Weekly Reflection 6: Science Lesson

Today I met with the science teacher at the school to discuss a new idea for a lesson tomorrow. Several teachers have been having difficulty with one of the classes in the school. There have been some meetings around how to best handle them and a new discipline policy has been put in place. One of the modifications for the students is that they cannot be in the science lab for science class; they have to earn back the privilege. The science teacher had been trying to conduct some really engaging lessons, but they involved a lot of movement and the lessons were unsuccessful.

The science teacher thought about how she can plan a lesson that would be useful to the students and engaging, but for now, kept them in their seats. She came up with the idea to run Jeopardy like game using MSP questions.  I helped her today with some of the planning. We decided on how many categories there would be, point values of the questions, that the students would be in groups of two, and what the students can win with their points. There will be two adults in the classroom, the science teacher and myself. I will continue this post tomorrow with a debrief on the lesson.

The lesson went okay. It seems to me that the science teacher and I differ a little on how to best manage the behavior in the classroom, and I don’t think we did a good job of making clear to each other the difference in our expectations beforehand. It was also challenging, because since it is her class I felt like I was holding back a lot and not intervening to help her when she seemed to be struggling or making what I thought, was the wrong management decision.

Overall, the behavior of the students was improved and they were very excited about the prospect of earning back being in the science lab or having extra recess. I do think that most of the students were engaged, but there was still an undercurrent of the disrespectful behavior that she is struggling with. After class we had a short debrief together and though we agreed that it went pretty well and we agreed on some changes we could make for next time; it is seems we have a little different perception of the behavior. It is possible I have higher expectations than her, but I also know that having those higher expectations is the only way to get these kids to behave how you expect or want. This is something that we will have to work on.

EDU 6657-Effective Classroom Design and Academic Instruction

Effective classroom design and academic instruction does improve behavior. It is likely that if a student is not engaged in a lesson, or does not have something given to them to complete, that they will engage in negative behavior. We, as teachers, need to come up with how will keep the students attention. According to what we learned in class there are five evidence based strategies for effective classroom management, which in turn will lower the negative behavior in a classroom. They are:

1. Make the most of your classroom space

2. Continually review and practice posted behavior expectations

3. Student should be actively engaged in class in a way that an observer would notice

4. Have a positive reinforcement system in place

5. Have a negative reinforcement or punishment system in place

By having these systems in place you help decrease the chance of problem behaviors in the classroom. These structures help keep students busy in a meaningful way. It also means that the teacher has in place a plan to try to redirect problem behaviors or give consequences for problem behaviors. This short list really gives classroom teachers a lot of tools.

According to the Article, Instructional Adaptation in the Management of Escape Maintained Behavior in a Classroom, “ Disruptive classroom behavior is a major factor contributing to teacher stress and discontent and significantly affects teachers’ capacity to maintain productive and orderly learning environment (Hawe, Tuck, Manthei, Adair, & Moore, 2000).” (Moore, Anderson, & Kumar, 2005). We can empower teachers with strategies to avoid having disruptive behavior, and using the above mentioned strategies is a great start to effective classroom management.

Moore, D. W., Anderson, A., & Kumar, K. (2005). Instructional adaptation in the management of escape-maintained behavior in a classroom. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 7, 216-223.

 

EDU 6657 How can we improve behavior outcomes for students?

The first step in setting up a situation where students can be behaviorally successful is to have clear expectations. I think the School-Wide Positive Behavior Support s (SWPBS) system is an excellent program that sets students up for success and understands that there will be students at different behavior levels. SWPBS uses a tiered system. In class we learned that the idea is that most kids (about 80%) will fall in Tier 1. If the school has clear and easy to remember expectations that are practice and are routine. As well as positive reinforcement built in, most students will see success. There is also a tier 2 and 3. Tier 2 typically represents 10%-15% of the student body and tier 3 about 5%-10%. What makes SWPBS unique, I think, is that there is still a SWPBS plan for the tier 2 and 3 students. They do not just get thrown into a different program. The program is for everyone, it just may need to be adjusted according to the needs of those students. “Within an SWPBS framework, these evidence-based interventions are organized further into a continuum that first considers what all students require for behavior support and then sequences interventions into an array of increasingly specialized intensity to accommodate students whose behaviors are not responsive to a given intervention (Sugai and Horner, 2009, p.229).

Another way to improve behavior outcomes is to look at an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) approach. In this approach there are four ways of explaining behavior. These are:

1. Escape- This is where students try to avoid a difficult task

2. Wants attention – This can be from peers or adults

3. Access to a Tangible-Which is seeking monetary or social reinforcements

4. Self-reinforcement- Giving self a reward, like you get to go for a walk if you do this

By using this approach and explaining why students are engaging in certain behaviors, the circumstances can be modified to get better behavior outcomes.

Sugai, G., & Horner, R. H. (2009). Responsiveness-to-intervention and school-wide positive behavior supports: Integration of multi-tiered system approaches. Exceptionality, 17, 223-237.