Ep. 72: Center-Based Learning in the ABA Classroom - Practical Tips for Staffing, Data, and Differentiation

Center-based learning can feel overwhelming in ABA and self-contained classrooms—especially when staffing is tight, learner needs vary widely, and data collection feels nonstop. In this episode, Caitlin and Audra break down how to actually run centers in an ABA classroom without burning out your staff or your students. From staffing rotations to flexible grouping, this conversation focuses on practical, realistic ways to make center-based learning work in real classrooms.

🔑 Key Takeaways
• Centers ≠ small group instruction 📍—they serve different purposes and need different planning.
• Not every learner needs intensive teaching at the same time—shrinking DTT groups reduces pressure and chaos.
• Plan staff and student rotations intentionally 🔄—rotate people, not just activities, to prevent burnout.
• Structured play is work for many learners 🎲—design play centers with intention and support.
• Start small 🧩—introduce centers in short bursts before increasing expectations or duration.
• It’s okay to pause data collection 📊—focus on routines and transitions first when rolling out centers.

📦 Resources Mentioned
• Related Episodes:
Ep. 9 Superhero Skills to Battle Burnout → https://abainschool.com/ep9
Misfit Minute 17 How to Make Transitions Easier for Students with Autism → https://abainschool.com/mm17
• Misfit Behaviorists Facebook Group → https://abainschool.com/misfits
• The Misfit Behaviorists Podcast → https://abainschool.com
• School-Based BCBA & Teacher Resources → https://abainschool.com or https://beltransbehaviorbasics.com/

🙌 Join Us & Share
• How do you structure centers in your ABA or self-contained classroom?
• What’s worked—or totally flopped—for your team?
• Share your ideas in the Misfit Behaviorists Facebook Group → https://abainschool.com/misfits

• Know a teacher or BCBA struggling with centers? Send them this episode 💙

Join the Facebook group for collaboration and freebies: The Misfit Behaviorists

😍 More, you say? We’re here for you!

• Apple podcast | The Misfit Behaviorists
• Instagram | @‌themisfitbehaviorists
• YouTube | @‌themisfitbehaviorists

👋 Find us!

• Audra | ABA in School
• Caitlin | Beltran’s Behavior Basics
• Sami | B.A.S.S.

🖱️ Rate, Review, Like & Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode! Showing this love helps us get out to more educators out there!

Transcript

Ep. 72: Center-Based Learning in the ABA Classroom - Practical Tips for Staffing, Data, and Differentiation

[00:00:00] 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.

[00:00:13] Caitlin: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorists. Tonight we are talking about center-based learning in the ABA classroom, and I wanna offer four tips for setting up a successful model. So Audra, do you have a lot of experience doing center based learning in

[00:00:28] Audra: Yes, but it is a challenge, especially if you're talking about a classroom with exactly a lot of different levels and then having to figure out how to, yeah, design it in such a way. And you're low on staff, you're always low on staff in these classrooms.

[00:00:41] Caitlin: I know a couple weeks or months ago at this point, we talked about group instruction and small group and things like that. So I wanted to make a clear difference right off the bat because a lot of what I wanna talk about really isn't so much teaching in groups like we were talking about, but really how to run centers and what that looks like.

[00:00:59] So the [00:01:00] first thing I wanna talk about is, when you think about an ABA classroom, you have potentially a huge range of learners, even the learners of the same age, but oftentimes three to four years age gap. So you could have maybe six learners and maybe two of them are kind of alike, and two of them are a little bit alike. But overall, there's like a huge wide range of levels, academic levels, behavioral levels, things like that. So even just thinking about what kind of centers you are going to run. And so the ones that I've been working on in some of my classrooms are everyone's favorite. Like perhaps you have an intensive teaching, discrete trial kind of grouping or center. I've done this in different ways, however, so a lot of the times in my school classrooms we're doing this with everyone. Say, you know, first period of the day or fifth period of the day, so that we're not doing a center of discrete trial, but everyone's in a discrete trial center versus another model that I would offer could be just as successful, is doing more centers where only one of [00:02:00] the groups in the classroom at that time is working on their discrete trial or intensive teaching. And I do wanna suggest this could be a very successful model if all of your students are working on discrete trials or intensive IEP goals at the same time and it's getting kind of crazy. I know it sounds like a little silly, let's picture a classroom right now and you have a group of two here, one learner with a one-on-one here, a group of two here, maybe another one or pair over here. And what's that different about? Maybe two of them are working on IEP goals versus the one pair are doing IEP goals and the rest are like sensory or play or something. I do think there's a huge difference because you're taking that more intensive data collection when you're running discrete trials. And right off the bat, that person, whether it's you or the para or the teacher, is gonna be feeling a lot more pressure. So instantly, when you shrink that down to only a few people are in that group at that time, it just reduces the amount of pressure. And I do think that's something that, unless you've tried it, you don't necessarily think up off the bat as a solution to a really [00:03:00] hectic, discrete trial session. So that's just one thing I wanted to mention. In general, that could be a center where everyone's doing it, or a station of your day or a station within center time. So if you're doing that as one station within multiple centers, other centers could include maybe structured play. So it could be as simple as like in independent play or a small group play, such as like Play-Doh, marbles things like that. Or you could have actual games going on like Uno or candy Land or something like that. I've seen it done both ways. Again, it really just depends on your learner. You could have a sensory center going on where you're finger painting, not so much craft, but think sensory, like very soothing colors and textures, things like that. It's really more of a space for your learners to just interact with different textures and stay seated. Almost like a pre art learning center I would call that, possibly independent work. This one's tricky because you may have a very early learning classroom where you don't have a lot of independent skills built up yet which is why [00:04:00] I love to recommend this as a teaching tool that everyone should be starting in every classroom of every age because you want to get to the point in your classroom where you do have multiple learners who have independent schedules as part as the repertoire.

[00:04:13] Audra: I'm thinking of the classrooms that I've been in, I'm thinking we would have center's time built in the schedule, like a two hour center time and then we'd have a couple of stations that were discrete trials. So two students would go there, there'd be one para in each of those. But then most of the other groups within the rest of the classroom, because we didn't have a lot of paras to go through, we didn't have two to one or anything, so we'd have one table would be one para with like four students doing like either Play-Doh or something. She could just manage kind of the materials. She's not having to take data. She's just there managing materials. And there could be, like you said, an independent ish station, maybe there's a para kind of in the area monitoring the independent stuff as well as the sensory area where they're just sort of monitoring what's going on. Typically, we'd have four paras in a classroom [00:05:00] like this of 10 to 15 kids. And so we'd have the two kind of intensive groups going with the data collection and stuff. And then we'd make sure that we're not just rotating the students, but we're rotating the paras too 'cause they wanna be over playing with Play-Doh as well. So it's that trick of the schedule, " I wanna play with the sensory stuff, play with the rice and bean."

[00:05:20] Caitlin: That actually is perfect segue for the next topic when we're thinking about centers, which is to really plan these rotations thoughtfully that match both your student and your staff needs. So just like you mentioned, you may have a staff member in your classroom who has been with you for years, or at least been in the program for years. They're very adept at taking data and managing behaviors. That might be the first station you assign them to is that intensive, discrete trial station. But you don't always want them to be there because they deserve that turn of time too. You want all of your staff to feel comfortable at all stations. So maybe, when you're short staffed, that's where that person goes, but it's a cue to you to take that new para under your wing and sit with them at [00:06:00] that intensive teaching station while your other para manages play, vice versa. So you wanna almost train your staff in training each station and make sure you can, if possible, shadow or give guidance to each staff member. You wanna be realistic about staffing. So again, if you're shorthanded, do what you gotta do. But just making sure you're matching paras and giving them the appropriate feedback and guidance at each station.

[00:06:23] I've seen it done in classrooms too, where these stations are within a school period and you're switching off every 10 or 15 minutes and then more commonly, I think, at least in my school, is we might say okay, period one, everyone at this group is doing the play. Everyone at this group is doing IEP goals. And I find that works well for a school-based model because you're at some point, whether it's for lunch or specials, probably adhering to that school schedule where like everybody's on the same level.

[00:06:49] Audra: I wish all schools ran it like that. You're the only school I've heard of that has blocks in elementary school like that. I mean, we had kids with different grade levels in the classroom like you have, but we didn't have [00:07:00] blocks. So first grade gen ed might have reading time at a different time than this kid. And so this kid is coming and this kid's going, and they're all here at different times. And so finding blocks to do centers is really challenging because kids coming in and out at different times. And then some paras have to accompany different kids out to the classrooms at different times. And it's just, it's hard. I totally empathize with all your teachers who are trying to make these schedules at the beginning of the year, and then you change 'em 20 times.

[00:07:24] Caitlin: So that leads me into another thought to consider is not just pairing your staff with each session thoughtfully, but also grouping your students together thoughtfully. Being flexible as always, but like we mentioned at the beginning, you might have two learners that are very similar learning profile, very similar behaviors. You may not wanna really pair them together for that reason. So if you have two very needy students who need all hands on deck when they're doing intensive teaching, maybe one of those students is working on IEP goals while one of those students is at like the calm sensory station or the Play-Doh station. And also thinking [00:08:00] about that in itself. I was talking about this with a teacher recently and she said, you know, this is so true. She's like, everyone keeps saying, don't do so much work. Let them play, let them do this. And she's like, for all of my kids, play is work. They're not the kind of kids that you could just say, "you know what, it's been a long day. Enjoy some free play." There's not a lot of appropriate play. They're dumping, they're stimming, they're putting things in the vent. Things like that are happening. So even when running structured play, I'd be very strategic about maybe you can pair some of those older learners with younger learners or learners who have more skills and maybe are showing more patience in that play center with that younger learner who's still learning to not grab and to share materials and things like that. And so just being flexible within that too, and also trying to change things up. I was in a classroom last weekend, she was saying, "okay, we have one-on-one here and usually a pair here and another pair here. And I usually do it this way, but we were experimenting with different pairs and we never would've thought on paper this pair of students would work really well together and make a good dyad and ended [00:09:00] up running a beautiful, it was a beautiful session", so just changing it up once in a while just to see what happens

[00:09:04] Audra: Also, not to always pair your best with your most challenging student, 'cause then you're gonna burn out your most compliant student too, so make sure you're rotating some of those as well. Be mindful, of those little kids.

[00:09:16] Caitlin: Yeah. I think the takeaway there is just maybe not having a plan set in stone all the time, right? Try those different pairings and maybe this one on paper looks great or looks terrible. Try it and see which works best. And then maybe if one week, like the vibe is just not vibing, change it up and that's an actual scientific BCBA term if the vibe is not vibing.

[00:09:36] So finally making sure to just prioritize the communication and consistency so you can be running consistent centers even while you're being flexible, changing the staff, changing the students, changing the tasks. I mean, it can be anything. Maybe you have a student or two who loves books. They could just sit there looking at picture books. You can put on maybe the Epic app, that's like narrating the book and all of a sudden you have a nice little literacy center. You may have a [00:10:00] learner who absolutely hates that and maybe that triggers you to think, "Hey, maybe this learner needs some IEP goals for sitting and listening to a book or being read to", or like a goal you might not have necessarily thought of until you tried.

[00:10:13] So holding those quick debriefs, because if your classrooms or anything like mine have been historically, in the moment, sometimes it's just really hectic, all hands on deck, and at the end of the session you're just like, "whew, that's over time for lunch". But making sure to recap with your staff at the end of the day or at the beginning of the next morning and seeing like, "oh, how, what, how did that pairing work for you?" Or maybe, "I think these two on paper we're terrible but it ended up as a great dyad. But all my paras told me that wasn't the case for them." So there could be a dynamic there with student and staff. That is just personal preference. Sharing those ideas, reinforcing like everything with your staff as far as like, "I saw you go above and beyond and turning that like structured play into turn taking and sharing and things like that," and so making sure your staff feel really valued. Maybe even reinforcing the idea if you do have staff who have been with you a [00:11:00] while or are just really experienced paras and they want to take more ownership and " would you wanna run a craft session each week?" I've had staff that are just really interested in that and looking for more leadership roles. And that's a win-win 'cause it takes a little bit off the teacher's plate.

[00:11:14] I think that's all we had, just knowing that center-based learning is an option. I think a lot of times in self-contained or ABA classrooms, teachers get really nervous thinking, " I can never do group instruction. I can never do centers like in other classrooms because my students are so different." And I think hopefully these tips can just help give you the confidence to get started and just trial and error, try a couple things and see what works. Keep that structure, but within that structure, be flexible. And when done intentionally, I think it really supports individualized teaching. So you can be running centers, group learning, but keeping your students engaged and hitting many different goals for many different students.

[00:11:50] Audra: And just two quick things too, if you can, add the visual piece of it, a visual schedule. So teach them from the beginning to use a visual schedule. And we use different ways. There's so many out there, whether you're [00:12:00] taking picture of their face to each center or some way to connect to each center. So the movements, the transitions are easier.

[00:12:06] If you're just starting to create center base, whether it's the beginning of the year, you just wanna try it to set up the centers that you want, you know, plan it out and stuff, but then do like two minutes a session or something, rotate to do it real quick. They're getting the routine of the centers and the movement and stuff, and make each of the centers that you have fun stuff always at the beginning. Then as they get more comfortable and stuff, then you can increase the amount of time and the expectation at each of the centers. And that will help you be more successful as the time goes on.

[00:12:35] Caitlin: Absolutely. And final bonus tip that you just made me think of as you're just trialing these different things and doing things like trying different things, starting them for two minutes as opposed to 25 minutes, the other tip I would say is if you're just trying this for the first couple days or a week, forget about the data. Like don't worry about like, "oh, it's structured play, but I'm gonna get that goal for turn taking," start with one thing at a time, and that one thing might be this huge [00:13:00] change to your schedule and don't overwhelm yourself or your staff with saying "go but don't forget, we're gonna get everyone's IEP goals done. Start to finish tonight too". It's okay to just put those data books aside for the day or few days as you start this huge new thing. That could help really make it successful is just entering that in one piece time.

[00:13:17] Audra: That's what makes us the misfits, right. It's okay to put the data away.

[00:13:21] Caitlin: I was just going to say that we put the misfit in misfit behavior,

[00:13:26] Audra: Put the data away

[00:13:27] Caitlin: all the other behaviorists, just keeps going, don't listen.

[00:13:30] I think that's it for us. Hopefully this helped. I shouldn't mentioned at the onset. This was a topic suggested by one of our viewers in the Facebook group. So if you have a topic you want tackled or you need help with in your classroom, please feel free to head on over to the Facebook group, Misfit Behaviorists. Drop that suggestion and we'll definitely get to it. Otherwise, thanks. See you next week.

[00:13:49] 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 [00:14:00] episode.