Processing time

This practical activity and video reflection invites participants to think about processing time, and how important it is to give learners the time they need. This activity is designed to get participants thinking about the individuality of learners, and how we can:

• adapt our approach to allow different learners different amounts of processing time
• control our own impulse to ‘fill a silence’ to allow learners the time to formulate their own responses
• build a learner’s independence by giving them time to express their own opinions or wishes.

Guidance

Introduce the concept of processing time by watching  this video by autistic youtuber Pooky Knightsmith that provides useful insight into her experience.

Hand out the list of instructions and tell participants not to turn over and start until they are told. Tell everybody they will only have 2 minutes to complete as many instructions on the page as possible, give a countdown and let people begin.

Let participants mark their own work and see who got furthest. Questions 2 and 11 should only be marked correct if they weren’t done (as instructed in questions 5 and 15). These are particularly important to highlight, as given adequate processing time for the instructions they would have been easier to spot.

You could conclude this activity by highlighting the processing time needed for different learners in your setting. People often under-estimate the amount of time which has passed between their asking a question and an answer being given. This leads to staff stepping in to answer the question for the learner, before a learner has had sufficient time to answer it themselves. You could demonstrate this by posing a question and asking participants to wait at least 10 seconds before putting up their hand. Participants should not have access to a timer. Reflect on how accurate their guess of 10 seconds was and how comfortable they felt waiting that long.

Key learning points for debriefing

• Support strategies that work with one learner may be counterproductive or unhelpful for another. The amount of processing time learners need varies from individual to individual and it shouldn’t be assumed that all learners need the same fixed time to understand requests.
• Being familiar with personalised documentation and knowing learners well is key to providing effective learner support and avoiding triggers.
• Different learners will have different communication needs. For example, LSAs may need to avoid using conceptual language for some learners who hear and interpret information very literally, e.g. “we are going swimming on the bus”.
  It is important to understand how your own verbal (your voice and how you use it) and non-verbal (e.g. body language) affects individual learners and their receptiveness to learning.
• Understanding individual sensory needs and preferences will support receptiveness to learning, engagement and motivation.

You can also draw on the topic learning points in your summing up.