Event Abstract

Make Every Second Count! Using SAFMEDS to Promote Fluency in Learning

  • 1 Emirates College for Advanced Education, United Arab Emirates
  • 2 National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland

Introduction During Say-All-Fast-Minute-Every-Day-Shuffled (SAFMEDS), information to be learned is displayed on both sides of a stack of cards. For example, the neuroscientific definition, “Brain’s ability to change and adapt throughout life” could be written in blue on the front of one card, and the corresponding term “Neuroplasticity” could be written in black on the back. When using SAFMEDS, the student holds the entire deck of cards, starts the timer (typically for 1-minute), “sees” the front of the card silently and “says” the response out loud (Kelly, 2017). The student then turns the card over and checks the answer for immediate feedback and places the card into the “correct” or “not yet/incorrect” pile. Once the timer signals the end of the counting period, the student counts the number of responses in both piles of cards. Both correct and incorrect performance is charted for review and instructional changes are made. It is recommended that the Standard Celeration Chart (SCC) be used as it “has no equal in education” as a tool to effectively measure and assess behavior and make data-driven decisions (Kubina & Yurich, 2012, p. 4). The student then engages in various strategies for additional practice/instruction (before and/or after the charted timings). Teachers can tailor this procedure to suit the needs of their students. For example, a computerized version of SAFMEDS could be used (Fox & Ghezzi, 2003; Tucci Learning Solution, Inc., n.d.) SAFMEDS should be completed at least once every day and the deck of cards should be shuffled prior to beginning the timing to avoid serial learning (Meindl, Ivy, Miller, Neef & Williamson, 2013). SAFMEDS is a strategy that increases fluency, a measure of both the speed and accuracy of student responses (Binder, 1996: Johnson & Layng, 1992). Focusing on fluent performance is one of the foundation principles of precision teaching and should result in improved outcomes such as increased maintenance, endurance, stability, application and generativity (Johnson & Street, 2013; McTiernan, Holloway, Healy & Hogan, 2016; McTiernan, Holloway, Leonard & Healy, 2018). To reliably predict these five outcomes, students need to reach predetermined, empirically-tested performance standards (Fabrizio & Moors, 2003; Johnson et al., 2013). SAFMEDS has been employed to increase fluent performance with a variety of topics, in different settings with different individuals (e.g., Beverly, Hughes, & Hastings, 2009; Casey, McLaughlin, & Everson, 2003; Greene, McTiernan & Holloway, 2018; Hunter, Beverley, Parkinson, & Hughes, 2016; Kelly, 2012; Mannion & Griffin, 2018). The current research study was a replication of Stockwell and Eshleman (2010) with the aim of establishing a fluent verbal repertoire with academic terminology in an undergraduate student. Method The participant was a female student in an undergraduate course in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) in a university in Saudi Arabia. The participant spoke and wrote English fluently as a second-language learner. One 60-card set of SAFMEDS related to key ABA terms taken from the glossary of Cooper, Heron and Heward (2014) was used for this project, as well as a smart phone timer, a data sheet, and a Daily per Minute SCC. The dependent variables were the number of correct and incorrect responses the student emitted during a 1- minute timing. A correct response was defined as an occasion when the student said the term out loud as it was listed on the back of a SAFMEDS card. An incorrect response was defined as an occasion when the student did not respond or stated a response that did not closely match what was printed on the back of the card. The independent variable was the performance aim of 40 or more correct responses and 2 or fewer incorrects during a 1-minute timing (Stockwell et al., 2010). The participant conducted 1 to 3 SAFMEDS timings independently and charted daily progress by plotting frequency data on a SCC. Practice timings typically occurred in the student’s home or on the college campus in a quiet classroom. When multiple timings were conducted on the same date, the best timing with the highest number of corrects and lowest number of incorrects was charted (Stockwell et al., 2010). Results and Discussion The data showed a “jaws” behavior change picture learning picture on the SCC (Kubina et al. 2012), indicating an improvement in performance – an increase in corrects and a decrease in incorrects over time. The number of corrects achieved during timings ranged from 3-50 per minute and the number of incorrects ranged from 0-4 per minute. Data showed that the aim for this project (40 or more corrects and 2 or fewer incorrects in 1 minute) was achieved in 23 days. The student continued for 7 more days following reaching aim and reached a maximum of 50 corrects for the last 2 days of recording. The participant had zero incorrect responses from Day 6 until the end of the study. Conclusion Following the use of SAFMEDS across a period of 23 days for 1-3 minutes per day, the participant acquired a fluent repertoire on seeing an ABA definition and correcting labelling its corresponding term. SAFMEDS was an effective tool for this participant to acquire essential academic terminology.

References

Beverly, M., Hughes, J. C., & Hastings, R. P. (2009). What’s the probability of that? Using SAFMEDS to increase undergraduate success with statistical concepts. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 10, 183–195.

Binder, C. (1996). Behavioral fluency: Evolution of a new paradigm. The Behavior Analyst, 19, 163–197.

Casey, J., McLaughlin, T. F., & Everson, M. (2003). The effects of five minute practice, unlimited practice, with SAFMED cards on correct and error rate in math facts for two elementary school children with learning disabilities. International Journal of Special Education, 18, 66–72.

Cooper, J.O., Heron, T.E., & Heward, W.L. (2014). Applied behavior analyis (2nd ed.). Essex, Great Britain: Pearson Education Limited.

Fox, E.J., & Ghezzi, P.M. (2003). Effects of computer-based fluency training on concept formation. Journal of Behavioral Education, 12, 1-21.

Fabrizio, M.A., & Moors, A.L. (2003). Evaluating mastery: Measuring instructional outcomes for children with autism. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 4, 23-36.

Greene, I., McTiernan, A., & Holloway, J. (2018). Cross-age peer tutoring and fluency-based instruction to achieve fluency with mathematics computation skills: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Behavioral Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-018-9291-1

Hunter, S. H., Beverley, M., Parkinson, J., & Hughes, J. C. (2016). Increasing high school students’ maths skills with the use of SAFMEDS class-wide. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 17, 154–165.

Johnson, K., & Layng, T. J. (1992). Breaking the structuralist barrier: Literacy and numeracy with fluency. American Psychologist, 47 (11), 1475.

Johnson, K., & Street, E. M. (2013). Response to intervention and precision teaching. New York: The Guilford Press.

Kelly, M.P. (2012, May). Twin case study of precision teaching outcomes for language acquisition targets. Paper presented at the 38th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, Seattle, WA.

Kelly, M.P. (2017). Motivating all students in the inclusive classroom to actively respond: An overview of three practical strategies. In S. Abu-Rmaileh, A. Elsheikh, & S. Al Alami (Eds.), Motivation and Classroom Management: Theory, Practice, and Implications (pp. 37-48). United Arab Emirates: TESOL Arabia.

Kubina, R. M., & Yurich, K. K. L. (2012). The precision teaching book. Lemont, PA: Greatness Achieved Publishing Company.

Mannion, L. & Griffin, C. (2018). Precision teaching through Irish: Effects on isolated sight word reading fluency and contextualised reading fluency. Irish Educational Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2017.1421090

Meindl, J.N., Ivy, J. W., Miller, N., Neef, N.A., & Williamson, R.L. (2013). An examination of stimulus control in fluency-based strategies: SAFMEDS and generalization. Journal of Behavioral Education, 22, 229-252.

McTiernan, A., Holloway, J., Healy, O., & Hogan, M. (2016). A randomized controlled trial of the Morningside math facts curriculum on fluency, stability, endurance and application outcomes. Journal of Behavioral Education, 24, 1–20.

McTiernan, A., Holloway, J., Leonard, C. & Healy, O. (2018). Employing precision teaching, frequency-building, and the Morningside Math facts curriculum to increase fluency with addition and subtraction computation: A randomised-controlled trial. European Journal of Behavior Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1080/15021149.2018.1438338

Stockwell, F., & Eshleman, J. (2010). A case study using SAFMEDS to promote fluency with Skinner’s verbal behavior terms. Journal of Precision Teaching and Celeration, 26, 33-40.

Tucci Learning Solutions Inc. (n.d.). Fluency flashcards. Retrieved from http://fluencyflashcards.com

Keywords: SAFMEDS;, Precision Teaching, learning tool, fluency, Celeration, SCC, Saudi Arabia

Conference: 3rd International Conference on Educational Neuroscience, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 11 Mar - 12 Mar, 2018.

Presentation Type: Poster Presentation

Topic: Educational Neuroscience

Citation: Kelly MP and Murray CM (2018). Make Every Second Count! Using SAFMEDS to Promote Fluency in Learning. Conference Abstract: 3rd International Conference on Educational Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.225.00019

Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.

The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.

Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.

For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.

Received: 25 Feb 2018; Published Online: 14 Dec 2018.

* Correspondence: Dr. Michelle P Kelly, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, michellepatriciakelly@gmail.com