Helping All Students Succeed

Clear Expectations

Both academically and behaviorally, it is important to provide clear expectations for students. This helps set a positive tone in the classroom by preventing the need to remind students to comply with expectations that they may not be aware of.

No one likes to enter a venue with a beverage, only to find out that drinks are not allowed after finding a seat.

If only they put a sign on the door!

Behavioral Expectations:

Safe, Respectful, and Responsible Matrix & Distance Learning Expectations

Academic Expectations:

Project Rubric & Digital Work Flow

Intervention Plans for Problem Areas

Despite any preparations a teacher might make, problem behaviors often arise in classrooms at any grade level. These behaviors can impact the classroom environment, academic performance, and student-teacher relationships negatively.

While student teaching a 9th-grade class, I encountered a problem with constructed student responses to short answer questions. Students were copying and pasting, using one word or phrase as an answer, or not explaining their response.

When asked, students knew how to find the answer in the text, students were also aware that they should probably choose to use full sentences and their own words.

I decided to use a literacy strategy intervention in the class that focuses on citing and explaining answers, as this will always be expected of writing in a science setting.

The steps used in identifying problem behavior, devising an appropriate intervention, and planning for long-term fidelity are sensible to a variety of problem areas.

R.A.C.E Strategy for Constructed Responses Intervention Plan

1. Define the problem behavior: Unexpected student responses to Short Answer Questions (SAQs) are defined as written student responses to Short Answer Questions that are copied and pasted directly from the textbook, that use sentences fragments or stand-alone words, or that provide an answer without any supporting evidence or reasoning.

2. Define the replacement behavior: Expected student responses to Short Answer Questions are defined as following the R.A.C.E method of responding to Short Answer Questions. Responses should be typed, or dictated and will; restate the question, answer the question, cite evidence, and will provide reasoning for the answer.

3. Develop a Procedure & Routine: R.A.C.E literacy strategy, a literacy method used to thoroughly answer a question.

Restate the Question

Answer the Question

Cite the Evidence

Explain your Answer

4. Decide on a Method of Instruction that Involves Students: Students began by practicing R.A.C.E. responses with the person next to them by asking and responding to simple, non-academic questions such as, ’What did you have for dinner last night?’ and ‘Who is your favorite movie character?’

Students practice by generating R.A.C.E compliant answers, 'My favorite movie character is Deadpool. He says a lot of funny things, and is tough, while still looking out for his friends. Anti-heroes make the best heroes. '

Encourage Fidelity

4. Precorrect: Prior to assignments and assessments that include SAQs, reviewed the expectations for responses.

5. Visual cues and reminders: R.A.C.E. poster in the classroom.

6. Group-Oriented Reward System: An intermittent reward system with 80% R.A.C.E. compliance among all student responses resulting in a class-wide reward.

Intervention Plans can involve a good deal of planning and consistent long-term implementation to yield results. It is important to decide what problem areas to focus on and to communicate goals and explore ideas with other staff to increase the probability of success.

Additional Tools

I have worked with many students who benefit from a visual schedule as a daily component of a long-term plan to maximize time spent in the classroom. Depending on their needs, many students can use daily agendas that include a quick self-assessment. Typically, these are tucked in a subject notebook, or incorporated into a daily agenda that the entire class uses.

Working with Behavioral Health Professionals and Occupational Therapists in developing visual schedules began as an effort to meet individual student needs. Sometimes I would gather observations and data regarding student behavior, then reach out to the member of the student's support services team.

However, since then visual schedules have just become a thing that I do. I make them for students who struggle with classroom routines or executive functioning, I create them for field trips, I sometimes make them for Science Labs or project work. Everyone benefits from the clarity of expectations regarding behavior and task accomplishment.

I also use Visual schedules myself; for adjusting to a new schedule or adopting a new routine.

Example: Visual Schedules

Visual schedules are laminated, with students using dry erase markers to fill them out. Students clean these at the end of the day.

We agreed that if 90% of students met their point goal by the end of the week, we would watch a 10 minute segment of a Science documentary to end class on Fridays.

This visual schedule (above) was created for a middle school student new to the classroom. To my surprise, other students in the classroom asked for a schedule as well.

This visual schedule (below) functions as both a schedule and a 'to do' list for Middle School Math students.

For each item on the schedule, the student would have a correlating section in their Math Notebook.

Google Sites

Report abuse