An Intervention Designed Promote Appropriate Classroom Behavior

*Since Week 1 was unsuccessful in going to sleep around that specific goal time I changed my project by pushing my sleep goals back 30 minutes for the remaining 4 weeks.

It is important for a teacher to challenge disruptive behaviour immediately and consistently. I feel by trying to make lessons enjoyable and providing work that helps students to achieve minimizes disruptive behaviour. The use of good communication by the teacher can also be a useful tool. This includes the use of the voice, phrasing, eye contact and body language. For example, using an assertive tone when making a request or physically positioning yourself near disruptive students.

The teacher could incorporate a positive behavior token system for students to earn paper money dollars to use for the classroom store.

“In summary all five student showed a considerable gain on their report cards. The fact that the students also improved in other areas may be to the halo effect; that is, teachers having been biased when grading the papers, but it should be noted that the student also showed an gain in there nonacademic class.” Hickey, K., Imber, S. & Ruggiero, E. (2015)

Token economies have a long history of being identified as evidence based practice (Simonsen, Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers, & Sugai, 2008). Through the use of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, token economies function to manage student behaviors. Such economies are widely used in classrooms, especially in special education classrooms that tend to have students with more severe behavior problems.

Overall, I really enjoyed doing the behavior modification project this semester. Originally I did not think I was going to be able to take much away from the project since I was not the one who was having a behavior modified, but surprisingly I was able to learn a lot from the project. After a while of watching and observing my partner, Karley, who was the participant in the project, have success with the stress management techniques, I decided to apply some of the techniques to my life as well. Even if it wasn’t part of the project, I still felt I could benefit from the techniques.

Content area F, Behavior-Change Systems, includes the task list item F-02: Use token economies and other conditioned reinforcement systems (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2014). My submission for this content area is the token economy assignment from SPE 565, which demonstrates the implementation of a token economy system. A token economy system uses items which are placed or attached to a board to positively reinforce desired behaviors. While the items used may have little to no value, they can be saved and used to gain access to a more desired item or activity. The intervention works by conducting a preference assessment to identify the items with the strongest reinforcement value. These items can be used as the rewards, or back-up

Birnbrauer, Wolf, Kidder, and Tague (1965) performed an experiment using the token economy on a special education classroom with seventeen individuals. Each individual was given assignments to complete, but the assignments varied for each student. Some of the assignments were sight vocabulary, phonics, reading comprehension, cursive writing, addition, and time-telling. There were two ways that the students could earn tokens. If the student studied on their own and raised their hand when they had completed their work, the teacher would provide them with a token. If the teacher was required to be present for the work, a token reinforcer and a social reinforcer were rewarded when the task was completely correctly. If the students completed their work for the day, they were rewarded with a backup reinforcer. The researchers found that during the experiment, students paid more attention to their work and to the teacher and had less errors on their

According to Snowman & McCown, token economies are used to strengthen behavior. It is another type of behavior modification strategy that can be used with students to effectively promote good behavior within the classroom. Token economies are based upon a monetary system in which tokens are used to acquire desired reinforcers. A token is something that has little or no inherent value but that can be used to “purchase” items that do have inherent value (Snowman & McCown, 2012). Teachers will create a reinforcement menu which includes the items that can be “purchased” by tokens. Students will receive these tokens accordingly when they use the target behaviors appropriately. When students acquire a certain number of tokens for displaying good behavior, these can be exchanged for certain objects or activities in order to reinforce the

What are token economies? It is identified as a form of operant condition, first noticed as a system through the studies of Ivan Pavlov and B.F Skinner. They studied specifically behaviour management to produce desired responses and inhibit non-desired behaviours. Token economies is a behavioural modification system that uses reinforcements or ‘tokens’ to improve behaviours. Many studies shown that token economies were prevalent in educational systems, where tokens received could be trade-offs for rewards that individuals strived/desired for. These studies hoped for effective modification of classroom behaviours including academic achievements and appropriate classroom manner.

A token economy system works for a parent trying to manage their children if they are conscious about using it to reinforce good behaviors (e.g. manners, cleaning up after themselves, etc.). The implementation of the system must be strict - the target behavior must be reinforced with the reward, and the two must be exclusive, meaning that the reward cannot be given for any other time. Otherwise, this would interfere with the child’s association between the two things, which would not make the behavior so reinforced (Naik, 2001).

The school in which I am attending is beginning to have a recycling problem. Recyclable items have frequently been found in the garbage cans around school, and not in the proper recycling bins. To solve this recycling problem, I have created a behavior modification plan in hopes to encourage recycling throughout the school.

A token economy is an intensive, in-class positive reinforcement program for building up and maintaining appropriate classroom performance and behavior. A token program may be needed when other positive reinforcement programs, such as selective use of teacher attention or a home-based reinforcement program. In many different education settings a material reward program can be conveniently managed through a token reinforcement program. Token programs involve the distribution of physical tokens (for example, poker chips, stickers, stars, smiley faces, etc.) or points following appropriate behavior. The tokens or points can be accumulated throughout the day and exchanged for designated rewards at a specified time. A predetermined goal is

Positive reinforcement describes a functional relation between a behavior and a consequence. Positive reinforcement has happened when a behavior is followed by a consequence that increases the behavior’s rate of occurrence (Alberto & Troutman, 2017). A tool to use to positively reinforce a behavior is the token economy system. By using positive reinforcement and the token economy system, the students will have the opportunity to be recognized and rewarded for each time they follow the hallway behavior rules such as walking in single line, their hand by their side next to body, and use quiet/inside voice. Positive reinforcement and token economy will be utilized in the academic setting by rewarding students when they work on their homework, when they get the right answer, when they complete their work, and when they solve problems and participate in the lesson.

Observations where taken in a year five class room. The classroom was small, a demountable building for a class of thirty-three students. The space had been utilised effectively, however, it still felt crowded and dark, due to the displays put on the windows. Of the thirty-three students in the class eleven where on Individual Education Plans (IEP) of various reasons including learning difficulties and physical disabilities. The student chosen for this study was not one of the eleven students on IEP’s. For the purpose of this study the student will be identified as Student A. This student was not identified to have any specific learning difficulties, student A had difficulty in mathematics however loved Drama and movement activities such as the Blue Earth programme they have running at the school.