Julie L. Thompson, M.Ed., BCBAJulie L. Thompson is a doctoral candidate in Special Education at UNC Charlotte who anticipates graduating in May 2014. She also earned her Master’s degree from UNC Charlotte. As a recipient of the NIFDI Research Fellowship Grant, Julie was able to conduct a study investigating the effects of proximity fading and task breaks on student responding during small group Direct Instruction in mathematics with students with ASD. Results demonstrated a functional relation between the intervention and students’ ability to actively respond during small group instruction. One student, an English Language Learner, required an instructional cue in her native language to increase her participation to mastery level. Following the promising results of this study, Julie is continuing this line of research for her dissertation and plans to extend the research by measuring generalization of active responding across DI curricula (Connecting Math Concepts and Language for Learning) as well as measuring accuracy of response and assessing mathematics skill acquisition using distal standardized measures.