NOTE: The Responsive Teaching Curriculum Guide which had been sold through this website was recently published by PRO-ED under the title: Autism and Developmental Delays in Young Children: The Responsive Teaching Curriculum for Parents and Professionals.

Responsive Teaching is a child development curriculum for children with autism and other disabilities which is designed to be implemented by parents during routine interactions with children in their natural environments. This curriculum can be used either by parents themselves or by professionals who work with parents and children. Research has shown that Responsive Teaching is highly effective at addressing the cognitive, communication and social emotional needs of children from birth through five years of age. This curriculum is structured so that it can easily be adapted for use in a variety of child development programs including early intervention, preschool special education, speech and language services and early childhood mental health. Responsive Teaching evolved from contemporary child development research and theory including constructivism, communication theories of language development and Attachment Theory.

The Responsive Teaching curriculum includes fully defined intervention objectives, instructional strategies and evaluation procedures that can be used to promote children’s development in the context of their interactions with parents and other adults. The authors have provided all the information that is necessary for implementing this curriculum. They:

1. Provide a detailed description of Responsive Teaching strategies that research shows are effective at enhancing children’s development
2. Identify and describe numerous Discussion Points that interventionists can use to help parents understand how these strategies impact children’s development
3. Provide a planning and tracking form/ program that prescribes a menu of Responsive Training Strategies and Discussion Points that can be used to address children’s developmental needs
4. Describe procedures for planning intervention sessions and evaluating children’s progress
5. Present a format for conducting intervention sessions

This curriculum is organized into four sections.

• Section I — Introduction
• Section II — Theoretical and Research Foundations
• Section III — Implementing Responsive Teaching
• Section IV — Curriculum Materials

Section I and III are dedicated to professionals and parents, while Section II is for the advanced practitioner who would like in-depth information about the rationale and research base for this program. Section IV gives an overview of the necessary steps for planning and implementing Responsive Teaching.

Click here to order this book directly from PRO-ED.

The Responsive Teaching Planning and Tracking Computer Program is designed to assist professionals or parents in planning and tracking the content provided in each Responsive Teaching intervention session. This program, which is compatible with personal computers that run Microsoft Windows 2000 or more recent versions of Windows, includes all the information that is needed to plan, record and print intervention session plans in a matter of a few minutes. Once a file has been set up for a child, intervention plans can be can developed by using drop down menus to select the child development goals, intervention objectives, RT Strategies and Discussion Points that will be used in a session. The Pivotal Behavior Wizard is also built into this program to assist professionals in selecting intervention objectives that are individualized to the unique developmental needs of a child. The program then automatically develops intervention session plans and evaluation forms for both professionals and parents which can be printed when needed.

This program also has a number of tracking and report features that make this an essential tool for parents and professionals who have limited time to devote to administration and report writing. This includes a post- intervention comment page which can be used to record intervention notes, the amount of time a session lasted, and ratings of the child’s progress on intervention objectives. It also includes several reports that are generated automatically, including the (1) Planning and Tracking Form which records the content for each intervention session, (20 a Child Development report which depicts the child’s progress during the program, (3) an Intervention Activity Log that records the number sessions and total amount of intervention time for each child on a case load during a previous time period, and (4) a Client List that includes addresses and contact information for all active clients.

There are two versions of the Responsive Teaching Planning and Tracking Program that can be ordered directly from PRO-ED.:

• The individual user version is designed for individual parents or professionals and includes all of the features described above.
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• The multi-user version can be used by as many as 10 professionals on a computer network. This version is ideally suited for multi-disciplinary programs. It allows all professionals who are working with a child to share intervention information. The administrative features on the network version also allow program supervisors to generate periodic intervention activity logs and client lists for all providers on the network.
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The Developmental Rainbow is an invaluable complement to the Responsive Teaching curriculum for both parents and professionals. It provides a comprehensive, detailed list of children’s developmental skills and behaviors from birth through five years of age. Items included in this profile were compiled and adapted from several developmental assessment instruments and preschool curricula and are organized into Developmental Age Ranges. They describe children's behavior across five domains including: cognition, language, social-emotional functioning, motor development and self help skills. Each of the developmental domains is further subdivided into general categories of behavior that reflect the major developmental accomplishments emphasized during early childhood. The Developmental Rainbow is spiral bound and each Developmental Domains is Tabbed and Color Coded so that it can be conveniently used in practice.

This observation tool is designed to be used by early childhood professionals to:

• Monitor children’s development across developmental domains
• Helps parents to understand that the behaviors their children are currently manifesting are developmentally meaningful
• Helps to normalize children’s behavior as typical behavior for a child’s current level of developmental functioning
• Identify behaviors that are at the child’s current developmental level
• Identify behaviors that are beyond children’s current level of development and are extremely difficult to learn
• Project reasonable long term developmental objectives or outcomes based upon the child’s current level of functioning
• Estimate children’s developmental age from form observations of the child playing, socializing, and communicating
• Monitor children’s progress in developmental intervention programs

To order the Developmental Rainbow, make a check out to Responsive Teaching for the amount of $25.00 for each book. International orders should add $3.00 for postage for each manual ordered. Mail this check to:

For information regarding Purchase Orders please contact Tammie at (216) 368-1707.

A series of six training tapes teaches five well established components of responsive interactive behavior that are the predecessors of the Responsive Teaching strategies. Balance (reciprocity), learning to give and take; Responsiveness, following the child's interests, Sharing control, allowing both partners to participate, Emotional playfulness (Affect), ensuring that interactions are enjoyable, and Match, communicating in ways the child can do;. Viewers will see examples of these five components of responsive interaction learn to use a scale to measure and guide their communicative styles (6 training sessions, 20-25 minutes each).

This video can now be ordered directly from Dr. James MacDonald. Order video