The Teaching Behavior Together Podcast

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Today we're going to be talking about how to incorporate behavioral and social emotional learning skills into your classroom in really fun ways.

The very first strategy I have for you for incorporating behavioral and social emotional learning skills in your classroom in a fun way would be to incorporate it into your morning meetings. If you already have morning meetings set up, set aside three to five minutes where you can incorporate some behavioral and social emotional learning targets. The easiest way to do this is have your students model different coping strategies that they engage in. It's really fun to have them submit different coping strategies they engage in in some sort of box or jar and then you randomly pull one out and whoever submitted that gets to model it for the entire class and then the entire class gets a chance to practice.

It's really easy to incorporate this type of strategy within your morning meeting because you already have the routine of your morning meeting this is just something you can add at the end really quickly or maybe in the middle to break up the different things that you do during your morning meeting. It is a great way to get in that social emotional learning right at the beginning of the day.

Another strategy you can use would be to incorporate some social emotional learning games with in your stations or rotations. So if you already have stations or rotations set up in your classroom maybe you do them three times a week or you do them everyday you can easily incorporate some social emotional learning games into those stations or rotations.  Now you're probably thinking what social emotional learning games are out there for me to incorporate? Well I have a bundle for you on teacherspayteachers that includes several different social emotional learning games that you can easily incorporate into your stations or rotations. 

Some examples of games included in that resource would be some tic tac toe activities, various memory games, emotions dominos, I-spy worksheets, and color by emotions worksheets. All of these different activities and games are great for stations and rotations. They have students working together or independently depending on how you have it set up. If they are working together you're also building in those collaborative working skills and teaching additional social emotional learning skills. 

Lastly, another great way to work in social emotional learning skills into your classroom would be to incorporate some different read alouds that address different SEL skills.  I did an entire episode on my top four behavioral social emotional learning read alouds to have for your classroom check out episode 61 to hear all about my favorites. 

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Social Emotional Learning Games
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Today we're going to be talking about one simple strategy you can implement in your classroom tomorrow to start seeing a decrease in disruptive behaviors. 

This simple strategy is called proximity and what it looks like is continually moving around the room while you are teaching. 

I know this sounds super simple, how can just moving around the room decrease disruptive behavior? But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Think about a time you were at a professional development or maybe a staff meeting and you had a text message and you checked your phone. If your principal or whoever was leading that PD walked over to you, you probably would put your phone away. this is the principle of proximity. 

So what could this look like in your classroom? Essentially all you have to do is walk around your classroom while you're delivering content or students are engaging in different activities either independently or collaboratively with each other.

Yep it's that simple all you have to do is walk around your classroom and continue to circulate. If a student is engaging in disruptive behavior you might want to hang near that spot a little bit longer and allow them the chance to engage in that appropriate behavior.

 Being in close proximity allows you to do two really important things and the first is probably the most important.  First, it allows you to provide direct reinforcement, praise, or acknowledgement for engaging in that appropriate behavior when that student starts engaging in that appropriate behavior. Because you're in really close proximity you're able to give that feedback really quickly. 

This also allows you to provide a really quiet redirection towards an appropriate behavior or a prompt towards appropriate behavior. This gives the student an idea of what they should be doing and then once they start engaging in that appropriate behavior you're in close proximity and can provide that reinforcement, praise, or acknowledgement.

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast, today we are going to chat about dealing with tantrums. Tantrums can be rough in the classroom, they can really disrupt the lesson you are teaching as well as trigger other student behavior. Here are some of my go to strategies when dealing with tantrums. 

My first tip when dealing with a tantrum is to ask the child what they need. I would say something like “tell me (or whatever form of communication they use) what you need.” And wait. It might take a little bit of time, but I give the wait time necessary for them to process what I asked and identify what they need. At times they may not be able to identify what they need because they do not know what they need. It might seem like forever, because minutes during a tantrum, are like extra long minutes, but giving wait time can increase the likelihood you will get a response. If we keep asking questions and prompting, it might delay the student being able to tell us what they need. You might also ask something like “do you need a break or a walk?” if you think that would be more appropriate for the student. Give them a chance to identify what they need and allow them access. 

Next, if I have to give directions, I keep them as short as possible and I include what I want the student to do within the direction. I might say something like, I need you to walk over here.” Or something similar to that. If I am giving directions it is to keep the student safe. Maybe the tantrum is happening in the hallway and a class is about to come in from lunch, I want to maintain the safety and dignity of that student so I might direct them to a different location. If you give long or complicated directions the student probably will not be able to process them and it probably won’t help the tantrum, it might even make it worse. Keep verbal directives to a minimum as they require the student to process information which is challenging to do when they are elevated. 

Lastly, I model regulation strategies. Essentially you want to co-regulate with the student. Demonstrate some go to regulation strategies and wait it out with them. I know this can be really challenging, again minutes during a tantrum seem really long. Modeling a strategy can help students engage in that strategy and hopefully allow them to calm down their body. We want our students to be able to return to a state of calmness no matter how long that takes. Of course we want it to be sooner than later, but sometimes these things just take a while.

As a bonus time, teaching regulation strategies when students are calm is the best way to ensure they will have tools in their tool box to engage in strategy that will allow them to be successful at calming themselves. I highly suggest teaching and working on self-regulation on a regular basis in your classroom. If you need a calm down kit, there is a free one in the description of this podcast, download it today and set up a calm down corner tomorrow in your classroom.  

As always, I love it when you share with me how these tips work in your classroom over on Instagram. Let me know if your kids are loving the calm down kit! Chat with your soon.
Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Calm Down Kit
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Today we are going to talk about what to do in situations where a student presents with some challenging behavior and the recommendation that you are receiving from others within the building is to build a relationship with that student. This can be a really challenging situation to be in. When you are looking for support from other personnel within the building and you're continually getting that same recommendation of building a relationship with a student, it can be really frustrating. 

So first let's talk about the importance of relationships within a school setting. Relationships are the foundation for everything. Building relationships with your students and within your classroom by creating that positive classroom climate is essential to success within your classroom. It is definitely the foundation that we build off of when challenging behaviors present. 

The very first thing to do is document all of the interventions that you have in place. This can be easily done through just a checklist of general interventions that you have set up in your classroom such as antecedent strategies that you incorporate into your classroom, relationship building strategies, and any strategies that you use to create that positive classroom environment and climate. 

The next thing I would do is advocate for more support. and what I mean by additional support would be a Tier 2 level intervention or tier three if that's appropriate based on the challenging behavior that you're experiencing. it is important to remember that Tier 2 level interventions are typically done in a small group format and that this often can take place either in the classroom or take place out of the classroom. 

The last thing I would do would be to advocate for feasible interventions to be implemented within your classroom. After you've documented your interventions and advocated for Tier 2 or tier 3 level support that involves explicitly teaching skills that our student might be lagging in order for them to engage in appropriate behavior in your classroom, I would then ask for assistance in implementing those interventions feasibly within your classroom. Don't be afraid to ask for support or ask for someone to come in and provide assistance or model what it could look like in your classroom. this shows that you're open to implementing different interventions and you're also open to additional support from other personnel within your building. 

I really hope this episode was helpful, try out some of these strategies let me know how they work for you over on Instagram at teaching behavior together and have a great rest of your day.
Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast, today we are going to chat about some of my favorite SEL read alouds. These are must haves for your classroom bookshelves. All of the books will be linked in the description of this podcast. You will be using my amazon affiliate link so I do benefit monetarily from your purchase if you choose to use that link. 

The first book or really book set is the Little Spot of Emotions book set. This is an 8 book series with books about happiness, kindness, anger, sadness, etc. The books are great when you are introducing emotions and can be an essential addition to a classroom library. 

The next book set would be the Worry Woos. These are a series of books about emotions and provide students with strategies for managing those emotions. They also come with plush toys that could be a great addition to your classroom. These books are super fun and engaging for all of your students. 

I also highly recommend the Kids Book About books. You can pick from so many topic areas like empathy, anxiety, sharing, etc. You can look through all of the topics and pick which ones you are interested in. The books are great for some of the more challenging topics to talk about with your students as they provide the language needed to talk about these topics. 

My fourth recommendation would be the What Should Darla or What Should Danny Do books. These are books about decision making and power of choices. The books come with multiple stories making them perfect for a series within your classroom. 

I have included links for all of these books in the description below. 

Little Spot Books https://www.dianealber.com/

Worry Woos https://www.worrywoos.com/

A Kids Book About https://akidsco.com/

What Should Danny Do https://www.whatshoulddannydo.com/

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Today we are going to be talking all about power struggles. We’ve all been there, in the middle of a power struggle wondering how we got there in the first place.  

 I know we have all been there, but on the off chance you have never been in a power struggle, they are basically any instance in which you have an unproductive back and forth with a student. This can look like you asking a student to do something and them responding with no and you two go back and forth without any progress toward a desired outcome. They are not a great place to be. The best strategy is to avoid getting in a power struggle in the first place, and here are my three go to strategies to do this successfully. 

First, take a problem solving approach and invite the student to problem solve with you. For example, if you are asking the student to transition from area to another and they do not want to you might say “hey (insert student name) it is time for small group, what are your thoughts on how we can get there?” It might take a little while, and often does, but you can help guide the student through a problem solving approach and agreeing to a solution together. Basically you are helping the student by providing some structure and choice to engage in the appropriate/requested behavior. Let’s walk through another example, say you work with older students and you have to keep reminding them to put their phones away. You might say something like “hey everyone, I don’t want to have to keep reminding you to put your phones away, how can we solve this?” Listen to all of their ideas and come up with a collaborative plan together. You might be surprised with some of the ideas they come up with. I have seen this work on both the individual and group level. The key is, when you think you might enter a power struggle, invite the student to help problem solve a solution. 

Another strategy would be to provide a non verbal prompt. This can be a written prompt on a post it or maybe a gestural prompt or a signal to the student. Either way, if you are engage in nonverbal behavior, the student is less likely to produce a verbal response back. Therefore, avoiding a power struggle. This might look like putting a post it on a student’s desk that says “we are working on our math, you can play your game at lunch.” All too often when we give verbal prompts we invite that verbal response back and it might not lead us in a good direction.

The last strategy also involves how we deliver prompts as well. One strategy that can work well is to prompt around the behavior. What I mean by that is when you are prompting, avoid including the undesired behavior in the prompt. Often when we include the undesired behavior in the prompt students feel called out, criticized and become defensive. If we prompt around the behavior and include the behavior we want to see, this could help us avoid a power struggle. For example instead of saying stop talking across the room to your friend you might say “hey I don’t want you to miss this, let’s flip to this page so we can stay on track, you can talk to your friend later. This might not be the way you are used to prompting and whenever you can include the desired behavior you are much more likely to see success. I would give it a try and come up with some common prompts you give and reword them to prompt around the undesired behavior. This might help increase your use of the prompts in the future and avoid those power struggles. 

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Hi friends and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. I am so glad you joined us for this chat about the 4:1 praise ratio strategy. This is a pretty common strategy used or discussed within schools, however, it is really challenging to carry out. Today we are going to talk about some feasible ways to master this strategy and increase those desired behaviors within your classroom. 

Ok, the 4:1 praise ratio strategy, for those that are unfamiliar, basically states that we should provide 4 positive interactions for every 1 corrective/redirective interaction. Some research says 5:1 some says 12:1. Whatever research you are reading, they all say we need to provide more praise or positive interactions than corrective/redirective/negative interactions when we are working with our students.  

My first suggestion would be to download a repeat timer app on your phone. There are a ton of free ones, they are usually work out timers that notify you on an interval you set. I set my interval to like 3 minutes but this can change depending on how long my lesson is, so set it to an interval that works best for you. I keep mine on vibrate, put it in my pocket, and use it as a tactile prompt to provide reinforcement. This does not guarantee I hit the 4:1 ratio, but it serves a prompt for me to deliver praise or engage in a positive interaction. Therefore, I do not go through the whole lesson and completely forget to acknowledge the positive. 

Another strategy I have used is post it praise. I included this in episode 55, but here is a quick recap. Before class I jot down a couple of praise statements I might give to the students. These might be general praise statements, like great work staying on task, or more specific praise statements related to the activity you are working on, such as nice job completing that puzzle. I would say, I write down maybe 10 and pass them out as we go through the activity. This way I already have my praise ready to go the post its serve as a reminder for me to give out that praise. Again, this does not guarantee I hit that 4:1 ratio, but it increases the likelihood I will be giving out that praise. 

Ready for the next strategy-this one is pretty simple. Go back to the basics and praise or acknowledge what you see and hear. A lot of times when I am working with teachers, they tell me they do not know what to acknowledge. I always tell them to start with what they see or hear. It might sound silly, but the more you practice this the better you will get at delivering praise. You will start to notice all the things you students are doing well and provide praise for that. You can say something like “I heard you using kind words with a friend, nice job.” “I noticed you worked really hard when we were in groups, great work.” Using the phrase “I noticed, or I heard” can help guide your praise or positive interactions. 

Lastly, every time you provide a redirection or correction let that serve as a prompt to yourself that you need to deliver a praise statement. This will get you to a 1:1 ratio which is a great place to start. Then you can slowly increase the amount of praise you are giving over time. With this strategy you are basically using yourself as the prompt. If it helps, for a couple of days, tally the praise statements and redirections you give in your classroom or have a teacher friend come in and observe you and tally. This will give you an idea of where you are and can help you set goals related to your praise goals! 

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Hi friends and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Last episode we talked about increasing engagement in your classroom. Today we are going to be talking about increasing work completion. I have one simple strategy for you to try in your classroom that we will chat about in today’s episode. Before I do that, if you have not already downloaded my free behavior intervention guide with 20 pages of strategies and examples of how to use those strategies in your classroom (across grade levels) use the link in the description of this podcast to do that right now! 

 Ok, friends, onto the strategy: often times when students are working independently or in groups on a task they can get a little off task. This is pretty normal, and we want to support our students in developing skills to maintain engagement and get back on task if they need that support. 

Have you ever heard of a pomodoro technique? Maybe you have used this when writing lesson plans or IEPs. If you haven’t here is a basic explanation. You set a timer for 25 minutes, turn off all distractions and work for that entire period. You identify a goal for the tasks you want to get done, say for example, write the profile section for an IEP, or get your math lesson planned for next week. You only do the tasks you designated for those 25 minutes, no checking emails, or running to grab a snack. When the timer goes off you get a five minute break and repeat. If you haven’t tried it, I highly suggest it, the strategy has been shown to increase work production immensely. 

You can use this same type of strategy for your students. You can do this is a couple of different ways. If you are working with younger students you might set some predetermined goals for a work period. Let’s say you are giving your class 30 minutes to create a story strip in a group. Maybe the story strip has 5 parts. You might set a timer for 8 minutes and let them know they should be done with the first two parts in that 8 minutes, let them have a short break, and repeat. This helps students remain on task and prevents some off task behavior like side conversations from occurring. Additionally, it demonstrates goal setting and working to meet a goal. 

If you are working with older students you might give them the overall time period, say 60 minutes to work on a science lab. You can let them know every 15 minutes a timer will go and they will get a short break. Have them identify where they want to be as a group at every 15 minute time marker so they can develop those time management skills. 

This strategy also works great for independent work. Basically you are asking students to set mini goals and providing structures and supports via a timer and short breaks to foster work completion. We are hitting on a lot of social emotional learning targets with this strategy such as self-management, goal setting, time management, accountability, and if you have your students working in groups, collaboration skills! 

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Hello everyone and welcome the this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast! I am so excited you are joining us today for this chat about increasing class participation. This is one of my favorite topics and I am going to share three of my go to strategies when we are trying to increase participation. 

All of these strategies fall under the umbrella of active student responding opportunities. These strategies are great for whole class or small group lessons where you are checking for understanding prior to a task or experiential activity.

The first strategy I have for you is called response cards. Response cards can take a variety of forms, I am going to talk about a couple of the more popular ones and you can tweak those to make them feasible for your classroom. The most popular form of response cards is white boards and dry erase markers. I like to either laminate or insert paper into those page protectors and have students use that as the white board. This can be more cost effective and you should be able to find those materials easily. 

When using response cards, you pose a question or problem and students answer or complete that problem. When you give the signal, students raise their boards. You glance around the classroom and gauge understanding. If the majority of the class was correct you move on, if you noticed the class has mixed answers or the majority missed the answer, you review that content. This allows for minute by minute feedback on the understanding of the lesson. This way you can determine if the whole class understands a concept instead of just the student that raised their hand. 

Another way to do this would be to print out ABCD cards and have multiple choice questions for students to answer. They would just hold up the letter that represented their answer. If you want to go even simpler, you can have students use the ASL alphabet and hold up their hands with the answers. All of these modes of answers are referred to response cards. This is an evidenced based strategy that has been shown to increase participation in the classroom immensely. 

Ok, moving onto to the next strategy, choral responding. This is another great strategy for increasing participation. If students know they will have to respond they are more likely to pay attention, formulate a response, and engage with the content. This is a pretty simple strategy to use, all you have to do is ask a question, give a signal, and tell all of your students to respond. You can listen for the general understanding of the concept you are teaching. Again, this is a great way to determine if you need to reteach a concept or review something with your class. 

Lastly, there is a strategy called number heads. This strategy involves pairing students up into small groups. You will have the students count off within their group. For example, if you have groups of five, students will count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and each person will have a number. During your lesson or at the end of your lesson you pose a question that the group will answer to demonstrate their understanding. You can either call out a number for the whole class and the student with that number in each group share’s the answer for the group, or you can visit groups individually and call on different numbers to share. This strategy is great if you want to increase collaborative opportunities in your class and has been shown to improve academic performance and collaborative skills amongst your students.

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Today we are going to be talking about redirecting behavior. This can be tricky in the classroom. Often times what I see when we are redirecting behavior is the potential for power struggles. Does this sound familiar “(insert student name), stop talking while I am talking And we get the response-I wasn’t talking. Or “insert student name, please put your phone away-It’s just one text, why are you getting upset?” Or insert student name “We can’t hit our peers-he hit me first.” All of these are defensive responses. And can lead to further conversation that is often unproductive. It doesn’t feel good when we are redirected. It often puts our students on the defense as well. If you are experiencing these types of responses to the redirections you give, here is the strategy I have for you: prompt around the behavior. I know this might go against what you learned about prompting, but hear me out first.

What I mean by prompting around the behavior is avoiding including the behavior of concern in your prompt. For example, with our prompt that sounded like “stop talking while I am talking-I might say something like “I don’t want you to miss this, let’s be quiet so you can hear me.” This prompt tells the student what we want them to do “be quiet” and avoids highlighting the behavior of concern. 

Here’s another example, instead of put your phone away you might say “now is a great time to take notes on what I have on the board.” Again, this give the student an idea of what you want them to be doing instead of being on the phone. Yes telling them to put the phone away is another example of telling them what you want them to do, but this also tells them what you want them to do instead of being on the phone. 

Ok, let’s do our last example: instead of we cant hit our peers you might say-We need to show kindness to our friends, how can we do that right now? Again this prompts around the behavior and avoids highlighting the behavior of concern which can promote a defensive response from the student. 

Prompting around the behavior gives the student an idea of the behavior you would like to see instead and helps us avoid that defensive response. If you notice you are getting a lot of those defensive responses this might be a strategy you try with your class our a couple of students. As always, it is best practice to provide more positive acknowledgements related to behavior over redirections/corrections. Keep that in mind while you are using this strategy as well. 

To make this more effective, if you are having to give a lot of prompts to a student, you might want to have a conversation with them about the behavior you are concerned about. This can happen in private and not immediately after an incident. Even the slightest prompt can be perceived as a criticism and result in that defensive response. When talking with the student we want to make sure they are calm and ready to have a productive conversation.  

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
Follow me on Instagram
Join my email list