Welcome to another edition of Special Ed #RealTalk! Where special educators stop being polite, and start getting real.
Today’s topic is none other than that notorious P-word. You know the one I mean. It starts off innocently enough, with the best of intentions. One thing leads to another, and then, before you know it…
That’s right. Prompting. We all do it, and we don’t always know what to do about it.
According to the always-reliable folks at Merriam Webster, “prompt” is defined as: “1) to move to action; 2) to assist (one acting or reciting) by suggesting or saying the next words of something forgotten or imperfectly learned; 3) to serve as the inciting cause of.”
That’s a lot to take in, but it does (as one would assume) sum up the situation perfectly! Put simply, prompting is simply helping something to happen. It can take many forms, but at the end of the day, the goal is to get to a desired result more quickly.
But, the problem with prompts isn’t what they’re intended to do, it’s what they’re not intended to do. Prompt dependency is a clear and present danger in our field and something we have to plan for long in advance to ensure that it doesn’t come to pass. After all, if a student is less independent for having been in our care than they were at the beginning, we haven’t really succeeded in our mission, right?
At the risk of giving the big idea away, prompting on its’ own isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s an instructional strategy much like any other, where skillful use makes all the difference. What’s important, then, is how prompting is used. What is the team hoping to achieve? Why is it important for this individual to be doing this specific thing, right now?
Those are important questions, and here are some thoughts to consider:
1. What is the big picture plan?
If a student has no background knowledge now, how reasonable is it that they will become completely independent with a skill in the time allotted? Is there a different, more short-term goal that might be more appropriate? More to the point, what can the student do, independently, already? These are all things that teachers should consider as they design programs for students, and calculate what reasonable progress towards a big-picture goal might look like.
2. Is a prompt really needed here?
All too often, the issue on the table is that we are just impatient! There are other strategies in our toolbox, such as wait time, shaping, visual supports, and more, that may help to speed progress without adding prompts to the equation. It may just be that you need to be patient, give the student time to think and respond, and see what happens from there.
3. How will I fade this prompt once I use it?
If a prompt is truly needed, and it might well be, make a plan for how to fade it out! If the goal of an activity is, ultimately, independence for the learner, then make a plan for how that independence is (eventually) going to happen! What will that look like? What intermediate steps will be needed? These are certainly things we as educators can plan for, and things we should plan for! After all, prompts are just another instructional tool, but we do need to plan for the day when the tool isn’t useful anymore.
It’s important to differentiate between things that a student legitimately can’t do because he/she/they haven’t been taught and things that a student isn’t doing independently because, essentially, someone else is currently doing it for them. Having a plan for how to fade prompts will alleviate guilt we feel from introducing them in the first place, and lead to better outcomes for students as they pursue happy, independent lives.
What has your experience been with prompting? How have you successfully faded prompts? Weigh in in the comments!
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