Behavioral Intervention Plans (Secondary): Developing a Plan to Address Student Behavior

Transcript: Challenge

Behavioral Intervention Plans (Secondary): Developing a Plan to Address Student Behavior

Tasha is a quiet tenth grader who primarily keeps to herself, except in band class where she is the first-chair violinist. Seventh-grade Isaiah is a social butterfly who has many friends and enjoys reading fiction and writing his own stories. Despite their strengths, both students display severe and chronic interfering behaviors. Tasha is frequently off task and, when redirected, her behaviors can escalate from playing with materials to putting her head down to walking out of the classroom without permission. This escalation presents a safety concern and is negatively impacting her academic performance. Isaiah, who has an intellectual disability, often hits, pushes, or kicks classroom furniture or materials. This tends to happen in the general education classroom when he has to stop engaging in preferred activities, and these physically aggressive behaviors disrupt the learning environment for everyone. For each student, a team of educators and family members worked together to conduct a functional behavioral assessment, or FBA, to understand why they were engaging in these behaviors. The teams collected comprehensive assessment data to identify influential factors and patterns in the students’ behaviors. Based on the data, the teams hypothesized that the function of Tasha’s behavior was to escape from challenging academic demands, while the function of Isaiah’s behavior was to access preferred activities. Now that these teams understand more about the context and root causes of the students’ behaviors, they need to identify supports and interventions to help them engage in behaviors that will facilitate success in school.

Here’s your challenge:

How can educators modify a student’s behavior?

How can educators know if interventions are effective?