Below is a general skill sequence for helping learners fill in “Its Bitsy Spider.”
This skill area represents one of the initial stages in intraverbal development, paving the way for the advancement of language and communication skills. It's particularly designed to complement common song fill-ins, making it an essential tool for learners to enhance their interactive capacities. This skill area fades the use of echoic-to-intraverbal transfers (see component skills for those). Instead, it highlights Itsy Bitsy Spider in its most basic form and implores the learner to engage in eight fill-in words across the song’s four lines. This opens the door for the learner to hopefully sing the song (and other songs) independently.
Treatment Plan Goal Ideas
This is a list of treatment plan goals. These are different from the goals you will find in the skill sequence below. Your treatment plan goals encompass any number of goals from the skill sequence. Sometime they will include multiple goals from the sequence (”Learner will label 5 toys”) and sometimes the treatment plan goal will be simply consist of a really important goal from the skill sequence (”Will label caregiver”). An analogy I like to use goes as follows: Each skill sequence goal (commonly known as a “target”) represent each stair in a flight of stairs. The treatment plan goal is the flight itself.
Treatment plan goal ideas for this particular skill area are as follows:
- When the therapist gives the first line of the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song with the ending word left out from that line, Learner will fill in the remaining word.
- When the therapist gives any line of the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song with the ending word left out from that line, Learner will fill in the remaining word.
- Learner will fill in at least 8 words from the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song when words are left out of the song.
Component Skills
Your learner may need to be fluent in these component skills first before introducing this goal/skill area. Component skills for this skill sequence may include skill areas that are fundamental to other areas. Fluency in the skill areas listed below may increase the likelihood that your learner will succeed in this skill sequence and those afterward.
Intro to Reinforcer/Preference Expansion
Imitates Actions with Preferred Items
Imitates Actions During Familiar Routines
Imitates Gross Motor Actions
Imitates Fine Motor Actions
Intro to Echoics
Filling In Common SongsIntro to Simple Patterns (Coming Soon!)
Skill Possibilities
Below is a possible skill sequence for working on increasing your learner’s ability to fill in Itsy Bitty Spider. Note that every learner is different and that you likely will need to tweak and vary some programming to their needs. Click the triangle icon to view the full description for each skill in the sequence/area.
Concurrent Skills
Working on these skills at the same time could help with goal mastery. Maybe your learner has mastered these skills already. Perhaps they are already listed as component skills above. That’s okay! Targeting other learning channels might help your learner.
Filling In Common Phrases 
2-Syllable EchoicsFilling In Common Songs
Filling in Familiar People 
Filling In Personal InformationComposite Skills
These are the possible next steps for learners who have mastered, or are mastering, the skills listed above. Note that new skill areas may require fluency in other component skills not listed above. Also, you can introduce composite skill sequences prematurely to keep your learner progressing, as generativity may occur earlier than expected.
Singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”Follow the link below to better understand component-composite analysis.
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