Is Spring here yet? I recently came across this nice podcast, Daily Strides, which comes out weekly with a new topic about horseback riding and explains it in a way that is easy to understand. I was hooked by episode 1025, “Working Toward a Consistently Better Quality Trot”. Daily Strides is a great resource for lesson … Continue reading
Filed under Teaching Tips …
The Training Wheel
This blog post is something that’s been floating around in my head for a long time now. Ever since reading “The Dressage Training Pyramid for Mere Mortals”, I’ve been thinking about how there’s so many more components involved in the typical USDF Pyramid of Training than just one triangle can tell! So I’ve created this … Continue reading
Consistent vs. Changing Lesson Plans
When I first started teaching, I spent a lot of time making new lesson plans every week for my riders. Now that it’s been a few years, I still take time to lesson plan every week but it goes faster because the lesson plans stay very similar. This got me thinking about the importance of … Continue reading
Sharing Laughs and Singing Songs
Here are two easy teaching tips that can really help! Ok, not so much teaching tips as connecting-with-your-riders tips. Here you go! Share Laughter This was one of the most influential ideas I took from Claudine Pelletier-Milet’s book, Riding on the Autism Spectrum. Laughing with someone creates a connection and a bond that is very important … Continue reading
Hierarchy of Support for Leaders & Sidewalkers
I am going through the gaps of information not on this blog, and it seems I have never posted about the types of support that leaders and sidewalkers can give their riders. By support I mean physical assistance – I already blogged about sidewalker prompting assistance in the Hierarchy of Prompts. Breaking it down like this … Continue reading
Preparing for New Riders
While I have posted about preparing a The Lesson Plan and doing the Intake Lesson (Version 1 & Version 2), I have not posted necessarily about preparing for a new rider. This has been on my mind lately because I have a new client! Within The Lesson Plan post, the first thing is what to do before the … Continue reading
Lessons from Sean Patrick
Lessons from Sean Patrick I fulfilled a little dream goal this past weekend and rode in a clinic with Sean Patrick, who wrote Modern Horseman’s Countdown to Broke, the book I used to train my horse! His training style is what I would call logical western, is similar to John Lyons (he did his certification … Continue reading
About Asking Questions
I have been reading the book “Play to Talk: A Practical Guide to Help Your Late-Talking Child Join the Conversation” by James MacDonald Ph.D. & Pam Stoika Ph.D. I’m impressed! I bought it 3 years ago to help me with riders with speech disabilities and wish I’d read it sooner! I will be blogging more ideas … Continue reading
Teaching Tips: Social Skills
The next two presentations at the 2017 PATH Intl Virtual Conference had to do with social skills. Here are some take home points. From “A Task Analysis Approach to Social Skills Teaching” by Melissa Abbey Elements of Social Skills Acquisition From various sources, all of these can be seen in therapeutic riding and interacting with horses! Self awareness … Continue reading
Advance Your Skills
The first session of the PATH Intl Virtual Conference was “Advancing Our Skills” by Joelle Devlin. I thought it was really great! I had no huge technical difficulties, though many had trouble with the audio. I like that the conference is starting off with the focus on self-improvement. During this brief break between sessions I’m going to … Continue reading