Behavioral Interventions that Fit Teachers’ Schedules

1. Behavioral Interventions that Fit Teachers’ Schedules “Meeting the Challenge” Behavior Conference David Hulac, Ph. D., NCSP April 7, 2014

2. What do we want to talk about today? 1) Brief Introduction to behaviorism 2) Basic principles of good classroom management (mostly reminders) 3) Techniques for working with problematic class-wide behaviors

3. Anatomy of Behavior

4. Evidence Based Practices in Classroom Management • Maximize structure in your classroom. • Post, teach, review, monitor, and reinforce a small number of positively stated expectations. • Actively engage students in observable ways. • Establish a continuum of strategies to acknowledge appropriate behavior. • Establish a continuum of strategies to respond to inappropriate behavior. (Simonsen, Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers, & Sugai, 2007)

5. Maximizing classroom structure

6. 1. Maximize structure in the classroom. • Develop Predictable Routines • Teacher routines: volunteers, communications, movement, planning, grading, etc. • Student routines: personal needs, transitions, working in groups, independent work, instruction, getting, materials, homework, etc. • Design environment to (a) elicit appropriate behavior and (b) minimize crowding and distraction: • Arrange furniture to allow easy traffic flow. • Ensure adequate supervision of all areas. • Designate staff & student areas. • Seating arrangements (groups, carpet, etc.) (Simonsen, Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers, & Sugai, 2007)

7. Developing and teaching routines “Most effective managers spend considerable time during the first several weeks helping students learn how to behave in their classrooms. They had carefully thought out procedures for getting assistance, contacting the teacher, lining-up, turning work in, and standards for conduct during seatwork, group work and whole class activities.” Emmer and Evertson, 1981

8. Procedures • Methods for accomplishing daily routines • What are the two broad categories for instruction?

9. Procedures • Methods for accomplishing daily routines • Include instructional periods • Include transition periods

10. Overcorrection • Positive practice

11. From the Safe and Civil Schools Series C H A M P S Sprick et al., 2010.

12. A few other things to think about

13. Classroom density • As density increases: • Attention decreases • Social withdrawl increases • Aggression, dissatisfaction & anxiousness increase • Performance is most pronounced in complex activities McKee & Witt, 1990

14. Lighting • VERY limited evidence. • Some research suggests that natural light may decrease behavior problems.

15. Classroom arrangement • More disruption in rows (though ideal for lecturing). • More on-task comments in circles • Clusters may result in greater on task behavior

16. Always include an attention getting signal • Both vocal and visual. Image from thepositiveclassroom.org

17. Targeting transitions Strategies to Promote ClasswideEngagement

18. Transitions: • 1-2 hours per day may be spent transitioning (Sainto & Lyon, 1983; Schmit et al., 2000) • Number of inappropriate behaviors may be reduced if transitions are made more efficient (Fudge et al., 2007)

19. Materials

20. Procedures • Red used when transitioning from one classroom activity to another • Teacher provides 2-min and 30-sec warning before moving CW to red • Once CW moved, provide directions for next activity • After providing instructions, turn CW to yellow or green to elicit questions regarding instructions

21. Timely Transitions Game Developed by Campbell and Skinner • Develop, teach, and post transition rules • Class earns group reward if transition time equal to or less than randomly drawn criterion • 5 transitions selected and stopwatch used to measure amount of time during which students misbehaved • End of day: select one transition period and transition criterion • If below criterion, class earns one letter toward prize (e.g., P-A-R-T-Y)

22. 2. Post, Teach, Review, Monitor, and reinforce a small number of positively stated expectations. • In general, teachers are very good about posting rules and expectations

23. Establish Behavioral Expectations / Rules • A small number (i.e., 3-5) of positively stated rules. Tell students what we want them to do, rather than telling them what we do not want them to do. • Publicly post the rules. • Should match SW Expectations

24. Prompt or Remind Students of the Rule • Provide students with visual prompts (e.g., posters, illustrations, etc). • Use pre-corrections, which include (Colvin, Sugai, Good, & Lee, 1997).

25. “better managers were also more careful monitors of student behavior and dealt with inappropriate behavior when it occurred, more quickly than did less effective managers. “ p. 345 Emmer and Evertson, 1981

26. Monitor Students’ Behavior in Natural Context • Active Supervision (Colvin, Sugai, Good, Lee, 1997): • Move around • Look around (Scan) • Interact with students • Provide reinforcement and specific praise to students who are following rules. • Catch errors early and provide specific, corrective feedback to students who are not following rules. (Think about how you would correct an academic error.)

27. 3. Actively engage students in observable ways. • Provide high rates of opportunities to respond • Vary individual v. group responding • Increase participatory instruction • Consider various observable ways to engage students • Written responses • Writing on individual white boards • Choral responding • Gestures • Other: ____________

28. Opportunity to respond • When students can frequently give answers to questions, their engagement increases. • Instructional talk • Positive prompts • Wait time • Balance of positive to negative feedback Source: Tressel, 2008

29. Instructional Talk • The teacher engages in short lessons, and then provides an opportunity to practice. • Demonstrations, discussions etc. Source: Tressel, 2008

30. Positive prompt • Directed requests for action or response • Recommend 3 to 4 opportunities per minute for a class • Ensure each student has a chance to respond • Prompt choral responses Source: Tressel, 2008

31. Wait time • Allow > 3 s for students to think of the correct answers. Source: Tressel, 2008

32. Response Cards • Students • write-on boards to answer teacher questions, • cover answer by drawing board to chest, • simultaneously revealing when instructed by teacher • Shown to increase participation and response accuracy (Narayan et al., 1990; Gardner et al., 1994), as well as student behavior

33. Christle & Schuster (2003) • Folded manila folder inside plastic sheet protector + dry-erase marker + felt for eraser • Data collected on 5 students who represented range of student behavior

34. 2 Meta-Analyses of Response Cards • Randolph (2005): included 289 cases across 12 SCD studies (majority theses/dissertations) • Off-task behavior decreased by 42% • 82% of students preferred RCs to hand raising • Randolph (2007): 16 SCD and 2 group design studies published since 2003 • Off-task behavior decreased by 34% • No differences in ESs between write-on and pre-printer response cards

35. 4. Establish a continuum of strategies to acknowledge appropriate behavior. • Specific and Contingent Praise • Group Contingencies • Token Economies

36. Specific and Contingent Praise • Praise should be… • …contingent: occur immediately following desired behavior • …specific: tell learner exactly what they are doing correctly and continue to do in the future • )

37. “Good job” (not very specific) • “I like how you are showing me active listening by having quiet hands and feet and eyes on me” (specific

38. Group Contingencies (Litowand Pumroy, 1975) • Three types: • “One for all” (Dependent Group Contingency) • “To each his/her own” (Independent Group Contingency) • “All for one” (Interdependent Group-Oriented Contingency)

39. Dependent Group ContingencyWilliamson, Campbell-Whatley, & Lo, 2009 • 6 HS SPED students (10th grade) • Teacher modeled & student rehearsed on-task behaviors • Teacher used 5-min MTS to record on-task/off-task • One student’s name was pulled from a jar • If that unnamed student met the criteria (4/5 +’s), whole class received reward

40. Independent: Token Economy • Procedures (Kazdin, 1977) • Teacher identifies 1-3 disruptive behaviors to be reduced (or appropriate behaviors to be increased) • Teacher provides positive tangible reinforcement (tokens/tickets) when students perform appropriate behaviors • Students may exchange tokens for rewards/prizes • EX. candy, dolls, comics, pencils, etc

41. Modifications • Add response cost • Whenever student performs undesirable (disruptive) behavior, teacher removes a token (Filcheck et al., 2004 ; Wasserman & Vogrin, 1979) • Students keep track of points (McLaughlin & Malaby, 1972) • Teacher instructs student to add/deduct points from own chart on desk • System-wide K-6 (Boegli & Wasik, 1978) • Tokens could be earned throughout day, distributed by principal, teachers, librarian, custodial staff • Others?

42. Potential concerns • Children differ in their preferences for reinforcer dimensions • Quality: time coloring vs. stickers • Rate: how often tokens are delivered • Delay of reinforcement: how often tokens can be exchanged • Necessary response effort: how difficult it is to earn rewards • Temporal discounting (Ainslie, 1974): rewards lose value as latency to receipt increases • Concerns regarding use of edible reinforcement

43. Independent group contingency (Brantley et al., 1993) • 25 4th grade students in general education class • Identified 3 prosocial expectations: pay attention and finish your work, get your teacher’s permission before you say something, stay in your seat without touching others • Class divided into 45-min intervals  Place check next to student name on chart if student exhibited 2 or more prosocial behaviors during interval • Initial criterion = 5/7 checks on 4/5 days

44. Interdependent: Good Behavior Game • Procedures (Barrish, Saunders, & Wolf, 1969) • Students divided into teams • Compete for rewards/privileges (daily and weekly) • Identify what periods will play game • Clearly define rules (inappropriate/appropriate behaviors) • If break rule, receive a mark on the board • Team with fewest marks or if both teams < 5 marks wins (decrease marks as weeks go on) • If maintain <20 marks/week, extra privilege

45. Population/Setting • A variety of settings from Kindergarten(Donaldson, Krous, Downs, & Berard, 2011) through 9th grade (Kleinman & Saigh, 2011) in NYC public schools. • Gen ed(e.g., Barrish, Saunders, & Wolf, 1969) • Transitional classes (students with low achievement and highly disruptive behaviors; Johnson et al., 1978) • Specials (i.e., during library; Fishbein & Wasik, 1981)

46. Modifications Mystery rewards • Used successfully in preschool (Murphy et al., 2007) and elementary settings (Lannie& McCurdy, 2007; Wright & McCurdy, 2012) • Post positive expectations • If all students in class/team meet criterion (e.g., 5 of fewer checks), group gets a mystery prize

47. Modifications Focus on the positive • Give points for following rules-rather than a mark for breaking a rule (Tanol et al., 2010) • Resulted in lower levels of rule violations • Preferred by teachers • Caught Being Good Game (Wright & McCurdy, 2012) • Assign points if all team members on-task

48. Modifications: Lunchroom McCurdy et al. (2009) Fabiano et al. (2008) Each class receives 6 lottery tickets One ticket taken away for each rule violation Remaining tickets go into drawing for class reward • Lunchroom rules explicitly taught • Class receives tick mark for rule infraction • Total # of infractions recorded at end of lunch • Criterion announced on Monday and classes below criterion received prize

49. Modifications • Exclude students from team points • Modified that if one team member was responsible for a certain number of points, they would not be counted as part of the team that day (Hegerle et al., 1979) • If one person got >4 marks/day, team could vote to exclude that person; person missed opportunity to participate if team won that week-worked in isolation (timeout) for next day to study alone (Medland & Stachnik, 1972) • Others?

50. Classwide Self-Management Strategies to Promote Classwide Engagement