Chapter Seven

1. ChapterSeven Improving Classroom Behavior and Social Skills

2. Understanding Behavior Problems • Students misbehave for a variety of reasons including: • Gaining attention • Concealing inadequacy • Gaining power or control over people or situations • Exacting retribution or revenge from real or perceived injuries • In addition, students enter into antagonistic relationships with teachers and other school personnel because they lack trust in adults. Interventions for these misbehaviors should focus on reestablishing trust between students and adults.

3. Understanding Behavior Problems • Student behavior is controlled by the classroom environment. Establishing a positive classroom atmosphere is an important key to effective behavior management

4. Observe and Record Classroom Behavior • Carefully observing and documenting misbehaviors can help teachers to determine precisely what behaviors need to be changed. • Define Behavior: Student behavior needs to be “operationally defined,” which means that the teacher must describe the behavior so that another person knows exactly what is meant. For example, it is difficult to understand what a teacher means by describing a student as having a bad attitude. On the other hand, “the student is late for class 70% of the time” is a more clear and specific description. • Use Observation and recording systems: Behavior is much easier to evaluate over time if it is presented in some type of chart or other graphic display.

5. Observe and Record Classroom Behavior, cont. • Techniques for observing student behavior include: • Event recording: Observer tallies the number of times a particular behavior occurs. • Duration recording: Observer records the cumulative amount of time during which the behavior occurs. • Interval recording: The observer sets an interval and documents whether a particular behavior has occurred at any time during that interval. • Time sampling: At a specific point of time, the observer records whether a behavior is occurring. • Determine the context of behavior: The teacher can create an “A-B-C” chart to document the dynamics of classroom behavior. The chart has three columns: Antecedent, Behavior and Consequence of the target behavior

6. Observe and Record Classroom Behavior, cont. • Make Graphic presentation of Data

7. Effective Classroom Management Strategies • Establish a positive classroom atmosphere: Students are more likely to follow directions, work hard and exhibit positive classroom behavior when they feel wanted and appreciated by the teacher. Teachers may establish a positive classroom atmosphere by doing the followings: • Project a feeling and caring persona. Convince students that you like them. • Teach with sincerity and enthusiasm. Use interesting and motivational activities, and avoid long-winded lectures and lengthy independent worksheets activities.

8. Effective Classroom Management Strategies, cont. • Use less intensive strategies: • Rules: Familiarizing students with all the classroom rules. For younger students, post the classroom rules in a place where all the students can observe. Write them as positively as possible. • Praise and ignoring: Many inappropriate behaviors can be effectively attended to by ignoring them and pointing out the positive models. • Proximity: Effective teachers do not remain seated at their desk but move around the classroom. Move closer to students who are beginning to demonstrate off-task behaviors.

9. Effective Classroom Management Strategies, cont. • Less intensive strategies, cont.: • Direct appeals: Students can be asked to follow class rules more carefully • Use reprimands judiciously: Negative feedback is sometimes necessary to help students succeed in class. Reprimands are more effective when they are viewed as direct feedback; on the other hand, they are less effective when viewed as punishment. • Validate the student’s feelings: Ask the student about his/her feelings after being reprimanded and address their concerns.

10. Effective Classroom Management Strategies, cont. • Use more formal management systems: • Reinforce positive behavior: Praise or other tangible reinforcement are effective methods of promoting positive social behavior. • Reward students with token systems: Token systems or token economies can be used with individual students, small group of students, or an entire classroom. In a token system, students who follow class rules are awarded points at the end of specified time periods, such as class periods. They can accumulate the points to exchange for small prizes or privileges later. Students can be surveyed ahead of time on their preferences for prizes.

11. Effective Classroom Management Strategies, cont. • More formal management systems, cont.: • Use punishment judiciously: Punishment is less effective in the long run than positive reinforcement, but is sometimes necessary to maintain order and provide a safe environment. • Train positive attributions: When students make “negative attributions,” they attribute things that happen to them to forces outside of their own control. In contrast, students who make “positive attributions” take responsibility for their behavior. • Post positive behavior: Public posting of students’ positive behavior has been linked to reduced behavior problems • Use timeout for specific behavior problems: Timeouts are most effective when the classroom activity the student is excluded from is enjoyable and rewarding.

12. Effective Classroom Management Strategies, cont. • Use appropriate level of timeout: The mildest form of timeout involves the systematic ignoring of a student for a specific period of time. A more restrictive version is contingent observation timeout, in which students who misbehave must sit away from class activities and not participate. • Use debriefing procedures after timeout: Students need to be debriefed before returning to full status in the classroom after timeout. This will help to make sure that students are aware of the behavior resulted in the timeout and how they can handle a similar situation in the future. • Implement level system: In a level system, all students are assigned a level that is associated with specific privileges and responsibilities. It allows students to take more responsibility for their own behavior and to receive privileges for demonstrating behavioral self-control.

13. Effective Classroom Management Strategies, cont. • Use the good behavior game: In a good behavior game, the teacher divides the class into two or more groups. During the instruction period, each disruptive behavior counts as a point for the team of the offending student. At the end of the instruction period, the team with the fewest points is the winner and may be provided with a group reward. • Set up student contracting: Establishing a written agreement that formalizes the behaviors a student agrees to exhibit. • Promote self-monitoring: Teach students to monitor and evaluate their own classroom behavior.

14. Effective Classroom management Strategies cont’d….. • Teach Students Self-instruction Strategies: Teach students to employ self-directed statements that guide social problem solving • Train for Generalization: Students in inclusive settings should be able to generalize all the positive social behavior they have learned outside the training context.

15. Handling Confrontations • Confrontations can constitute direct challenges to the authority of the teacher and have a profound effect on the classroom environment. Several steps recommended for dealing with confrontations are: • Stay calm. Take long and slow breaths and take yourself out of the situation by depersonalizing it. • Don’t take it personally. • Don’t escalate the situation by making loud reprimands and threats. • If necessary, speak to the student later. • If the student’s behavior seems very much out of character, it may be wise to ignore the behavior for the moment and speak about the problem later when the student has calmed down.

16. Life Space Crisis Intervention: • Life Space Interviewing is a clinical therapeutic tool to serve the needs of students who display severely disturbed, aggressive behavior. • There are six steps to the procedure known as Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI) • Student Crisis Stage and Staff De-escalation Skills-Provides support for students during intense emotional periods and employs techniques to de-escalate intensity. • Student Time- Line Stage and Staff’s Relationship Skills-Assists student to reflect on the incident. Staff summarizes the students’ comments. • Student Central-Issue Stage and Staff’s Differential Diagnosis Stage-Staff attempts to identify the Central Issue, assesses students’ motivation to change and sets up goals. • Student Insight Stage and Staff's Clinical Skills- Staff carries out the intervention leading insight to the student regarding his/her behavior. • Student New-Skill Stage and Staff’s Empowering Skills-Staff rehearses the new behaviors with the student using role-play. • Student Transfer-of-Training Stage and Staff’s Follow-up Skills-Student is assisted in attempting new and positive behaviors.

17. Schoolwide Discipline System • The advantage of school wide discipline systems is that the same rules are enforced in the same way throughout the school. This allows consistency, and can be beneficial to limit-seeking students as well as to students who have difficulty adjusting to different standards or rules being enforced in different classrooms. • The disadvantages to school wide discipline system are that they may not effectively address the needs of all individual students, and that, if misapplied, they can promote an overall punitive atmosphere throughout the school.

18. School wide Discipline System • Some examples of School wide Discipline systems might include: • Employing assertive Discipline: All students are first apprised of the rules and then the Discipline Plan is implemented. • Positive Behavioral Supports: This relies on Behavioral Principles to produce socially important outcomes with methods which are socially and culturally appropriate.

19. Teaching Social Skills • Social skills are the behaviors we use to work and socialize with other people. Three elements of social skills are: • Allows one to initiate and maintain positive relationships with others. • Contributes to peer acceptance and to a successful classroom adjustment • Allows one to cope effectively and adaptively with the social environment.

20. Teaching Social Skills cont’d…. • Several methods are available for assessing socialskills and social acceptance of students in the classroom. • Sociometric measure: in this measure, students are asked to write down their most and least favorite students. It can help provide the teacher a sense of how well liked individual students are. • Teacher rating scale: teachers can also use some teacher checklists to determine individual strengths and weaknesses in social skills. For instance: • The ACCEPTS program has questions as part of its screening checklist & includes a placement test • Job-Related Social Skills program includes teacher surveys of particular social skills • The best method of assessing social skills is by observation of social behavior in naturalistic settings

21. Teaching Social Skills cont’d…. • Train Students to Improve Social Skills: Most social skills training procedures are classified into four categories: • Modeling: involves demonstrating the appropriate social behavior and allowing students to observe. • Shaping: involves the use of positive reinforcement to promote the use of a social skill. • Coaching: requires the use of verbal cues to improve target behaviors. • Modeling-reinforcement: employs a combination of observation and shaping techniques.

22. Teaching Social Skills cont’d…. • Choose Curriculum Material thoughtfully. • Conduct On the Spot Training: If specific social skills have been targeted and practiced with particular students, promote and reinforce these skills throughout the day.

23. Teaching Social Skills cont’d • Generalization of social skills includes the following strategies: • Make certain students have mastered the skills they are to generalize. Students will not generalize behaviors they have not learned adequately. • Make the training as realistic as possible. • Teach behaviors that will maximize students’ social success and minimize their failures. This will make students want to generalize and maintain their behavior. • Use real-life homework assignment. • Enlist the help of peers, parents, and school personnel to promote and reinforce social skills

24. Teaching Social Skills cont’d • Generalization, cont. • If necessary, initially follow the student into the generalization setting or situation and prompt and reinforce there. • Teach self-management skills. • Use periodic retraining and reminders of social skills. • Teachers need to carefully document the effectiveness of the training to ensure the social skill instruction is having the maximum impact in improving social skills. • Validate Treatment