Ep. 65: How to Teach Maintenance and Generalization of Skills in ABA and Special Education

If it’s not generalizing, it’s not functional. In this episode, we break down what true mastery looks like, how to plan for maintenance from the start, and practical ways to “teach loosely” so skills stick across people, places, and materials.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Redefine Mastery: Ditch “80% for 3 days” as the finish line—probe across time (weeks), people, places, and materials.
• Plan for M+G Early: Write IEP goals that embed generalization (different staff, tables, exemplars) and maintenance checks.
• Teach Loosely ≠ Teach Sloppily: Use multiple exemplars (sizes, fonts, colors), varied instructions, and rotate staff from day one.
• Schedule Maintenance: Build in review times (e.g., Friday maintenance, quick sweeps after work sessions) and intersperse mastered items.
• Use Natural Opportunities: Count lunch boxes, read names on cubbies—teach outside the data squares for real-life use.
• Team Communication Wins: Share what works across classroom, gym, lunch, recess; align prompts and exemplars.
• Match the Learner: Some learners need tight scaffolds; others generalize quickly—individualize criteria and pacing.

🧰 Strategies You Can Use Tomorrow

• Goal Writing Upgrades: “Match letters with different colored cards, at different tables, with different staff, across two weeks at 80%.”
• Exemplar Rule of 3: Teach each concept with ≥3 versions (e.g., tiger photos, clipart, figurine).
• Mastered Bin System: Keep a “M” bin of mastered targets to intermix with new learning.
• Quick Maintenance Routines: 3–5 min daily spot-checks; Friday review block.
• Motivate Naturally: Embed practice before preferred activities (recess, lunch) for built-in reinforcement.

📦 Resources & Links

• Related Episodes: Episode #16 Probe vs Trial-by-Trial data and Episode #5 DTT vs NET

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Transcript

Ep. 65: How to Teach Maintenance and Generalization of Skills in ABA and Special Education 

[00:00:00] Caitlin: And if it's not generalizing, it's not functional. So if I've taught them numbers and they're just acing all these numbers at their desk and nowhere else. What am I really doing? Am I saying to a parent, yeah, we taught numbers, but they can't use them anywhere? They can't help you out the store. 

[00:00:12] Intro: Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast. Join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Caitlin Beltran here to bring you evidence-based strategies with a student-centered focus. Let's get started.

[00:00:26] Caitlin: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast. Today we are gonna talk about two of my favorite topics, maintenance and generalization. Maintenance being that our skills that we're teaching are retained over time after our direct instruction and daily practice. And generalization being those skills are really showing across different people, places, materials, different contexts. So Audra, this popped into my head the other day because I was working our summer program, and a teacher who I love was saying how, oh, this child has done a really nice job this summer, matching letters. And she called him over to show and she was like, look, he's gonna match these letters. And he is like taking the cards and like putting them every which way except on the right letter. And she goes, oh, you know what? He only works at that table. And so she said, I don't think he really mastered matching letters yet. Right. And so it's kind of like funny, like a light bulb moment and this teacher was brand new to this classroom, everything. She did a phenomenal job, but it was led to like a great conversation about how we can expand upon that. So have you had that happen before where you've had learners master a skill but only under certain really specific conditions?

[00:01:35] Audra: Yeah, I think that was a kind of a downfall of ABA years ago, this rote memorization in a certain setting and forgetting that piece of it. Mm-hmm. And so we have many learners early on who exactly that, either could only do it in a certain setting or with certain people is a big one and and then maintaining once they master skill to making sure that it gets put away, but it gets used as part of their daily lives. Or if it's not something that they do all the time, is that you're checking on it later to make sure the skill is still there. You have to be systematic and you have to plan for that. You can't just assume that once they learn a skill that they've got it. There's so much more to it for our early supported learners.

[00:02:16] Caitlin: It led to a great conversation about, especially talking about IEP goals and defining them really specifically because she was asking great questions about does he need to match them like in the hallway and in a book and big and huge and little. I said, well, it's really all about how you're writing your goal. So if you're writing your goal, he can match letters in any context, then yes. But again, for some of our early learners maybe, I'm just not expecting that yet. So maybe I'm actually programming the goal would be huge for him if he could learn matching letters just with flashcards in the classroom with different people or something like that. So I always wanna teach loosely, which we're gonna talk about, but I can still scaffold that over time, and that could be a new objective for him. So first I think just redefining that idea of mastery because I think somewhere along the way that kind of cliche of 80% accuracy over three days, became the gold standard in ABA and I totally get where it's easy when you're glancing things over and it's all the same and it's something to remember that sticks out in your head. But really, we're gonna wanna see a little more than three days at any criteria to consider something mastered. So I know in my old program we would say maybe we would check that off as a first step toward mastery, but then we would start probing for generalization. We'd start probing in a few weeks time span without daily practice. If you've truly mastered a skill, it's like riding a bike. You don't need daily practice anymore. So, I know that sounds a little counterintuitive if you're first starting out in ABA. But again, I could for whatever reason, not ride my bike for two years. I probably haven't, but if I pull it outta my garage tomorrow, I still know how to ride it. I can still tell someone yeah, I know how to ride a bike.

[00:03:49] Audra: That's a really good example of a skill too that does that. It's like when you were learning to master riding a bike, there were little pieces that you had to learn, where to put your feet and how to pedal and how to hold and how to steer. It was a very systematic learning. Now, of course, they typically develop in 4-year-old, goes through those steps very quickly, but they do have to learn all those pieces and once all those pieces build and they build on top of each other, you don't have to go back once you're riding and make sure you can still put feet on the pedal, you know? 'Cause they all built on each other. Yeah. And so that's a really good skill for a mastery or a generalization where the skills built on each other. You didn't have to keep, go back and probe and practice all these building skills. Exactly. 'cause they all work together and so it, and that's different than a different skill where there are different pieces. You have to make sure all the pieces have been mastered and generalized individually too. So it's what kind of skill are you teaching and who is the learner that you're working with?

[00:04:43] Caitlin: And hopefully we're picking functional skills that are going to be somewhat naturally maintained too. So if you're teaching identification of their name. You put their name on their lunch bag and you put their name on their cubby. And so instead of saying go to a cubby, it's go to your cubby and you move that name card. So you're making sure they're looking at the name and not just their cubby. That's just one example. But especially in our early classrooms, we are teaching a lot of building block skills. So maybe I'm teaching one-to-one correspondence that's going to grow into a larger number scale. I'm no longer needing to practice the tiny skill of putting the feet on the pedal because if you can ride the bike, you don't need to practice putting your feet on the pedal every day. So just redefining that mastery and what that means.

[00:05:23] And I think that first tip I would offer is really just plan for that from the start. So if you do have a learner who, if we're doing daily practice, great, they're gonna get it by the end of Friday every week, but then some Monday be like a little rocky. I'm probably not gonna pick that 80% over three days as mastery criterion for that learner. I'm probably gonna say 80% across two weeks or across 10 consecutive sessions or something like that, because I know this is a learner who has a tendency to go like this. They're consistently inconsistent. So just remembering that you can individualize all of your goals, including that maintenance and generalization clause in your goals. So you're like being really reflective. And same thing with generalization. If you have a learner who they transfer skills really easily, they're gonna generalize it really easily versus a learner who, I know I have to be really systematic and I can't say they have mastered this skill without practicing in all different contexts. I'm gonna program that from the start and write, so and so will match letters with different colored cards on different tables with different staff, so that from the beginning I'm teaching with all of those supplies.

[00:06:28] Audra: You can even think of like the skills that you do need to probe the little, like if you're identifying animals or something, those are things you need to make sure you're getting that maintenance in. And so if you build it into your goal that they're mastering four out of five or 80%, whatever, but then the mastery is of at least 30 animals or something like that. Yeah. And so you're making sure that you're thinking about the big picture. It's like, yeah, I want them to master 80%, but of how many and how are you gonna build that in? So they're only gonna work on three animals at a time. So once they master those three and they move on to the next three, don't forget about the first three. Build those into the practice of the new three, or whatever it is that you're doing. Mm-hmm. So you're building it in from the very beginning.

[00:07:08] Caitlin: Absolutely all good things to talk about and program for from the beginning. And that kind of leads me into my next tip, which is to really teach loosely. And I know that sounds, in the beginning when I first heard that, I was like, oh, it's like the free for all teaching. No, that's not what it means. I think that old school ABA, we taught with this one particular set of flashcards and then at the very end we made a brand new set of flashcards and we thought, can they generalize? Then somewhere along the way we realized that really wasn't going so well. So now what we're trying to do is vary from the beginning. I really don't wanna ever get stuck on one picture of a tiger is how they learn. Tiger. I wanna have like maybe at least three exemplars for tiger, for potato, for milk. Or something like that. I'm varying the context from the beginning. If just using the animals example, yes, in my one-to-one session, I'm practicing all these animals, but then maybe later on, like last week we talked about running groups and we're reading a story, i'm gonna pull out some of those animals, oh, what kind of animal could go there? And can they name the animal at the small group table in front of their friends with a little figure instead of in a book, check. That's the generalization, and I'm teaching loosely. Also just varying our instructions, and I think this comes along with making sure we're rotating staff. And so I know sometimes in our classrooms we get pushback about why do we all have to work with all the different kids? Like I know his materials really well, or I know their data sheets really well. This is the whole thing. If I know them really well, they know we really well, and we can almost finish each other's sentences. Whereas if I pull a substitute in the room and they ask it slightly differently and they say, what is this? Instead of tell me the animal, and the student just stares at you, then no, I really can't say they've mastered that.

[00:08:46] Audra: We used to use the term teaching outside the data squares and so you take your data and stuff, that doesn't mean you're done. You can continue to practice a skill in different settings and different presentations and you don't, and you don't have to take data on every little piece that you're doing either. It's just this is the skill and we might have to take a little data to see where they are, but then work on that skill in all sorts of different ways because the more you think about it, this is what you know our life is, is like we have skills that we use all the time everywhere. And so it's not just Yep, check. Check. We took the data, we took our three data spots. Exactly. And that's it.

[00:09:21] Caitlin: And that kind of brings me into my next point, which is really like scheduling some of that review of old skills. So scheduling in whether it's like Fridays we do maintenance, or after the morning work session, just do a quick sweep through their maintenance. I think this was something I struggled with at first because I did wanna make sure I was choosing skills that were naturally maintained. So some things, again, if you're teaching a learner to count to five. Then their next goal after achieving that is count to 10. Yes, they're practicing one through five every day as they count to 10, but if you've taught them 10 animals and now you're moving on to 10 foods, them learning 10 foods is not like a natural progression after animals, so I have to make a point to myself to mix in those animals, or again, on Fridays if that's more helpful. Sometimes just to cue staff, adding it on like its own day or its own time of the day is really helpful to make sure like we're actually carving out time to make sure we're reviewing old concepts and making sure they students still know them.

[00:10:17] Audra: We had, everybody had their little data box and all the materials and stuff in it, and one of the sections in their box was stuff they've already mastered. So when you're going through a whole bunch of stimuli and stuff and you have pictures and they've mastered this set of, you know, 10 animals, whatever, it goes into that, and they're just randomly in there. So. If you're working, you have a little break time or something, or just within your new targets, pull out some of those mastered, they had a big M on the back so they knew it was a mastered, intersperse them with the stuff you're working on, or use it as a filler in the time that you have. So you're constantly bringing back some of the stuff that they have mastered to make sure just naturally it's being maintained.

[00:10:55] Caitlin: Like if we have new staff to the classroom, I'm always like, don't even worry about their current goals yet. As you're getting to know them, just use their mastered skills. It's good practice for them. It gets you paired with them a little bit. And that's my last tip is just like involving your whole team, making sure you're all doing things consistently. Have you found like a way to practice this skill outside the classroom this week? Or what have you seen? Like, I know the counting looks great here, but then he got to lunch and he was not counting those chips the same way. Are we using enough exemplars? And that really comes with just communication because a lot of the times the teacher is not always in the same classrooms like gym, lunch, recess, that maybe the paras are, or the speech therapist sees something outside the classroom that the paras don't see in the classroom. So really just making sure we're communicating about those things.

[00:11:39] Just some barrier that I've seen is again, that over reliance on overly structured environments, materials, settings SDS cues, and really forgetting to plan and teach loosely from the start. Especially when we think about generalization, like I remember that light bulb moment for me was like. We're not trying to teach this one really specific thing and then teach them to generalize it if we're teaching it loosely and teaching it the right way from the start. Generalization should be a natural byproduct of that. I shouldn't need to spend so much of my time at the end of this program teaching them to generalize if I've taught them numbers one through 10 with big numbers, little numbers, purple numbers, black numbers, numbers on the wall, numbers on the table at the end. They should know their numbers. They should know them wherever they are, even if it's a brand new environment with a brand new number.

[00:12:28] So just remembering, like making multiple exemplars of different things, swapping materials is a good way to do that with another classroom or the student across from them once in a while.

[00:12:38] Audra: Observational learning where you have two learners working together and one's working on a skill, but is the other one picking up those same skills because they're near each other? That's a great way to work on generalization too.

[00:12:48] Caitlin: Yeah. Sometimes just like going old school, like paper and pencil or whiteboard, like we can make all the pretty visuals. A whiteboard and a marker. Oh yeah. You shouldn't. Spin is like game changer because every para has a different writing. You can use a different color of marker. You're making that five huge, tiny, yep. So just remembering all those things and like looking for those quick wins, use your naturally occurring opportunities, your students are lining up for lunch, you're grabbing all the lunch boxes. Like, oh, Christopher, how many do I have? One, two. Yep, you're done. You got your teaching outside the data square point for the morning. Something like that, especially when they're moving into preferred things like lunch or gym or recess. So you're doing it right before and leading into some natural reinforcement.

[00:13:27] Just some final thoughts if we are seeing that that skill is not maintained outside of that daily practice teaching or outside of those specific structured environments, we really can't say it's mastered. Right? And if it's not generalizing, it's not functional. So if I've taught them numbers and they're just acing all these numbers at their desk and nowhere else. What am I really doing? Am I saying to a parent, yeah, we taught numbers, but they can't use them anywhere? They can't help you out the store. They can't count forks at home. So if that skill is not generalized and realizing it's really not functional, and yes, sometimes we're teaching building block skills, but making sure that we're always at the thinking of that final outcome from when we first start. That teaching loosely is not teaching sloppy. It's just teaching with multiple examples, multiple settings, multiple people, and planning that generalization outcome from the start. I'd love to hear what you guys think. Join the Facebook group if you're not already. Misfit Behaviorist podcast and drop a comment.

[00:14:24] Also in a topic for what you wanna hear about next. We're constantly uploading freebies, data sheets, different things like that. Otherwise, stay tuned and we'll see you next week. Bye.

[00:14:33] Intro: Thanks for listening to the misfit behaviorists, and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and tricks. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.