This past semester, my low incidence disabilities class required that we carry out two instructional plans. One of the instructional plans had to focus on an academic skill and one had to focus on a functional skill. After one week of intense observation, I decided to choose Mark (psuedonym) for my academic plan and Angie (psuedonym) for my functional plan.

With Mark, I noticed that he knew most of his upper case letters, but was unsure of many of his lowercase letters. Thus, the instructional plan focused on helping Mark learn his lowercas letters. The baseline data collected showed that Mark knew around 50% of his lowercase letters. Using the cold probing technique of the verbal behavior program, I chose three new target letters for Mark to work on every day after we had reviewed the pile of letters that he was familiar with. I worked with Mark for a period of 23 days; he finally reached criterion on the last day of instruction. After realizing what he had accomplished, he jumped up in his chair and yelled "I did it!" Certainly, this will go down as being one of the most exciting days of my teaching career.

In addition to carrying out the academic plan, I also worked with Angie on her functional plan. When I initially observed Angie, I noticed that the muscles in her hands were very weak. Thus, she had a very difficult time using her fork to eat her food and it created a mess during lunch and breakfast. I decided that it would be best to create a three step task analysis that I could reinforce during lunch on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The task analysis was as follows: pick up fork with dominate hand, stab food with fork, place food in mouth. Every day, I would collect data for ten trials. A plus sign was placed next to the step if she completed it correctly, and a minus sign was placed next to the step if she did not complete it correctly. Although Angie did not reach criterion, she did become much better at grasping her fork, and I hope she continues to practice this skill in the future. 

At times, data collection was incredibly frustrating. Sometimes, the student was simply having a bad and thus I had to stop data collection completely. I now have much more appreciation for teachers who conduct research within the classroom while trying to carry out the normal classroom routine. Although it is hard work, I do believe data collection is necessary and is an important part of evidence based practice.