Tier 1 PBIS

TIER 1 PBIS

Responding to Unexpected (Problem) Behavior:

Despite our efforts to proactively set students up for behavioral success and to prevent problem behavior, there will still be incidents of problem behavior. A primary focus of responses for unexpected behavior is the instruction of the expected behavior.

Every occurrence of an unexpected behavior is an important opportunity to reteach the expected behavior to the student. It is important to keep the reteaching opportunity positive.

At Houlton, we spend the first six weeks of school teaching and practicing expected behaviors across all school settings. After six weeks of instruction and practice, teachers will begin using the ‘Reteaching Slip’ when unexpected behaviors occur. The PBIS team has developed a re-teaching tool that focuses on teaching and preventing future occurrences of unexpected behaviors. When students demonstrate an unexpected behavior, please follow the below reteaching steps. A copy has been put into your mailbox to put into your badge holder, or a location that can be easily referenced.

Reteaching Steps

1. Respectfully ask student to stop.
2. You are ______.  That is unexpected.  
3. What is expected?
4. If the child doesn’t answer, say “The expectation is ___________.”
5. Let’s practice the expected behavior.
6. Thumbs up or Houlton High Five

Procedure for Managing the Reteaching Slips

1. Complete online or paper Reteaching Slip (found in workroom)
2. Put in Lisa Wasson’s mailbox
3. IF the student is not yours, please notify their homeroom teacher verbally or by making a copy and sharing the electronic form.
4. Once Lisa W. has entered the data in our data tracking system she will return the slip to you. Please choose a data collection system that works best for you to keep track of your reteaching slips.

Why do we use the Expected-Unexpected Social Thinking Vocabulary?

Response:

Historically there is a tendency to think we can teach students to learn social behavior by setting behavioral expectations and then simply telling them what we expect from them or telling them when we are disappointed in their behavior. To this end, professionals and parents, upon noticing a student doing an undesired behavior, will tell the student, “That’s inappropriate.” Rarely do you hear teachers telling students their behaviors are “appropriate.”  When we interpret the meaning behind the use of the phrase “That’s inappropriate,” we usually find it is used in a manner that reflects the speaker is disappointed in the student if not upset with him or her. Therefore it is used to scold and redirect rather than to teach.

In Social Thinking, we developed Social Thinking Vocabulary terms with the purpose of directing students to think more deeply about the social situation in which they are involved. We believe that students who frequently demonstrate “inappropriate” behavior often have social learning challenges and require more direct teaching in lieu of reprimands for their undesired social behavior and recognition of attempts at desired social behavior. As Ross Greene says, “Students would if they could.” We also believe that social competencies do not result from a set of memorized social skills, but instead are a result of social awareness and the ability to adapt to the social requirements of the situation and the specific people in the situation.

The goal in all of this is to help our students learn to observe social situations more carefully and understand that behaviors are linked to others’ emotions, and how each of us feels about another's behavior affects how we treat each other. At the end of the day, when we do expected behaviors it makes us feel better about ourselves. (Michelle Garcia Winner)

The Houlton PBIS team has decided to utilize The Social Thinking Vocabulary concepts “expected” and “unexpected” in our reteaching slips. We will be introducing the terms on Hawk Talk and some of our very own Tier 3 students will be creating a video teaching our school about ‘expected’ and ‘unexpected’ behaviors. Please let the PBIS team know if you have any questions!