Behavior Intervention

Wow!!! I am not good at updating this... at. all. New goal= blog at least 2x a week! I started this blog to keep in touch with the families in my classroom and so that they could have a "peak" into what we do all day! To be fair to myself, I had a baby last year and I was also coaching the high school swim team. Those days are no longer, as I retired from coaching. It was a sad day, but this past year I saw first hand all of the time I put into coaching as I had some "extra" time. A) I got my prep period back at school! (HUGE, HUGE difference in my day!!!!) and  B) I get to come straight home and be with my baby. LOVING IT!

Anyways, moving on to this blog post: Behavior Intervention. I have come to love behavior tools. In our classroom we use a positive reinforcement system. Each student has their own token board with a highly motivating character that they love. They earn tokens by demonstrating expected behavior. It is a lot of work at the beginning of the year! It takes a lot of work shaping the behaviors that I want to see. I am constantly "feeding" tokens.  However, by the end of the year, they no longer earn tokens and are just expected to exhibit appropriate behavior. IT WORKS WONDERS. I will post more on this later.

In order to set myself AND my students up for success, I need to introduce and practice the behaviors that I expect of the students. This is easily my "first week of school" lesson plans. Introductions into a new environment (I teach kindergarten and first grade so I am constantly getting a new batch of students into a brand new environment) and introductions into a new routine and teacher. It can be challenging and exhausting (for both of us)! However, if my students don't KNOW what I expect, how can they demonstrate the appropriate behavior?! Practice, lots and lots of practice!

On the first day we usually do a classroom and school tour. Instead of piling all of the school rules on the students on the first day, I slowly introduce them to rules of each different area of the school. First we start in our classroom. We go over general rules first (because they are the most important). I usually read social stories to the students about following classroom rules. We always practice the appropriate behavior. Example: sitting on the carpet the appropriate way (criss-cross applesauce), everyone sits on the carpet appropriately and BOOM there is their first token :) Instant behavior shaping.

One of the activities that we do is the following social story and correlating activity. We read the story together and talk about why this rule is safe. We practice on the board together, and then they complete independently (with my paraprofessionals helping around the room). This is a great way for me to get to know how each student has interpreted my set of rules.

Classroom Expectations- Social Story
Behavior Sort

Once we have the general rules down, we move onto to the rules in different areas of the classroom and then the playground, cafeteria, etc. I will post more about these later.

I am already thinking about my first day with my new set of students! For now though, I will continue to enjoy summer :) Happy Summer Everyone!