Classroom Management – Part 3 – Creating Behavior Plans

Classroom Management Series: Part 1, Part 2

Your behavior plan will need to depend heavily on 1) the behavior you want to change, and 2) how frequently it is displayed.

If the behavior choice you’re looking to help a child to change is having homework completed or otherwise coming to school/class prepared, you can probably get away with a weekly plan where it either happens or it doesn’t each day.  Make the goal a little higher than the student’s current compliance level, and reassess at the end of each week (running Wednesday through Tuesday).

For most behaviors that need to be changed, the behavior plan will work better if you break your day into parts.  My school day is naturally broken into 10 unequal parts.  We have 6 class periods, 2 recesses, lunch, and a 30 minute period after lunch that isn’t strictly devoted to being a class period, but we use wisely nonetheless.  Depending on the behavior I’m trying to help a student modify, I may include every part of our day in their plan, or I may choose to exclude lunch, recess, and possibly that 30 minute period after lunch.  If a behavior is something that can and should be practiced during less structured social settings, I’ll include every part of our day.  Things like being respectful, following directions, and playing appropriately are examples of when I’m likely to include lunch and recess.  If it is something that including lunch and recess would essentially be a “freebie,” I would exclude those time blocks.  Behaviors such as being attentive in class, using work time wisely, and acting appropriately during enrichment/special area classes come to mind as examples where I would exclude recess and lunch from the plan.  I am perfectly willing to give credit where it is due, but if it’s impossible to use that skill during that time block, then there is no credit to give.

Vistaprint has a variation of their business cards that I’m considering getting to use for behavior plans (if I can get them for just the cost of shipping).  They’re intended to be loyalty cards, and you can get them with 10 check boxes or 5 check boxes.  For now though, I’ve just made my own version in Microsoft Office, and I’ll print them as needed with as many boxes as necessary for the number of blocks I plan to use with that student.  I like the idea of a business card sized version.  It’s small and discreet, and getting a couple of fun shaped hole punchers would make it fun to have been successful in that time block.

If the behavior that you’re helping a student to modify is something that happens many times a day, such as calling out, consider giving the student a sticky note, and each time they realize they’ve called out (or whatever the behavior is), they make a tally mark.  You do the same whenever you notice that they’ve done it.  At the end of each block, when you’re transitioning to the next activity, do a quick comparison.  I would use my own numbers for the official count, This will force the student to become more aware of their own behavior, which will hopefully help them to do what is expected more often, and eventually stop (or at least mostly stop) the undesirable behavior.  You might choose to write the number of times they displayed the behavior in the box for each time block, or you may choose to hole punch or put stickers on the blocks in which the goal is met.

My premade behavior plan cards (business card sized) are available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I’ve included pages with 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 check boxes to meet a variety of needs.

Stay tuned for my next post, I’ll be talking about how to set attainable goals for behavior plans.

Tags: behavior plan, Classroom Management, how to create a behavior plan