New Classroom Management Strategy Increases Student Engagement

School Improvement Network Video Segment Shows How to Use Nonverbal Praise Routines to Increase Student Engagement

new video segment showing a classroom management strategy to increase student engagement using nonverbal praise routines. The video segment is available to all educators as part of the weekly publication, “Strategy of the Week.”

“As part of our cause of helping 100 percent of educators become effective so that 100 percent of students can become college and career ready, we’ve dedicated the last two decades to creating the resources educators need to become as effective as possible in everything from classroom management to standard-specific instruction,” said Chet D. Linton, CEO and president of School Improvement Network. “When fully implemented and integrated, these resources can boost teacher effectiveness, increase student engagement, and even raise student achievement.”

In the new classroom management video segment, educators will learn how to use nonverbal praise routines to increase student engagement and involvement, and contribute to a greater sense of classroom community.

Click here to see the new classroom management video segment and how to increase student engagement with nonverbal praise routines.

Click here to see other teaching strategies in “Strategy of the Week.”

Click here to gain access to more classroom management video segments with a free trial of Edivation.

Get the Newest Teaching Strategies to Improve Classroom Management

18 New Video Segments by School Improvement Network Show Newest Practices to Improve Classroom Management in K-12

checkout our new series of 18 video segments filmed in classrooms around the nation, documenting the best practices to improve classroom management in any school or classroom. These videos are part of School Improvement Network’s PD 360 video library.

“After decades of research and capturing master teachers and best practices in classrooms across the nation and the world, we have compiled the best teaching strategies to improve classroom management into a scalable platform that educators in any school or system can access,” said Chet D. Linton, CEO and president of School Improvement Network. “With these classroom management segments, educators everywhere can find readily applicable strategies and resources that improve classroom management in any classroom to help improve student engagement as they master the skills they need to graduate ready to start college or a meaningful career.”

The new segments show a holistic framework to improve classroom management called the Classroom Management Framework. These segments outline numerous classroom management strategies to reinforce any classroom management framework.

This classroom management series is available to educators through PD 360, the most widely used online, subscription-based professional development solution in the US. It offers a library of more than 3,000 expert-produced training videos, powerful support tools and resources, and an online professional learning community of nearly one million educators.

Click here to see one of the classroom management segments.

Click here to access the classroom management series through a free 30-day trial of PD 360.

Teach Your Children to Dream

How to Stop Bullying in Schools

By Alicia C. Shaw, Ed.D,  principal, Gideon #37 Elementary

The prevention of bullying is not about control, discipline, adding rules, policies, consequences, etc. (which we all know are designed to make the lives of adults easier). Preventing bullying is about empowering all students with knowledge, encouragement, understanding, compassion and tolerance. Most bullies are simply children who have been bullied themselves and often by an adult. They feel a loss of control in their own lives, so they attempt to find control by whatever means possible. By helping children understand the only person they can control is themselves, we can help them discover positive attributes they all possess.

Everyone wants to say that children are our most valuable asset. This is not true, assets are material objects. Children are our lifeline. We as educators must strive every day to build the hopes and dreams of our children. We tend to focus on negative things and look for new ways to dish out punishment and control behavior. It is the same concept of control for us. Teachers can’t control behavior any more than kids can control other kids. We have to spend more time understanding behavior instead of trying to control it.

Asking all children to fit a “mold” of rules and policies is like asking a river to control the flow of water. It is not possible. We have to see children as individuals with hopes, dreams, difficulties and frustrations. The choices we make and the words we speak may mean the difference for a child having a life of fulfillment or a life of difficulties.

Teach your children to dream. Our dreams are not just the thoughts that roll around in our heads everyday, they are what gives us hope that tomorrow will be better. If we help all children, including the bullies, realize their dreams, then we give them hope. By giving them hope, we take away the hurt that causes them to bully others. Your bullying policies should reflect positive approaches to children. If you do this, you won’t have to worry about bullies. They will become the leaders of the future. Have faith in a child.

*****

For more information on bullying prevention and available resources to support your efforts, sign up today for the FREE professional development webinar for educators presented by the School Improvement Network, Bullying: Understanding the Problem, Defining Solutions on May 30th 2012, 3:00 p.m. with Robin Young of the National Crime Prevention Council.

Click here to register for the FREE webinar:http://www.instantpresenter.com/AccountManager/RegEv.aspx?PIID=EA57D783884f

How Proxy Bullying Works, Part 1

How to Stop Bullies

image courtesy of opposingviews.com

Cyber-bullying never existed when I was in school, and I wager that for the vast majority of you it is the same. So when I first found out about cyber-bullying, I wondered if it was simply an over-exaggeration. But I was wrong. The issue is deep, the actions are hurtful, and the bullies are difficult to catch. Cyber-bullies tend to work through proxy, or manipulating others to punish someone who is innocent.

Bullying is easy enough to understand, but proxy bullying is much more difficult to spot.

I had one memorable experience with proxy bullying when I was a youngster, probably in 7th grade. A peer who sat next to me began mumbling during a test. The peer wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to give the impression of talking. That’s when I heard the teacher call my name.

“This is a test! Do not talk during the test, or you will be dismissed.” The teacher was particularly offended, because I was the last person in the entire school that she would have thought she’d find cheating. My peer snickered. I put my head down and kept working. I didn’t want to bother the others.

The other student started mumbling again. The teacher called me to her desk. The entire class was shocked, and I was humiliated. My peer smiled openly.

“Why are you talking during this test? You know I can’t accept your test because of this,” she informed me. Though my young eyes began to burn with tears, I think she was just as hurt as I was.

“It’s not me. It’s [name],” I confessed quietly.

Her relief was matched only by her exasperation. “Why didn’t you tell me that the first time?”

“I didn’t want to make a big deal. I was trying to focus on my test.”

By raise of hands, how many of you, readers, have had this experience with your students? In this instance, my teacher became the proxy, or stand-in, for my peer who thought he was playing a clever prank. Rather than do something to me himself, he was able to manipulate the teacher to cause me anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, and sadness.

How would you have helped this student (me) understand that it is OK to speak up? What would you have done to the student who was manipulating you?

Cyber-bullying by proxy is steeped in manipulation. Stay tuned for the next post to find out how to stop cyber-bullies who are manipulating teachers, parents, and even IP servers to come down on innocent students.

How a Trouble Child Became an A-Student in 1 Week

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

By Rhonda Rountree, Reading Specialist

Save your seat today for Conscious Teaching's FREE Webinar on April 25!  

image courtesy of fctd.info

One thing that I learned by accident a few years ago was give students a chance.  One day while teaching 3rd grade many years ago, I received a call from the office that I had a new student.  I sent down one of my current students to get “Johnny” and escort him to my room.  His parents had to leave and weren’t able to come and meet me that day. 

When Johnny came in my room, I showed him his seat and told him what we were working on.  I wasn’t able to get any information except his name, address, phone number, and what bus he was to ride home.

 A few days later, his parents showed up at my door wanting to know how Johnny was doing.  I told them he was doing fine, making friends, and seemed to be adjusting well.  The parents looked at me dumbfounded.  They even asked me, “Are you talking about our son?”  I reaffirmed that he was very bright, and was getting along with everyone in class.

Now it was my turn to be confused… why was this information so shocking?  His parents informed me that at his previous school, he was in the office just about every day for some type of infraction and it had been this way for a few years.  So when I told him that he was getting along with everyone, it was a shock to them.  Johnny was on the AB honor roll in my class and was well liked by his peers.

When Johnny came into my room, I didn’t have the knowledge of his past behaviors so I didn’t look for bad behavior.  I expected him to behave like a third grader ( inquisitive, impulsive, and wanting to please).  I treated him like I treated the rest of the class.  To encourage friendships and cooperation, my class was set up in groups of 3 and 4 at the time so I introduced him to a group that had just lost a member. The group knew what was expected on cooperation and just started showing Johnny the ropes. 

I saw Johnny this year. He will be graduating from high school and his parents told me that he is getting straight A’s.  They want to give me credit for the change in Johnny but really all I did was give him a chance.

Too often we as teachers see the name of a challenging student on our roster and think “Oh, no! Not them!” Johnny is an example of this mentality.  I think that when the teachers saw Johnny’s name on their roster they started off with the perception of this student is going to be trouble and I need to make sure he doesn’t disrupt my class.

Before Johnny, I was guilty of going to the teacher from the previous year and asking, “What do I need to be on the lookout for?” meaning what "bad behavior do I need to watch for?"  With Johnny I didn’t have a teacher from the previous year to fill me in on all the bad stuff so I couldn’t look for it in him. When I looked for good behavior, that’s what I got.  Johnny didn’t look like a kid with trouble, he looked “normal” so that was the way I treated him.  Johnny finished his elementary career at our school, and he did end up in the office a couple of times.  But he wasn’t in the office everyday like he was at his old school. I don’t think the schools are different in the way they treat students, but I do think the perceptions were very different.  I didn’t see Johnny as a “bad kid”; I saw him as a student that just moved.  I think that perception is what allowed Johnny to reach his full potential.

Now, when I look at my roster and I see the student that is challenging, I think of Johnny and wipe the slate clean.

Play to Win! - Ideas on Student Achievement Best Practices

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

by Susan Varner, Media Coordinator

image courtesy of freewebphoto.com

Most of the students in our upper elementary school play recreational ball of some form, and, like generations before them, dream of being a pro athlete. After flashing photos of current faces in the sports world - Manning, O'Neal, etc., I ask the kids "do you think that these guys played rec ball when they were 10 ?" After the realization that they probably did, I move onto "Do you think that, between seasons, they watched tv, played video games, & ate lots of junk food ? Or do they practice the skills that they are missing, and keep their bodies in shape? " Then, we go on to talk about playing ball for the school team, getting into college, - increasing skills through practice, keeping in shape, etc. - ending up in the pros as a great success -  all the while keeping the focus on these world class athletes who the kids see as the ultimate success stories.

After the kids  are really "into" the discussion, I stop and pick up an easy reader. The kids are RIGHT THERE, and I tell them that, after learning to read in first grade, they had just stopped practicing, content with the basic skills, then they would still be reading first grade books. And, at this age, if they don't try new words, find new skills, don't read during the "off' season, don't keep up with their 'teammates',  then eventually, they will lose their skills and fall so far behind that they will never make it past this level of reading. Just as if Michael Jordan had stopped practicing after learning how to make a free throw in rec ball - would he NOW be MICHAEL JORDAN ?

It is a awesome discussion, and the faces of the kids are the proverbial "lightbulb". Each year, after this discussion, the students bombard me with requests for books that are "a little bit hard" - and this, after all, is exactly what I want them to do !

I hope that you will try this with your kids and let me know how it turns out !

How to Make a Game of History

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

by Taylor Nix, World History Teacher

image courtesy of en.wikibooks.org

My 1st hour World History class was struggling at the beginning of the year. I teach in a very low income area that is plagued with utter apathy. My 1st hour was by far the worst of my classes. Getting a single student to raise their head from the desk to even look in my general direction was difficult. No lie. As I listened to them in the hallways between classes I began to hear that many of my students were gamers. I have a decent amount of experience as a gamer and so  I decided that I would turn my classroom into an adventure role playing game.

I enacted my plan at the beginning of the 3rd quarter after Christmas break. Each of my students was no longer an ordinary student at a desk, they were world explorers of their own choosing. The first stage was creating their characters. They picked a name, a class (a specific role a character fills), and even wrote short background stories that explained who they are and where they came from. We decided to split into two teams which would work to compete against each other in classroom activities.

From now on I was Mstrnix, the leader of a group of data gathering soldiers bound and determined to gather and collect information about different civilizations throughout history. Each day in class they would be given a different quest to venture on and experience. Some days both teams would work towards one goal, some days they would do solo quests, and others would be team oriented. Turning in work that was done in class would yield them experience points, also called XP. The xp would be added up in order to cause their character to “level up”.  In the gaming world leveling a character can allow you to use better items, go to new places, and learn new abilities. Each player (student) would start out at level 1 and by doing quests would increase their levels allowing them to use new items, attend parties, and learn abilities that they would not previously have.

I pointed to the back of the room where there was a brand new bulletin board with 8 sheets of paper on it. I explained that every Tuesday I would post 8 new quests on the board for them to complete. They would have from Tuesday to Tuesday to complete them and they have to complete at least 4 of them each week. Five of the quests were for individual completion, while the other three were designed to be completed with either a partner or a member of their team.

Loot, as it is called in the game-o-sphere, is what drives most players to continue to play the game, the idea that you can make your character more super awesome than it already is, and most importantly to increase your stats. All of their loot was designed to fit one of the three categories. I made it extremely simple in that students only have two stats, attack and defense. The heavy class was designed to buff up their defense stat, the medium to be an equal balance of attack and defense, while the light class was to build up the attack stat.

At the end of each chapter I would use a jeopardy type of template to create what I call a “raid”. In the gaming world the most challenging play comes from battling extremely difficult opponents in an attempt to get rare and powerful items. The same was true in my class version. To review for the test we split into teams and using my template would simulate this. I would have five categories on the board that represented different hallways for the raid. Once a group chose a hallway they would attempt to go through five doors of increasing difficulty to get to the boss at the end of the hall. They would first choose a door, I would ask them a question, if they got it right they would go through the door. On the other side of the door was a culturally or area specific creature or monster which would have its own attack and defense stat. The students would roll a dice to determine if their attacks were successful and whether or not they survived. If they defeated their foe they would receive a number of items to split up amongst their team. The day after the raid they would individually fill out a “field report” that documented their encounters in the raid. If you didn’t catch on the field report is just a standard test that covers the chapter or section that we have completed.

I would love to continue explaining some of the other workings and ideas that I have implemented in this hour, but I feel that I am getting a bit off subject a little bit. The key point that I want to drive home to you fellow educators is to embrace your student’s interests. I do not believe that what I have created is in any way a cure all for every class. That being said, I have found a way to inspire and motivate kids to do quality work by using their own creativity and interests in a positive way. They show up to my class ready to succeed and more importantly ready to play. I won’t lie and tell you that it is easy to plan because it’s not. It is almost life consuming to plan just this one class, but I can’t stop. If there was ever any evidence for why I became a teacher it is because of what I have seen in this class.

What Movie Making and Classroom Management Have in Common

Every day, articles are posted on the Internet discussing, highlighting, and mentioning the necessity of implementing technology in the classroom. While most of the articles you read will be about using video games to help with math, or creating class blogs to assist students develop their English skills, this week, I read an article that demonstrated using technology in a completely different way.

Recently, the words “classroom management” took on a whole new meaning as an educator used today’s technology to initiate a creative approach to classroom clean-up. We’ve all experienced trying to get students to do things they don’t want to do, but never have I heard of a solution like the following.

As Todd Nelson explains, “Nothing cleans quite like a little QuickTime movie starring fifth and sixth graders.” Todd approached the task of cleaning the classroom as an opportunity for movie making. His idea hadn’t been planned out, put together, or even carefully thought through, but spontaneity can foster brilliant ideas.

“The film genre was born quite by accident. It was a slow clean-up day on aisle two, and I really wasn’t thinking beyond an amusing ploy when I said, ‘Why don’t we make a movie of clean-up time?’ The result: Instant dharma. Lights, action, camera, whirling dervishes…clean. Chore turns to limelight,” described Nelson.

So where did the inspiration begin? Nelson realized that, “this is the generation for whom there has always been MTV, for whom “music” and “video” have always been inseparable, for whom there is a sound- and video-track for everything. You almost get the feeling that for something to be real and valid, it has to have been recorded. We are all celebrities of our own digital record keeping; all paparazzi of same.”

Nelson’s method may raise questions about what really motivates students to action, or if video making has just become a teacher’s favorite classroom management tool, but it’s probably too early to tell. For now, as Nelson so quaintly puts it, “It’s all good. Whatever gets the crayons off the floor without nagging.”

To learn more about Todd Nelson's movie-making clean up, click here.

Boys Will Be Boys: Thinking Differently About How to Educate Boys in Grade School

Katheryn Rivas, a writer from our friends at online universities blog, submitted this post on early childhood behavior. These classroom management strategies help us understand and work with elementary boys of all ages. I hope you enjoy!

Boys will be boys. So the saying goes — and yet, so many boys in schools all around the country are being punished for being just that: boys. Aggressive, physical, and energetic behavior in school-aged boys has long been a hotly contested topic among child psychologists, teachers, and academics. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, boys

• are 30% more likely than girls to fail or drop out of the education system
• are up to five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD
• under-perform against girls in academics, all the way to graduate school

Schools today increasingly mete out strict consequences for unruly, distractible, and impulsive boys, but are they responding to boys with counter-productive methods? Developmentally, boys are not as mature in grade school as girls, especially in verbal and fine motor capacities. The elementary classroom curriculum is sometimes at least 80% language-based, which puts average boys at a severe disadvantage and worse, doesn't give them the opportunity to become fluent or to practice the language in a safe environment before they are frustrated by expectations that are too high.

Furthermore, with many schools paring down or in some cases completely eliminating recess periods, boys — who learn more quickly by physically playing and socializing — are stifled and stunted by being constricted to the classroom. Joseph Tobin, PhD, a professor of early childhood education, remarks, "The most tiring thing you can ask a boy to do is sit down. It's appropriate to expect for kids to sit still for part of the day, but not all of the day."

The combination of boys' naturally defiant rambunctiousness and schools' intolerance of such behavior often worsens the tendency boys have to act out. Stricter punishments lead to louder resistance. The cycle is unlikely to end unless teachers are prepared to modify their strategies to accommodate their boy students. Here are some ways to compensate for a boy's playfulness and assertiveness in the classroom to both help foster a healthy and positive relationship with learning as well as handle their behavior without snuffing out their spirit:

1. Encourage play. Include as much physical activity for boys as you can in your curriculum, both indoors and out. Children learn by playing, and will expend energy that will otherwise go to aggressiveness or unruliness.
2. Tailor lessons to boys' needs. Balance out your lesson plans with activities that will appeal to boys, such as building things, to keep them engaged and to optimize their learning. Touching, moving, climbing—anything that involves use of their bodies and is "hands-on" will help them learn more effectively.
3. Let them choose reading material. So often schools want students to read material that is not only uninteresting, but that actively bores them. Of course, school shouldn't always cater to the wants of the students, but they (especially boys) will be much more motivated to read independently if they are able to read or write about things that interest them.

Remembering that boys and girls develop differently is a critical part of knowing how to best educate them. Sometimes bad behavior in the classroom is not the result of an overly energetic boy, but an education system that doesn't support a boy's natural growth and tries to shape boys into something other than what they are: boys.

About the Author

This guest post is contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who writes for online universities blog. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

Classroom Management: The Law of Least Intervention

This week's free PD 360 video is called "The Law of Least Intervention," and I think you'll find it fascinating.

Sometimes it's tough not to react.

Sometimes it's very difficult not to make an example of some kids.

But that's what they want, isn't it? A lesson that I have had to learn in various teaching capacities is that when a student acts out, it is very often because they want attention. So what do I do? In my mind, I correct the problem. But to the student, they get the attention they were looking for. Perhaps it's not positive attention, but if they are willing to misbehave, then they are probably past the point of only seeking positive interaction. So when I react (read: over-react) to classroom behavior problems, these students have achieved their goal. It's not surprising, then, that I have faced classroom behavior problems in the past.

That being said, we still need to address the problem. Sometimes ignoring the student or not adequately addressing his or her issues only leads to more dramatic misbehavior. So how do you strike the right balance?

There is no universal cure for every student's classroom behavior problems, but there are some principals we can follow. I hope you enjoy Classroom Management: The Law of Least Intervention.

Managing Behavior with Trust: An Assistant Principal Weighs In

Here's a 3-step process and one highly successful assistant principal's experience in helping students resolve their own behavior issues. Curtis Nightingale, assistant principal at Pratt High School in Pratt, Kansas, returns to the School Improvement blog to weigh in on issues faced by administrators and teachers alike. 

I believe the key to handling discipline, i.e. “classroom management,” is all about people skills. Conflict will happen—that is something we cannot control. But how we approach that conflict—that, we can control. Refusing to take it personal and making your students your allies rather than your opponents is the place to start.

Moment Management

photo courtesy of www.bannockcounty.us

If you will approach difficult moments (those moments where you as an educator feel challenged by a student) in very much the same way you approach teachable moments (when things don’t go as planned, yet a good educator will find a way to make even that event a learning experience) you can begin to see them more as a positive challenge rather than a negative one.

Helping them to break down the conflict in terms they can understand and the ability to see the other side is key to moment management. Many teachers do this through norm setting exercises, tribal councils, etc. The principle is the same. Helping them to recognize the roles in the room--the staff’s and theirs--can help them better understand the conflict. In other words, basic citizenship.

Building Relationships on Trust

I will admit, I rarely had discipline issues in my class. In fact, I am not sure I ever sent a student to the office—short of a fight in the hallway, of course. Now, that may be due to the fact that at 6’2” and 245 pounds I had a “calming effect” on my students, but I like to believe it had more to do with the relationship I developed with them.

I attempted to foster a “we” atmosphere in my room. “We” were going to attack the subject at hand and “we” were going to figure it out. At times I may have pretended not to know the answers, and quite frankly there were times I did not have to pretend, but I was attempting to foster a trench mentality…us against the world, the computers, the textbook, the test…you get the idea.

Many of my potential discipline issues were solved within the first few weeks of school just through the development of an actual relationship with my students. Through our give and take they didn’t want to let me down, thus there was never an issue of disrespect, defiance, or refusal to do what I asked. Did I have kids that failed my class? Yes. Did I have kids who served detentions for me? You bet. Did kids get mad at me? I am sure they did, but I also had to bar kids from eating lunch in my room with me…some of those same kids! I am a firm believer that there are days where the only positive adult contact some of our kids will have is that contact they have with us educators. Sad, yes; sobering, even more so.

How I Help Students Get Over It

As an assistant principal, I will get kids in my office for various defiance issues, and these are the steps I would follow:

1. I always ask them their side first. I validate their viewpoint and then ask them what they believe he teacher’s issues to be.
2. I may then read them the teacher’s comments and we then begin discussing the issue as if they are watching another student involved in the same situation. As we talk through it, I take away emotion, I take away personal viewpoint because of course we can’t know what a stranger is thinking or feeling. As we move through the exercise, they begin to recognize how the teacher/sub/staff member saw their behavior.
3. We then look at the policy and I quote them the worst-case scenario consequence. I ask them how they would apply this to our subject in question.

The next time I deal with this student, the exercise is much more concise, because I have built both trust and a relationship already. And I have done this with one visit of most often less than 5 – 10 minutes. As a teacher I had them for 85 minutes every other day, all year/semester long.

If handled appropriately, imagine the relationship that could be developed with that amount of time!

Tier Two Supports: Interventions for At-Risk Students

Emaley McCulloch from Autism Training Solutions will be giving a free webinar on February 29 as part of the monthly free PD theme here at School Improvement Network. Emaley is writing a few blog posts to help you understand her webinar topic, Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports. 

And here's a hint for ya--it's not just for children with autism, and it's essential for classroom management. Enjoy!

image courtesy of fabianramirez.com

Do you usually have students in your class that need that extra nudge, reminder or encouragement? You know, those students that you usually put right in from of your desk so you can keep a good eye on them? These students often fall into the category of tier two on the Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) continuum.

As you may recall, the continuum of positive behavior supports has three tiers. PBIS expects 90% of students to respond effectively to tier-three interventions but about 10-15% of students will fall into an at-risk category that may need additional support and intervention. So if you have a class of 20 students, two or three of your students may need tier-two interventions. These interventions are often delivered in small groups (e.g. group speech sessions, small group reading instruction, ESL groups, social skills groups etc.).  The purpose of tier- two interventions is to be proactive and to prevent the student from falling further behind his peers academically, behaviorally and socially. 

Here are some evidenced-based tier-two interventions.

Cuing and Group Social Skills Instruction

Students who have difficulty learning in a group setting (e.g. students who talk out of turn, don’t pay attention, disrupt others) can work on appropriate classroom behaviors in a small group. The small group sessions focus on enhancing listening skills and impulse control. The student’s goals are clearly given and stated in positive terms (e.g. raise your hand to talk). The teacher uses a cueing procedure that requires the group to self evaluate their progress on reaching the goals. Students receive positive reinforcement for performing identified behavior.

Behavior Education Program

The Behavior Education Program (BEP) is a behavioral intervention for at risk students that requires that they monitor their behaviors by doing a daily check-in, checkout systems. Students attend daily meetings with an adult before and after school to review goals and monitor their progress. Students are also required to check-in with teachers immediately after class to receive immediate feedback and a daily performance report from the teacher. The report is sent home for the parent to sign and the student receives positive reinforcement for appropriate social skills.

BEP Overview:
http://www.nhcebis.seresc.net/document/filename/61/NHBEPTraining.Hawken.pdf

BEP Forms:
http://www.nhcebis.seresc.net/behavior_education_program(bep)

Practical Functional Behavior Assessments (FBA)

The primary goal of an FBA is to guide the development of effective positive interventions based on the functions of behavior (e.g. escape, attention, access to items, access to self stimulation) (Horner, 1994) Interventions based on the FBA result in significant change in student behavior (Carr et al.., 1999; Ingram, Lewis-Palmer, & Sugai, 2005) Practical FBAs involve simple and realistic team-driven assessment and intervention strategies. Trained school-based personnel can do it.
The steps of a Practical FBA are:

• Identify that an FBA needs to be done
• Make an observable and measurable definition of the problem behavior
• Gather information on the behavior
• Prioritize what behavior needs attention first
• Collect data on the antecedents and consequences of the problem behavior in several environments
• Make a functional hypothesis of what the function(s) is/are, the triggers and what is supporting the behavior.
• Last BUT NOT LEAST, create a plan that utilizes proactive procedures, teaches replacement behavior and outlines how everyone will respond to the behavior.

Here is a video about an FBA and what steps it takes to do one.

http://www.autismtrainingsolutions.com/fba-toolkit-excercise-1

Here is an FBA Toolkit
http://www.autismtrainingsolutions.com/content/fba-tool-kit

Learn more about positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS) at Emaley's free webinar on February 29!

Students Want Discipline (they just don't know how to say it)

As a former street cop and narcotics detective, Curtis Nightingale is no ordinary administrator. Nightingale is now an assistant principal in Pratt, Kansas, who is armed with an arsenal of child behavior strategies from his previous line of work. This is a peer who knows firsthand how to help children find themselves.

Children truly want discipline in their lives. 

I know, this statement seems overly optimistic, but I honestly believe this to be true. While to us “discipline” means expectations and consequences, to students “discipline” means structure, attention, and connection. Many of our students lack this type of construct in their home lives. Whether through a single-­‐parent working

situation, poor parenting skills, or the dreaded friend-­‐parent relationship, many children lack, yet need and want boundaries. 

Armed with this philosophy, how do we as educators approach setting and enforcing realistic boundaries with some of the most difficult students we have in class? I believe the answer lies in our ability to be firm, fair and consistent while making sure they know we care through the “connection” or relationships we build with them.

Pratt High School

Now, before you think I am one of those bleeding heart, mamsy-­‐pamsy guys I will tell you that education is a second career field for me; my first was in law enforcement. Whether as a street cop, a narcotics detective, or later as an administrator I found out fairly quickly that you would not get far in that profession without an ability to build relationships quickly. The ability to separate the person from the conduct, and to not judge was as much a survival tool as it was an investigative one. When I traded in the handcuffs for the detention list, I found that many of these same instincts were applicable. The ability to identify with what is going on with a student before you lay into them for missing a detention or being rude to a staff member is important.

Let me emphasize, I am not condoning the behavior at all. In fact, if you lay the groundwork correctly they will actually explain to you how wrong their conduct was and more often than not choose a far more aggressive consequence than the one you had in mind—you will actually have to negotiate them down from their stiff penalty to your own. Done correctly, they may even thank you for the detention/suspension they end up with. But before we get there, how can we minimize those conversations? It is as simple as moment management.

A friend and colleague of mine developed a fantastic discipline/facility management system that he literally travels the country sharing and training educators in. And although I have never taken his course, he and I were discussing classroom management one time and he said something to me that really rang true to my own philosophy. To paraphrase him, he mentioned instead of trying to think of managing an entire class, or an entire day, if teachers could just learn to manage those critical moments it could drastically reduce not only their stress levels, but also their classroom behavior issues as well. Critical moments…you know the ones. You give an instruction; Johnny challenges you…this is a moment.

In our next installment we will discuss ways we can approach these difficult moments and maintain composure while still addressing  he behavior and showing the student that rather than it being him/her versus you, it is actually you and the student versus the behavior.

Don't miss the free webinar on February 29th at 1:00 p.m. EST with Autism Training Solutions! Child behavior expert Emaley McCulloch will  present "Training Educators to Do Behavior Assessments." By the end of the webinar, participants will be able to:

• Define and understand a range of student behaviors, and recognize why students are acting out
• Determine the psychological and situational motivations behind student behavior
• Use new understanding to better manage the classroom environment

3-Minute Classroom Management

Robert O'Brien is an exceptional principal in Spencer, MA. He shares an experience here that helped one of his teachers regain control of a particularly unruly classroom. His experience is as illuminating as it is simple. 

During my first year as an administrator, I was assigned to observe a new teacher to our high school. Her resume, recommendations, and job history made her appear to be the perfect candidate. However, when classes started, students from her class began to trickle to the office, either being “thrown out” or leaving of their own accord. I was instructed to investigate.

She had been a teacher for approximately five years—why was she having so much trouble?

I entered the class early and watched students come in, many after the bell. She stayed seated at her desk, and waited for the students to take their seats. This was a grade eleven American Literature class, a graduation requirement. The students jostled, slowly becoming aware that the assistant principal was in their classroom, and finally settled down.

After an agonizingly long attendance called, the teacher began the lesson, still sitting behind her desk, told the students to go to a table at the front of the classroom. There where five stacks of papers; the students were instructed to take one page from each pile, staple them together, and return to their desks. What ensued was chaos. All the students approached the table at the same times, the papers soon became a pile of disarray, and pushing and shoving broke out over the staplers.

I sat quietly, now knowing why she had so much difficulty.

Even before the class started, effective teachers have things in order. If a class is working on a five page packet, they are ready to go before class starts. An activator is placed on the board, with the expectation that the students begin working as soon as they walk into class. The teacher should meet the students at the door, offering words of encouragement and appropriate salutation while watching both the hallway and her classroom. When the bell rings, she stands among the students, using her personal space to prevent any disruptions. Attendance can be taken with an old fashioned seating chart. And never, ever have the students collate their own papers. The class is orderly and student are learning. The teacher is stress free and the students are on task.

What a difference three minutes can make.

Don't miss the free webinar on February 29th at 1:00 p.m. EST with Autism Training Solutions! Child behavior expert Emaley McCulloch will  present "Training Educators to Do Behavior Assessments." By the end of the webinar, participants will be able to:

• Define and understand a range of student behaviors, and recognize why students are acting out
• Determine the psychological and situational motivations behind student behavior
• Use new understanding to better manage the classroom environment

New Research Gives Insight to Teacher Training

The academic progress of students is linked directly to where their teachers attended college.

Not to say that if a teacher went to a low-ranking school that they couldn’t or wouldn’t be successful in the classroom, but rather that all teacher training is not created equal. According to the director of the University of Washington Center for Education Data & Research, Dan Goldhaber, the new research revealing that academic progress of public-school students can be traced, in part, to where teachers went to college is just the first step toward determining what kind of training — not where the training occurred — best prepares teachers for excellence in the classroom.

Washington state schools are among the first to see which teacher-training programs seem to result in the best student test scores, but 35 states now have the means to do similar research, according to the Data Quality Campaign, a national organization formed by education and business groups to track state progress on collecting data about students and schools.

Is the future of teacher training on its way up?

To read the full article, click here.

Exercise Increases Students' Ability to Focus in Class

Keeping students focused and engaged in the classroom can be more work than covering the actual lesson material at times. According to an article in the New York Times, one aid in attention retention is exercise. A new study of 138 schoolchildren ages 8 to 11 living in Rome demonstrated that students’ performed better academically after physical activity, specifically endurance exercise (results based on students’ performance on a written test widely accepted as a good indicator of a person’s attention and ability to concentrate).

The study also revealed that when students were asked to learn new drills with a ball in their gym class versus the endurance exercise class, the test scores increased, but not as much as with endurance-focused exercise. The second session, which was “geared toward the development of both motor control and perceptual-motor adaptation abilities,” required more thought than the endurance class, the researchers wrote. The same researchers speculated that asking the students to both think and move was too much, inducing “an excessive stress load” on their brains.

To read the full article click here.

The Power of Professional Learning Communities

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are changing the impact of teachers in schools across the United States. Recently, Jackson Junior High School in Jackson, Missouri has noticed dramatic improvements since the implementation of PLCs.

There are four critical questions at the core of Professional Learning Communities: What do they want students to know? How will educators know when a student has learned it? How will educators respond when a student doesn’t get it? How will educators respond when a student already knows it?

Teachers and administrators at Jackson Junior High School say students and faculty are working collaboratively to answer those questions. And that partnership, they say, is paying big dividends.

The Jackson School Board heard and approved an evaluation of the instructional effectiveness of the junior high's PLC, which just wrapped up its third year. The collaborative culture has seen some real measurable results, according to principal Cory Crosnoe and junior high teachers. Discipline referrals have been cut by a third, and grades were up considerably in the first semester of the recently completed school year. F's made up just 3 percent of the grades, according to district statistics.

Read the full article here.

Learn more about creating and improving PLCs here.

D's Are Not An Option at Mount Olive High School

There will be no more D's this fall at Mount Olive High School in Mount Olive, New Jersey. Larrie Reynolds, the Mount Olive superintendent commented, "D's are simply not useful in society...It's a throwaway grade. No one wants to hire a D-anything, so why would we have D-students and give them credit for it?"

Mr. Fiedorczyk, a seventh-grade science teacher said, "I have kids who walk the boderline. They know it. They admit it. They calculate what they need to get the D." For some students this will mean a stronger effort toward getting an A, B, or C grade.

Full Article at The New York Times

Do you think taking away the D grade would help the students at your school?