Pre-K Student Achievement Best Practices

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

By Jane Papenberg, Pre-K Teacher

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

image courtesy of wpslincoln.org

I am a pre-k teacher in a Title I school.  The school is Westport Academy Elementary, Baltimore, MD I have learned that even at this tender age many children feel beaten down and not smart. To overcome this I work hard to build a climate for these children to feel safe, risk-taking is welcome and "I can do anything," attitude.  We practice, and practice until we get it. We cannot say the words, "I can't" in our classroom.

To accomplish the "I can"  feeling, during the first month of school,  I bake cookies and my para and I write the word can't, on the cookie in icing, for each child.  We read a motivating book about accomplishment, we discuss and practice, I can activities and then we eat the cookie that says "I can't." If the child chooses to eat the cookie the child cannot say the words: I can't,  ever again.  It is reinforced every time someone says the words.

The thing I learned by this activity is that the children take it literally and seriously.  If a new child joins the class, if  another student hears the words, "I can't," the new student is quickly reprimanded by his or her peers.  The student will be told, "You have to try to get help and you have to practice to get it right." I have done this activity 2 years in a row and will continue to, every year.  Never too old to eat a cookie and remember practice is how we get better at whatever is worth accomplishing.

The children leave my classroom confident in their own ability no matter what happens outside of the classroom. The child has a life long skill and knowledge about how to achieve their own dreams and goals.

Webinar on Student Achievement Best Practices

Stuff You Can Use for Managing and Motivating All Students

[EDITOR'S NOTE:

Rick Smith, master teacher and founder of Conscious Teaching, and his associate, Grace Dearborn, will deliver a must-see webinar titled "Stuff You Can Use for Managing and Motivating All Students" on April 25th that focuses on student achievement best practices. Below are some of Rick's ready-to-use strategies for conscious teaching, classroom management, and student achievement. Look for more strategy-filled blog posts from Rick this month!

Learn about April's free webinar and save your seat here!]

Classroom management and student motivation are essential elements of effective teaching.  Our upcoming webinar will focus on these issues, offering dozens of powerful strategies that teachers can implement easily right away.

Visuals for Procedures

Many teachers use visuals and rubrics for teaching content.  They can also be used to teach classroom procedures.  In our webinar we’ll share dozens of samples.  Below are three, along with teacher testimonials.  Our website – www.consciousteaching.com - has more information on these and other strategies that we’ll be sharing on April 25th.

Using the Textbook:

"When I ask my students to get out a piece of paper and pencil and open their textbooks to a certain page I always get the same questions, like "What are we doing?" and "What page are we on?" So I tried displaying a “textbook readiness” photo on my projector screen with an image of a student desk with a book and paper and pencil, and I write the book page number using my overhead pen.  Now students know what to do and if they get confused i just reference the photo and they do it. Voila!

-­K. Servante, 11th grade English teacher, Houston, Texas

Tardiness:

"My students have to be seated when the second bell rings, otherwise they are tardy. Every time I mark a student tardy who is in the room but not seated, he or she argues and becomes disruptive. I tried using photos to show what is tardy and what is not, like I saw in the workshop, and it actually worked! Now if a student argues I just point to the photo on the door and the argument ends right away."

-­S Santos, 7th grade math teacher, New York, NY

Lining Up Rubric:

“Before  I used the lining up pictures and numbers, I dreaded asking my kids to line up at the door. Now it goes  smoothly every time. I just hold up the number of fingers that their line looks like, and the kids adjust and do all the work!"

-A Miller, 3rd grade teacher, Sacramento, California

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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.

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

To what degree is your school implementing Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS)?

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!

The word Positive in Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) encapsulates the whole purpose and aim of PBIS in schools.

Past behavior management models lacked effectiveness because they were –

·    Reactive

·    Focused on punishment

·    Poorly implemented

Through PBIS, team members can take a proactive approach. They can reduce problem behaviors by making pro-social and pro-learning behaviors easy and rewarding for both teachers and students. Thus, teaching positive behavior as relentlessly as we teach reading or other academic content is the ultimate act of prevention, promise, and power underlying PBIS (Algozzine, Wang & Violette, 2011).

Although PBIS is an evidenced-based intervention, it is not a curriculum. PBIS is a framework for ensuring that all students have access to the most effective and accurately implemented instructional and behavior package possible.

The framework consists of three elements to achieve these outcomes:

1. Supporting staff behavior through school-wide systems
2. Supporting student behavior through evidence-based practices and
3. Supporting decision making through data

Framework of PBIS

Systems

The systems that are important in supporting the implementation of PBIS are:

·           Universal screening and assessment (http://www.apbs.org/Archives/Conferences/sixthconference/files/E4%20Breen%20et%20al.pdf, http://www.apbs.org/files/fbapractice.pdf)

·           Commitment to staff training in evidenced-based interventions (http://www.autismtrainingsolutions.com/autism-training-school-benefits)

·           Team-based collaboration (http://www.apbs.org/files/teamingpractice.pdf)

·           Fidelity measures (http://www.apbs.org/Archives/Conferences/8thconference/files/E8-Kelk11.pdf )

·           Progress monitoring (http://www.behaviortrackerpro.com/ )

·           Data-based decisions (http://apbs.org/Archives/Conferences/fourthconference/Files/Riffel_L_no1.pdf )

Evidenced-Based Practices

The practices that are important for supporting the implementation of PBIS are:

·           Functional Behavior Assessment (http://www.autismtrainingsolutions.com/content/fba-tool-kit )

·           Positive Behavior Support Planning (use of reinforcement and teaching meaningful replacement behaviors)

·           Using research-based teaching procedures and curriculum (http://www.nationalautismcenter.org)

·            Establish working conditions that support and promote strengths and talents of staff (http://www.apbs.org/files/systemschange.pdf )

·           Implement practices such as coaching, co-teaching, mentoring and self-assessment to measure fidelity of implementation (http://www.apbs.org/Archives/Conferences/seventhconference/files/F7_Basu.pdf )

Data-Based Decisions

The data that are important for supporting the implementation of PBIS are:

·           Academic assessments and progress monitoring

·           Operational defined behavior is measured over time in multiple settings

·           Quality of life measures (http://www.beachcenter.org/resource_library/beach_resource_detail_page.aspx?intResourceID=2481&Type=Tool )

What stage in the implementation process of PBIS are you in?

Here is a full  step-by-step guide to implementing PBIS in your school

http://www.osepideasthatwork.org/toolkit/pdf/SchoolwideBehaviorSupport.pdf

Behavior and Classroom Management: Make It Work, Make It Last

Hi there, loyal blog readers! It's Jared Heath here with School Improvement Network. By now, many of you have seen the link our website that invites you to be a guest blogger. That's a fun little part of a new way we're helping educators now, but it's only a small part. I'd like to break that corporate image for a minute and talk to you about what we're doing each month.

Free PD


Sure, PD 360 is supporting teachers and students in phenomenal ways. It's incredibly inexpensive for your schools, and it's proven to be more effective than even I imagined (and I'm a marketing guy). But our passion truly is supporting teachers, helping students, and improving schools, and we felt like we could do a little more to help you.

From that idea sprang what we now offer on our new website as "Free PD." Every month has a specific theme, and February's theme is "Behavior and Classroom Management: Make It Work, Make It Last." Here at the inception of this initiative (we just started in January), we are offering the following free resources:

• Free PD 360 videos
• Blog posts that discuss the topic in depth (that's where you come in)
• Free monthly webinars
• Monthly ebooks (coming soon)
• SchoolCasts (coming soon) NOW HERE!

Are you ready for a confession? Me, I'm a high school dropout. Technically. It's not that I didn't have teachers who cared about me, and it's not that I didn't have the capacity. But I knew as a 17-year-old kid that there had to be more to education than what I experienced. I work at School Improvement Network, because I believe in educators. I believe in you. And this is what I can do to help you. [But don't worry--that story ends well. I got my GED, went to college, married a beautiful lady, and started a family. :) ]

Free PD 360 Videos

Like I said earlier, PD 360's differentiated training is doing wonders in schools all around the world. That's why we're releasing one free video from the PD 360 library every week--but be sure to catch it before the next week, because we replace it with a new one every Monday morning (or afternoon). Come visit our Free Video Blog, comment on the video, and for heaven's sake, start a conversation about it. No one is as good at this teaching thing as you.

Blog and Guest Blog Posts

You are the expert--no one knows what it is like to teach in your classroom in your school under your circumstances like you do. And it's not just teachers. Administrators have a lot to tell us about their experiences and how they are making the machine roll. We can tell you anything we want, but you'd probably rather hear it from your peers. We have this blog, and we also write a Common Core 360 blog. Drop by each to see what's going on. We post to each several times a week, and we hope we can answer your needs.

An educator emailed me a few weeks ago, shaming me for asking you to do the guest blog posts for free. That's actually not true. We do giveaways every month for educators who write a guest post for us. For the month of February, EVERY educator who blogs for us gets an ENTIRE YEAR of Common Core 360 for free. In the month of March, EVERY educator who blogs for us gets FREE registration for the School Improvement Innovation Summit.

Send me an email at jared.heath@schoolimprovement.com if you'd like more info.

Webinars

Our partners are just as excited about helping you as we are. At the end of every month, you have a chance to sit in on a free webinar featuring people who do this stuff professionally. In February, you'll hear from the folks at Autism Training Solutions (and when I say they're changing the world, I mean it).

If you can't catch the webinar, we do a pretty good job at posting the video within a couple of weeks for you to watch at your leisure.

SchoolCasts and eBooks

SchoolCasts are audio recordings of webinars and PD 360 videos that you will be able to download and listen to on your commute or on your morning jog. We're working on making these available to you as soon as possible.

At the end of every month,  there's a lot of content that we've gathered for these themes. We put it all together into an ebook and make it available to you--again, entirely free. We'll have January's ebook out (Common Core: Supporting the Whole Teacher and Student) within the next couple of weeks.

The Wrap Up

I invite you to avail yourself of these resources. They are free so that you can use them in your classroom and your profession. Come around every week for the video, email me your blog posts so that I can post them, and enjoy what I am working avidly on making one of the largest caches of free professional development resources.

Our students need you. This is one way we can help you meet their needs.