Implement and Monitor Behavior Support Plans: Data Tells the Story

I think it is time to wrap up the 5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support series by talking about the 5th step--implementing and monitoring the support plan. It's really easy to feel like once you have put together your behavior support plan that you are done and can you relax (oh, and concentrate on one of the thousand things that need attention). Unfortunately, you don't yet know if the plan you put together is actually going to work. So, let me share some tips and thoughts about what the next steps are for this phase of the cycle.

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DOs and DON'Ts for Responding to Challenging Behavior

It's been a while but I really want to try to finish up the 5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support series with the final few posts on responding to challenging behavior considerations. Of course these posts will be interspersed with our Special Educator's Blog Hop coming in February for Valentine's Day and Workbasket Wednesday next week so it won't be too intense.

Oh those behaviors we can't just pretend don't happen! That kiddo who hits the kid next to him because it lights him up like a Christmas Tree that cries screams--"He hit me!" That girl who, in the middle of your instruction when you are working with another student, starts throwing your materials off the table including the scissors.

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Teaching Appropriate Attention-Seeking to Replace Challenging Behaviors (Freebie!)

When we talk about replacement behaviors and functional communication training (FCT), the three most common applications are teaching attention seeking, teaching escape behaviors, and teaching requesting items and actions (for the tangible function). Today I want to talk about how to teach an individual to use an appropriate communicative way to gain attention from others. You can teach students to gain attention in a variety of ways from telling jokes, initiating interactions in play, and initiating conversations among others. These work well for students who have some communication skills but aren't using them effectively. I want to focus today more on the student who does not have effective communicative ways to gain attention. They might be nonverbal and have limited communication skills or they might be verbal but not use their language effectively or communicatively (like the kid who recites the newscast but can't ask for a banana). These are the students who need the basics of communication specifically focused on gaining the attention that their challenging behavior currently serves. Obviously this is something you would use for students whose FBAs indicated attention as a primary function of challenging behavior. I am going to give you the highlights and then I have included a free download of a protocol with more details about how to set it up.

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5 Types and Functions of Visual Supports--Antecedent Interventions for Behavioral Support

In continuing the series 5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support, we are on Step 4 of creating the behavior plan and choosing interventions. Remembering that our interventions must match our hypotheses, one of the first sets of strategies we use are often referred to as antecedent interventions because they address the antecedents to the challenging behavior based on your FBA. As you will remember (or click here to be reminded), one of the huge advantages of using a function-based approach to behavior support is that you can address behaviors before they happen to avoid them all together through prevention. So, today I'm going to talk about some of the more common antecedent strategies we might use.
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