Prevention of absenteeism and school failure in students with ASD: Improving the transition from primary to secondary school

Teaching strategies with students with ASD has its own basis in the education principle of learning from success. For this, we need to use behaviour modification techniques such as those explained below:

• Backward chaining: consisting of segmenting learning into small steps to give support in all of them and gradually withdrawing it from the last step to the first, provided that the previous one is successful.
• Token economy: a desirable behaviour that is intended to be achieved is established and in which the child can have control on his own or with the support that we plan to achieve it and reinforces are proposed (stickers, stickers ...) that accumulates or exchanges to achieve a previously established reward. You can set three goals, two that are very easy to achieve and will act as reinforces, or just one. In any case, it is important that the child participates in the construction to see it attractive. You can work together with the whole class. It is also known as the point system.
• Reinforcements: any stimulus that increases the probability that a behaviour will be repeated in the future.
• Extinction: it is based on the principle of reinforcement. Any behaviour that is followed from a reinforce will tend to recur, any behaviour after which the reinforces disappear will tend to disappear.
• Success from learning: promoting that learning is carried out based on the student's knowledge and sequencing the task in small steps so that they acquire the skills to solve it successfully.
• Strength focus: skills, interests and needs as a vehicle of learning
•  Individualised assessments: each student has its own needs and supports
•  Visual aids: organise the environment and tasks with clarity, colours or pictures 
•  Being broad-based, i.e. support people at their natural contexts
• Structuring:
• Physical spaces (classroom layout, control of sensory stimuli, space-temporal markers, visual aids, specific areas for relaxation, notice boards, traveling agendas in which social information is provided ...).
• Agenda and organization of school materials, notes, notifications: monitoring of academic agenda with support through support circles, or teachers.
• Organization of the distribution of students and tasks in group work.
• Highly unstructured spaces and moments (class changes, entrances and exits, breaks, ac-novel activities ...).
• Support in the sequential structuring of learning (following sequential teaching strategies: step by step) and establishing reinforcements for the achievement of the task.
• Sequenced support in the learning of physical skills, evaluating the motor, vestibular and executive capacity of the student.
• Anticipation and objective explanation of changes (absence of a teacher, surprise exams, introduction or exclusion of subjects, new learning formats, room changes ...).
• Curriculum accessibility:

• Adaptation of exams (specific questions, avoid double negation, previous training in the model).
• Time extension.
• Distribution of space and time with visual aids.
• Facilitation of notes.
• Course splitting.
• Visual aids (e.g., signalling when to turn the sheet because the exam continues with an arrow, use of coloured cards that indicate the time remaining for the student).
• Explicit training in self-instructions.
• Coordination with the environment through digital platforms, meetings, agendas.
• Enhancement of personal development in the area of ​​physical education vs competitive models.
• Support for the differentiation and delimitation of relevant aspects of the subjects.