Best Practices in Play Assessment and Intervention

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Best Practices in School Psychology V tiers by describing how play assessment and intervention can be used in early intervention services. Case 1 Ms. Austen, a mother of three young children, contacted Springfield Elementary School to find out more about child development and, more specifically, whether her children were on the appropriate developmental trajectory. Ms. Austen then met with the school psychologist who served Springfield Elementary. She stated that her main concern was whether she was providing the appropriate learning environment for her children to develop necessary skills and be ready for kindergarten. The school psychologist suggested that, by watching her children play, Ms. Austen could learn about how her children were functioning. She was asked to keep a record of the type of play that her children frequently engaged in as well as any newly emerging play activities. One month later, she returned to the school to share her observations with the school psychologist. The PIECES coding scheme was discussed with Ms. Austin and compared to her observations (see Table 3), at which time it was determined that the children were functioning within the normal range. This reassured her that she was providing appropriate activities. The session concluded with the school psychologist giving Ms. Austen a handout that listed developmentally appropriate activities that she could do at home with the children. Case 2 Ms. Jennings visited the pediatrician for her 3-yearold son Jeremy’s annual examination. During the appointment the pediatrician interviewed Ms. Jennings, who had concerns that her child might not be demonstrating age-appropriate cognitive skills. The pediatrician gave Ms. Jennings pamphlets on typical developmental milestones for 3-year-olds and referred her to the school district for screening. Ms. Jennings contacted the school, and the early childhood consultant went to the house to conduct a screening of Jeremy. This screening consisted of an observation of Jeremy during 30 minutes of free play followed by an interview with Ms. Jennings. The early childhood consultant determined that Jeremy’s pretend play was below the expected level and the consultant referred him to the early childhood school psychologist. The school psychologist conducted a more thorough play assessment of Jeremy in his preschool and then classified his behaviors using the PIECES coding scheme. In total, the play behaviors observed in the preschool were consistent with both how Ms. Jennings reported that Jeremy plays at home and what the early childhood practitioner reported seeing in the initial play assessment. In the exploratory/pretend play subdomain, Jeremy’s skills were predominantly at the level of simple single behavior pretend play acts. An example of this type of play was when Jeremy pretended to eat a cookie and then had his teacher pretend to eat the cookie. Active other-directed acts were emerging but less common, indicating skills at the 24-month level. Jeremy demonstrated this skill when he was playing with a toy dog and made it bark. In contrast, age-appropriate pretend play at Jeremy’s age should have involved short sequences of three pretend play acts such as making the dog bark, Table 3. Examples of Ms. Austen’s Descriptions of Her Children’s Play and Corresponding PIECES Codes Children Mother’s description PIECES subdomain and level Brady (4 months) Elliot (28 months) Lydia (51 months) . Plays with feet and chews on toes . Exploratory/pretend play: mouthing . Bats at toys . Exploratory/pretend play: simple manipulation . Grabs toys/anything and puts them in his mouth . Exploratory/pretend play: mouthing . Makes snakes with Play-Doh; slithers them around and says ‘‘sssss’’ . Exploratory/pretend play: active other-directed act . Counts to 14 . Quantification skills: counts to 5+ . Pretends to be a cat; crawls around and meows . Exploratory/pretend play: self-directed act . Puts on sunglasses, grabs a bag, and says, ‘‘Bye Mommy, I go work.’’ . Exploratory/pretend play: multischeme combination . Lines up toy cars by size . Categorization: sorts objects by size . Makes pretend cookies with Play-Doh; offers cookies to guests . Exploratory/pretend play: multischeme combination . Draws birthday cake, adds candles, sings birthday song . Exploratory/pretend play: multischeme combination . Plays doctor: gives shots, looks in throat and ears, gives medicine, listens to heartbeat, performs surgery . Exploratory/pretend play: event 556 Chapter 33, Volume 2
feeding the dog, and then petting the dog. Jeremy’s baseline for this type of pretend play was zero. The goal was that, after 6 weeks of intervention, Jeremy would demonstrate three-step nonfacilitated pretend play acts in a half-hour play session. With regard to the supplemental subdomains, Jeremy was observed to be functioning somewhat below the expected level on categorization skills. Specifically, Jeremy showed some deficiencies in sorting and nesting objects. The school psychologist followed up on this observation and found that prompting play with nesting cups and a nested puzzle did not improve Jeremy’s performance. The goal established based on assessment was that, after 6 weeks of intervention, Jeremy would spontaneously or with facilitation successfully nest a fiveitem series of nesting cups and complete a nested puzzle depicting common shapes (e.g., circle, square, and triangle). Jeremy’s performance on the other supplemental subdomains (problem-solving skills and planning, quantification, drawing, and seriation) was at ageappropriate levels indicating no need for intervention. Intervention for both target areas involved modeling and adding to Jeremy’s spontaneous play behaviors. For example, if Jeremy pretended to feed a toy dog a cookie, the interventionist would add to Jeremy’s behavior by modeling an additional play act, such as pretending to pour the dog some milk. In addition to modeling, direct teaching of sorting and nesting behaviors was also used to increase age-appropriate categorization behaviors. Both the preschool teacher and the mother were trained to implement the interventions. Training for the teacher and mother was conducted by the school psychologist in one 30-minute session. The school psychologist was in contact with the teacher and mother on a weekly basis to address concerns and monitor intervention integrity. To monitor progress the school psychologist observed Jeremy in a free-play situation once a week. At the end of 6 weeks of intervention the data were reviewed and it was determined that Jeremy had met the goal in the core subdomain of pretend play (see Figure 1) but not in the supplemental subdomain of categorization (see Table 4). Thus, in this case play assessment and intervention led to improvement in one of two target domains. While the goal was not met in the second subdomain, both the parent and teacher believed that Jeremy had shown improvement over the course of the intervention and chose to continue implementing the interventions. Because of the progress shown, it was determined that no referral for early childhood special education services was necessary. Figure 1. Case 2: Pretend play progress monitoring data. Number of Pretend Play Acts 4 3 2 1 0 Baseline Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Weeks SUMMARY Goal Line Trend Line The existing empirical literature indicates that there are numerous benefits to using play assessment and intervention with young children. Because the assessment is conducted in the natural environment of play, it is motivating and elicits the highest level of a child’s functioning. The process offers flexibility while remaining Table 4. Case 2: Categorization Progress Monitoring Data Week Spontaneous (S) or facilitated (F) play Play Assessment and Intervention Play behavior with nesting cups and shape puzzle 1 F Nested two cups F Placed circle in puzzle 2 F Nested three cups F Placed circle in puzzle 3 F Nested four cups S Placed circle in puzzle F Placed square in puzzle 4 F Nested five cups S Placed circle in puzzle F Placed square in puzzle 5 S Nested two cups S Placed circle and square in puzzle 6 S Nested three cups S Placed circle and square in puzzle Chapter 33, Volume 2 557
Page 1 and 2: 33 OVERVIEW Best Practices in Play
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Page 5 and 6: This lack of research motivated us
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Page 11 and 12: Linder, T. W. (1993b). Transdiscipl

Best Practices in Play Assessment and Intervention

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