Teaching Discrete Skills to Students with Moderate Mental Retardation in Small-Group Instructional Arrangements

In this investigation we examined the effectiveness and efficiency of a system of least prompts procedure in teaching discrete behaviors in a small group instructional arrangement. We taught four primary-aged students in a self-contained public school classroom for students with moderate handicaps to read food words found on a national restaurant chain's menu. In addition, we assessed students’ acquisition of nontarget stimuli (i.e., the approximate cost and at what meal the food is normally consumed as found on the menu) following each instructional condition. The secondary nontarget stimuli were presented as prompts in the procedure's prompt hierarchy during instruction. We used a multiple probe design across word sets to assess the effectiveness of the system of least prompts procedure in a small-group instructional arrangement. The results indicated that (a) the system of least prompts procedure was effective in teaching food words to each of the four students in a small-group instructional arrangement and (b) each student acquired some of the secondary nontarget stimuli. We discuss the results relative to designing efficient small-group instructional arrangements while using effective instructional strategies.