High-Leverage Practice 10: Social/Emotional/Behavioral

I am going to discuss High-Leverage Practices as mentioned on the CEC website organized around four aspects of practice. I hope you will join in the conversation!

“HLP10 - Conduct functional behavioral assessments to develop individual student behavior support plans.”

Many times I can look at a child’s behavior and know that it needs to be changed but without doing some deeper research, I know that I may not be able to change the behavior permanently. I must first do a functional behavior assessment.

I need to determine the behavior that needs to be changed. Once I determine that, I need to look at other factors that affect this behavior.

First I need to see what happens before this behavior occurs. I need to see if there is something that is triggering this behavior. Things I might not realize affect the student may be causing the student to react in a certain way. There is something in the environment that is causing this behavior to happen. I need to list things that happen before the behavior occurs.

Next, I need to see what consequences happen after the behavior is exhibited. What results does the student get from behaving this way? How does it affect the other students and the teacher? How does it affect the student? I may need to change what may be reinforcing this behavior.

Then I need to think about a replacement behavior I would want to substitute for the behavior that needs to be changed. I need to find an appropriate alternative for inappropriate behavior. I also need to think about what I need to do in the environment in order to make this replacement behavior the better option.

For example:

Negative behavior: Student screams.

Cause – The fluorescent lights come on in the classroom

Consequence – the student is taken out to the hallway and the screaming stops.

Replacement behavior – no screaming.

Changing the environment – using table lamps with LED bulbs and not turning on the fluorescent lights.

If the student is having the same behavior issues in other classrooms, it may be a good time to have a meeting so the whole team can brainstorm the answers to this functional behavioral assessment.

At first, this assessment may seem like a lengthy process but the more often you do this, the easier it becomes. Soon it will become second nature to helping students change their behaviors.

Do you do a functional behavioral assessment? What steps do you follow? Please share.