Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia (ACE) ®
For over thirty years the New England Center for Children has researched effective teaching procedures for children with autism. The curriculum protocols used in the classrooms are developed based on sound and systematic research conducted at NECC or elsewhere, and published in peer reviewed journals. This research to practice model facilitates the refinement of components of errorless teaching procedures, discrete trial training methods, task analysis, and incidental teaching models. The curriculum is designed using these procedures for a broad scope of skills and then translated into a computer program, the Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia.
- The Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia is a computerized database which holds assessments, curriculum, and data analysis tools for teaching children with autism.
- The ACE contains a Core Skills Assessment instrument which provides a protocol for the direct measurement of 48 critical skills in the curriculum. Students are evaluated yearly and those skills which are not mastered are targeted as teaching objectives. Lesson plans to address each of those skills can be found within the scope and sequence of curriculum on the ACE. The Core Skills Assessment is repeated yearly and student performance is tracked across years.
- The ACE contains over 900 lesson plans providing step-by-step instruction to assess and teach skills in the areas of communication, self-help, academics, social, leisure, physical fitness, community, and vocational skills.
- Lesson plans can be customized to each student’s learning style and are accompanied by a video clip demonstrating key features of the teaching procedures used.
- Data sheets and related materials such as pictures or worksheets are also included with every curriculum sheet.
- All documents, once modified for the individual, can be printed and brought to the classroom for teachers to use as they work with each student. This valuable teacher resource increases efficiency and decreases redundancy.
- The ACE contains record keeping features which enable teachers to enter individual student performance data on each lesson plan. These records can be viewed in a table or graph format providing supervisors the ability to quickly assess student progress and make program modifications if necessary.
- The ACE can aggregate data to generate reports across groups of students over time. These reports can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of any given curriculum across the program.
Learn more about our approach to academic instruction, communication, social, life, and vocational skills.
