How to Use Errorless Learning in a Special Ed Classroom

Errorless teaching is an instructional strategy where we ensure students get the correct answer. This is a really valuable and beneficial teaching strategy for our early learners to get that buy-in and build up responding. I'm Sasha Long. I'm a former special education teacher and board-certified behavior analyst, and I'm gonna break down not only what errorless learning is, why we'd want to use it, but also some actionable ways that you can utilize errorless learning in your classroom or home. So within errorless teaching, the the prompt is given right away for that correct answer. The idea behind this is that the student is going to fall into a pattern or routine of answering correctly and receiving reinforcement. Reinforcement is anything that comes after a behavior that increases the chance of that behavior happening again and again. So we want our kids to contact reinforcement because we want them to continue to do that behavior, whether it's responding correctly to a question or completing a task. With errorless learning, we ensure that our kids are getting correct responses versus if they don't know how to do the activity yet, they might not be contacting that much reinforcement. Then with errorless learning, we start pulling back. We start giving less and less support so they can start responding correctly. Now you might be wondering, okay, why are we really doing this? What types of kids need this? This is great for early learners. This is great for students that need to build these skills. This is great to get buy-in. This is great for kids that have a lot of work refusal or work avoidance because they're gonna be getting lots of reinforcement reinforcement. Now let's see what this looks like in action. Two ways that I love setting up errorless tasks is within Task Boxes or within workbooks. Both of these fit in so well in a classroom. If you have an independent work system, you can load your errorless tasks right in there, and your students that are still maybe struggling with matching or discrimination skills can still participate. And workbooks are great for morning work, independent work, guided practice. So let's see what both of these types of errorless tasks look like. All right, so two ways you can use errorless learning in your classroom or home is one, by utilizing a prompt fading strategy. Sounds technical, it's not. I'm gonna show you how to do it in a second. Or by setting up the activity in a way that's an errorless task. I'll show that too. First, let's talk about how to use prompting. So prompts is anytime we give help, right? So let's say we're working on letter identification and I've got four flashcards set out for my student and we're gonna be working on identifying letters. I'm gonna say, where's M? "Touch S." "Where's O?" And the student should be pointing at the answer. So when I use errorless learning, how this is gonna look is I'm gonna say, "Touch M," and then I'm gonna point to M right away. So I'm gonna give them the right answer, and what I want them to do is point to M as well. They're gonna copy me. I'm using some modeling here, right? I'm pointing to the right answer. When they point to M, I'm gonna say, "Good job! Yay, you did it! Awesome, this is M." Now, "Touch S," and I'm gonna point to S right away, and they're gonna point to S. So again, I'm giving them the correct answer, but I'm also giving praise or reinforcement every time they copy me. Now after we do this for a little bit, maybe a few teaching sessions, maybe a few trials depending on the learner, then I'm gonna wait. Time delay is just a fancy way of saying waiting. So I'm gonna say, "Where's E?" and I'm not gonna point right away. I'm gonna give them the chance to respond correctly. Now because we've been using this errorless learning where I'm giving that correct answer, which is me teaching that correct answer, giving that reinforcement, they're gonna be now more likely to touch E on their own because they've had all of that practice of me saying, "Where's E?" and pointing. Now they know, they remember, "Hey, when she says E, I know to point to this one." So that's the idea behind errorless learning. It's really gonna teach that correct answer. We could do this the same way if we were just working on expressive letters. I would say, "Hey, what's this?" "E." I would say that, I would give the right answer right away. I would say, "What's this?" "E." and they would reply, "E." Go to the next one, "S," and they would repeat "S." I'd go to the next one, "M," and they would repeat "M." So same idea, I would do this for a few days, a few sessions, and then I would go, "Hey, what's this?" And I would wait, 1, 2, 3. They don't respond by 3 seconds, and I'm gonna give them the right answer, right? And again, giving that praise. So same thing if you were, let's say, working on counting. I've got a few flashcards here. Let's say we were working on matching numbers to quantity. So I'm gonna give them 3 numbers here and 3 different quantities, I'm gonna say, "How many's here? Let's count." Maybe we'd count together and say, "Where's that number?" And then right away point to the number 9. So they're the ones gonna match it, but I'm gonna point to that right answer. So we're giving that answer right away, teaching that, and then pulling back. The errorless work task, there is no option for the student to get it wrong. Here we are loading each lunchbox with a snack. So we can put any snack in any lunchbox. So I'm gonna grab the lunchbox, grab a snack, match it. What I love about errorless work tasks is this is going to build independence, this is going to work on fine motor skills. These could be great tools to work on vocabulary. You could practice naming the items if you wanted, or if you're keeping it as an independent activity, it's going to work on task initiation and so many great skills. So let's look at a few other examples of what errorless work tasks could work— look like. This one is really great. This one's matching circles, so a nice way to work on shapes. But we're not having to discriminate because all the options we have are circles. So I'm gonna grab the card, match the circle, grab the card, match the circle. Again, we can't get it wrong, but this is going to reinforce the idea of what a circle is. Same idea here with the sight word yellow. So we have a bunch of task cards that have different yellow items, and I'm gonna match the word, but again, it's all the same. So I'm gonna match yellow for each, Now when we fade this out, we could add in cards that are yellow and red, and we'd have to discriminate between those two words. But right now it's errorless. Within errorless workbooks, the same idea— there's no opportunity to get the wrong answer. Here we're putting butterflies in the net— nest— in the net, but there are no other animals besides butterflies, and the only spot you can put it is within that net. Here we are matching toucans, but it's not an identical match, it's just, just an outline. So we're just matching. There's no wrong answer. Great to build that independence, fine motor skills. What's fun is you can have these themed on any theme. This is an animal one. Here we have a life skills one. We're loading groceries on the shelves. This could be an independent activity, but this would also be a really great structured language activity where we're talking about the items we put on the shelves. We could talk about what the function of them is. We could talk about the color they are. So great for all types of learners that are building foundational skills. All right, that is errorless teaching. I hope you have thought of some ideas for how to use this in your home or school. Make sure to click subscribe on our channel for more ideas for your classroom.