Center Considerations - Error-Less Visuals and How to Use Them in Music Therapy Sessions
Lately, I have been thinking about things to keep me busy while supervising my interns. I always go into creative mode when I am stuck in my office, watching and listening but not engaging in what is going on in the music therapy sessions. So, my current thoughts about centers and my thoughts about things that I can do to keep myself busy are starting to merge together.
One of the things that I have noticed about visual aids and centers is that you have to teach people how to use them before they become effective. You cannot plop a client in the middle of all sorts of things and expect them to know how to interact with the materials without assistance. Now, there are some times when you want to see what people will do, but if you have specific goals for your clients, then you might have to intervene a bit to introduce the topic. For example, my sister has a center where her kids write their spelling words in various media. They have to know what to do when they get to that center. They need to know that they are practicing their spelling words. They need to know what to do once they get their spelling words to that part of the room. They need to know how to start and when they are finished. Most of those prompts and cues are explicitly taught to them at the start of center time. She has reminder prompts at each center as well - the exact number of lines to write all the rainbow words the number of times desired, pictures of completed projects, other things like that. So, the first step to any center is to focus on the goal while developing the center itself.
Once you have the idea for the task/skill development/center, then the task analysis starts. This is one of my favorite steps in any creative project. My logical brain enjoys thinking of the steps that have to happen in order to make anything come to fruition. How will a client engage in this particular center? What is the reason behind doing this center? What skills do the clients need to have before they can engage in the center itself? Oh, just thinking about task analyses makes my heart happy - not to mention making my brain tingle!!
So, what does this have to do with the title of this post? It's coming, I promise.
One of the steps to using file folder activities with clients is "the Error-Less Task." Basically, an error-less task with a file folder (or other tasks, for that matter) offers opportunities for all attempts at answering to be correct. There is no wrong way to do things. This is one of my mantras for many of the things that I introduce to my clients, so error-less tasks are the best for my philosophy of "try and see what happens."
Here's an example of an error-less task in music therapy.
The client selects a sequencing song file folder activity. Inside the file folder are a bunch of pictures that represent different parts of the song. The client's job is to arrange the pictures into any sort of sequence, and then the therapist and client sing that sequence together. In this case, the therapist might have to get away from the idea that there is a correct way to sing this song. For example, if the song selected is "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," the therapist might feel that the song has to start with the fly and end with the horse, but does it? It really doesn't. Once the client has placed all the cards on the file folder, the task is finished. There is a cause and effect link building for the client - "I put this picture next to this one, and my therapist and I sing what I chose." "If I switch these pictures, my therapist has to change what she sings."
Composition can also be an error-less task. Songwriting. Movement. Dance choreography. All of these things are (or can be) error-less therapeutic music experiences in the music therapy session.
Now, there are times when goals are to demonstrate comprehension or to complete directives - these are not the times for error-less tasks. Everything has to be oriented around and through the goal of the client. If you start with error-less trials first, the client may be able to understand what you are doing when you move towards requiring right answers.
One of the things that I always have to remind myself is that every little thing that I ask my clients to do has to be relevant to their personal goals. It is easy to get into a habit of wanting to make everything that I can get for free from Teachers Pay Teachers, but if it is not relevant to what my clients need, then why waste my time and energy?
One of the best challenges for me is to develop resources that can be used for many goals and many different skill levels. A sequencing song folder (like one for the song mentioned above) can be used for error-less trials as well as for work on sequencing, receptive language, expressive language, movement, symbol recognition, and all sorts of other goals. Using the same picture cards for all of these TMEs might require a different presentation mode, but those are easy to make. In fact, I am starting to design some templates to use for just this type of visual aid design. Ooh! A tool that I might be able to design to help music therapists expand what they can do with their visual aid resources!! I like it! I can make some templates and add them to my exhibition for March. Oooh!! This exhilarates me. Time to start playing around with templates...
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