all her attention to Max. Kids definitely appreciate it when you give them all your attention. TAGteach is a great way to force the teacher to give full attention to the learner.

Theresa McKeon: Can I answer the one from Shubata regarding the xylophone video?  Question: How will I make sure the child hears the tag when teaching a musical instrument? Answer: You probably wouldn’t make a tag point that is the sound. It would come  beforehand, something to do with the strike or the position or how the fingers are placed. The purpose of that video exercise was to give you the opportunity to observe behavior and the time in between. Now they have just hit the toy and now they are not. Martha has done a marvelous job with her child in capturing that brief moment in a scream where the child has to take a breath. It is an interesting thing to start to really watch behavior. Even when they are going bang, bang, bang, in between the bangs there is a moment of silence, a moment of bringing the stick up. I would love for everyone to start to see those micro pieces of behavior, because when you are shaping students, especially those without language, this skill can be very important.