4 Tips for Giving the VB-MAPP Assessment as a Special Educator

Giving an assessment like the VB-MAPP can be extremely overwhelming. If you've just purchased this or you've used it a little bit but you're trying to figure out how to tackle it for your whole class, stay tuned because I'm going to share 4 tips for giving the VB-MAPP assessment within a self-contained special ed classroom. I'm Sasha Long. I'm a board-certified behavior analyst and former special ed teacher, and I love sharing actionable strategies to do in a busy, crowded classroom where you can still get a lot done. So let's talk VB-MAPP. VB-MAPP, if you're new to it, is the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program. It's a mouthful. The first step, if you are brand new to the VB-MAPP, is to read it. I know that seems like obvious, but maybe it's not. I want you to go through and read this whole book. Again, it's not that intense. You don't have to like detail read every single level and all of that, But what I do want you to read really thoroughly are the guidelines. The first section of the book are instructions and guidelines for scoring. Thoroughly read this. They explain all the new terminology. They use words like mand and listener responding. You want to make sure you know what they mean. So thoroughly read the entire first section, and then I want you to skim the goal section, the levels, the transition, the barriers assessment. Read kind of skim that, but thoroughly read the first section and then go through your placement book and look at how this is set up as well and go through some of these goals. The more familiar, familiar you are with the scoring system and the different goals, the easier it is to get this. And honestly, the more times you do it, the less you have to review everything and you just get quicker. Okay, so that's step 1, thoroughly read the guidelines, skim the rest of the book. Step 2, now you're getting ready to give the assessment. You've got your students, you're figuring out your plan. I want you to put all of your assessment tools together. I like having it in a binder. I like having everything I'm going to need in one spot. You can go around your room and look at the different goals that are set up here and be like, okay, I've got a puzzle that I can work on this, I've got some, you know, picture flashcards, some items. Put it all in one bin, one basket, one binder. I set mine up all based on the skill that we're working on. So here's tact 11, and then I have the skills that we need to— the tools that we need to work on this skill right here. So when I'm sitting and assessing a student, I've got everything ready to go. It's written out: tact 12m is labels with prepositions and pronouns. And then I have the pictures right here of who is raising their hand, who is wearing glasses. So I've got the right types of pictures ready. I don't have to run around. I think that's one of the harder parts with the VB-MAPP is there's a lot of specific content that you need, But you can use a lot of stuff that's already set up in your class, but it's nice having all the protocols in one spot. Here, Listener 11 is selects by color and shape. We've got all kinds of different flashcards for color and shape. So you've noticed that I didn't laminate these. I just put these in page protectors. Super easy. I'm sitting with a student, I might take some extra paper and I might cover up and just show one flashcard at a time and say, hey, where's the rectangle chocolate? Which chocolate is a rectangle? Which pizza is the shape of a triangle? So I'm gonna cover up just one at a time, but this makes prep so much easier not having to laminate. So that was step 2, get everything in one spot. Step 3 is don't try to do it all at one time. Maybe you've got 8, 10 kids in your class, you're like, I'm gonna do the VB-MAPP with everyone. That's a great goal, that's gonna take you a lot of time, and that's okay. Just pace it out. You're not gonna go through the whole thing in one sitting because there's a lot of things that you need to observe. So So you want to pace out how you're going to do this. Schedule short blocks of time to work on the contrived testing and then to work on the observation testing. So within the protocol, for each thing that you're assessing, it will say if it's a tested skill or an observed skill. So a tested skill, you'll sit at the table with these kind of flashcards. An observed skill, you're going to watch them. So I've gone through and pulled every observed skill and put it on one sheet so I don't have to go back and reference the book all the time. So here I have for level 1 is my list of things that I want to observe. Do they spontaneously label items? I can have this out with me during the day, and when they do spontaneously label an item, like, you know, when the gym teacher walks by and they're like, "Mr. Thomas," I'm like, "Okay, they spontaneously labeled." Can they visually track an item? Can they visually attend to a toy or a book? I've got that right there ready to go, and I can have it with me. If you have this with you during the day, you're gonna be able to get through a lot of this because you're seeing all of these things. These are all school behaviors. Right? Labeling items, requesting items, visually attending, using a certain type of grasp with a pencil— all of these are things we're gonna see readily. So I have it out for one student at a time. I'm not trying to multitask too much, and I've got it all right here so I can get those observed skills down, and then I will put it in my testing book later. So break it up, have the observed skills, have the tested skills. That's step number 3. Last tip for doing the VB-MAPP: Use the information you gather. The great thing of a VB-MAPP is you have so much information about what skills they have and what skills they still need to work on. You're gonna get this really great scoring form that's gonna really visually show you where the student's at. Maybe they have a lot colored in here and about half colored in here. That's gonna tell you they're in this level 2 area of skills. Anything that's not colored, you're gonna know they still still have to work on it. Make a plan then for working on those missing pieces. So let's say they still needed to work on, um, skill 8 in listener responding with feature function in class. Here I've got the flashcards all ready to go. I'm going to start working on this throughout my day in a contrived way with flashcards and in a real-world way during play and during different activities that were outside. So this skill right here is selects item from an array of 10 with who, what, which, or who questions with a verb and a noun. So which one cleans? Which one can hop? Which one dries? So all kinds of setups right here ready to go, but we can also do this same idea in play outside, right? If we're at the playground and you're like, hmm, which one can you go down? They're gonna run over to the slide. Like, which one, um, is purple? Which one can we swing on? That's gonna touch on another skill. We're gonna be able to do this in different areas of our day plus get this really nice direct instruction with the flashcard. All right, so those are my 4 tips for giving the VB-MAPP. I love an assessment tool like this because it's going to gather information about what our student already knows as well as telling us what to do next, and that's the info we really need. We need to know where to go with this student. Follow The Autism Helper for more tips and strategies for your special ed classroom.