What will you learn from this product?

• Time unboxed is a teaching strategy that teaches students with autism how to understand what a typical person means when they say “what did you do today, yesterday, last month, etc.?”
• This strategy gives people with autism a way to understand concretely what a concept like “time” means. This gives their loved ones a chance to connect with them, know what they did during their day and give them some more power with what they choose to do in the future during the concept “time.”
• Time unboxed is a tool meant to be used by parents and professionals in their work with children and adults with autism.
• The goal of the strategy is to teach those individuals to step out of the rote I went to school I ate lunch, I had speech” and really remember and communicate their day and things that happen in their lives.
• This includes the hope for generalization quickly if you stick to this process for a few weeks.
• Students with autism rarely respond uniquely or meaningfully when asked what they have done and this will give them a chance to connect the meaning of what we say when we ask them about it.
• This strategy connects parents with their children and family members to the members with autism and gives them a glimpse into their lives.

Time unboxed was created for students who I call “memorizers.” These students are the ones who have the ability to memorize multiple stimuli in a session. Their speech is limited to repeating what they have heard in a memorized rote way. These students do not understand what we are asking when we say “what did you to “today.” This strategy gives them a way to locate the answer in their memory, and relate it directly to what they are being asked. Pre-requisite skills.

For an individual to benefit from time unboxed they need to be able to do the following:

• Read simple words, or learn them quickly.
• Memorize the words easily (able to repeat them after completing a different skill/activity).
• Answer the question “what did you do?” Immediately after completing a task. (you can help form their language here if they have trouble conjugating, but it would be beneficial to work on the exercise below with conjugating verbs while working on this skill).