Professional Learning

Learn more about professional learning opportunities below, plus Tier 2 and Tier 3 strategies and interventions that can be explored by watching an introductory video (where available) and downloading supporting documents.

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2023-2024 Ci3T Trainers and Coaches Calls

The purpose of our coaching calls is to provide ongoing support for Ci3T District Leaders, Ci3T Trainers, Ci3T Coaches, and other individuals supporting the design and implementation of Ci3T. We offer these calls as a service activity to support those committed to meeting students’ multiple needs in academic, behavior, and social domains. Open to all interested parties — to join these calls, please register here!

2024-2025 Ci3T Trainers and Coaches Calls

The purpose of our coaching calls is to provide ongoing support for Ci3T District Leaders, Ci3T Trainers, Ci3T Coaches, and other individuals supporting the design and implementation of Ci3T. We offer these calls as a service activity to support those committed to meeting students’ multiple needs in academic, behavior, and social domains. Open to all interested parties — to join these calls, please register here!

TIERED INTERVENTION LIBRARY

Learn more about Tier 2 and Tier 3 strategies and interventions below by watching an introductory video and downloading supporting documents. In these materials you will learn more about each strategy, why it is effective, the research supporting its use, and how to evaluate treatment integrity and social validity. Also included are PDFs and/ or Microsoft Word documents of what the intervention would look like as described in a school’s tiered intervention grid, research article references, practitioner article references, and more.

Professional Learning

ACTIVE SUPERVISION (POSTED March 30, 2017)

Active supervision can be used as a low-intensity, teacher-delivered strategy to support students meeting behavior by frequently and proactively monitoring students during specific settings or times. Active supervision is defined as the use of “Specific and overt behaviors (scanning, escorting, interacting) designed to prevent problem behavior and promote rule-following behavior” (Colvin, Sugai, Good, & Lee, 1997, p. 346). Its effectiveness is increased with the use of precorrections (Lane, Menzies, Ennis, & Oakes, 2005). Active supervision incorporates distinct elements (De Pry & Sugai, 2002; Haydon & Scott, 2008): established expectations, frequent scanning of context, positive interactions (verbal and nonverbal precorrections and prompts), reinforcement of desired behavior, and when necessary, correction to help success. Download all documents for Active Supervision, or download individual items:

BEHAVIOR CONTRACTS (POSTED DECEMBER 15, 2015)

Behavioral Contracts Behavior contracts, or contingency contracts, are written agreements between at least two individuals in which one or both agree upon certain behaviors. The contract document specifies an agreed-upon cause and effect between the completion of a behavior and the earning of a reinforcer. Most behavior contracts include three components: the behavior, the reinforcer, and the reporting sheet. There are many types of behavior contracts that can lead to positive behavioral change. Contracts can support behaviors students would like to change on their own, as well as agreements between teacher, student, and parent where each party agrees upon a certain individual behavioral goal. In these materials, you will learn about behavior contracts, how they are effective, the research supporting their use, benefits and challenges, and how to evaluate treatment integrity and social validity. Download all documents for behavior contracts, or download individual items:  

The Behavior Education Program (BEP)/ Check In- Check Out (CICO) (POSTED November 11, 2016)

Check-in/Check-out, also referred to as the Behavior Education Program (BEP; Crone et al., 2004), is a low-intensity intervention that can be used as a support for students who require additional support to meet school-wide behavior expectations. The intervention consists of three primary components: a scheduled check-in with a school staff member at the beginning of each day, a Daily Progress Note, and a scheduled check-out with the same staff member at the end of the day. These three components are designed to provide opportunities for building positive relationships, access to adult attention, instructive feedback on the student’s behavior throughout the day, and positive reinforcement for behavioral successes (Lane, Capizzi, Fisher, & Ennis, 2012). Download all documents for BEP/CICO, or download individual items: For more information, please consider Responding to Problem Behavior in Schools: The Behavior Education Program (2nd Edition). For resources and materials, please visit the Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MIBLSI) website or visit pbis.org and search for Check-In Check-Out or the Behavior Education Program.

BEHAVIOR-SPECIFIC PRAISE (POSTED AUGUST 20, 2015)

Behavior-Specific Praise TRANSCRIPT Behavior-specific praise is an essential component of Tier 1 (primary) prevention frameworks used to teach a range of new behaviors and ensure continued use of established behaviors using positive reinforcement. In addition to being a core component of Tier 1 efforts, behavior-specific praise (BSP) can also be used as a targeted support at Tier 2 and as an element of Tier 3 supports. In these materials we invite you to learn more about the how and why of behavior-specific praise. Background: Creating a positive school climate and safe classroom environments where students feel connected to a caring adult can begin with the simple act of acknowledging appropriate behavior. Using general praise statements is most likely a part of every teacher's repertoire of behavioral strategies, but the form of praise that has proven to be most effective is behavior specific praise, or praise statements that include reference to the specific behavior for which the student is being recognized. Behavior-specific praise statements are statements that praise the student and clearly state what desirable behavior has been performed, such as "Bob, great job showing your work on your math homework," or, "I like the way you pushed in your chair as we got ready to go to lunch. That keeps the walkways safe." Behavior-specific praise can be used to acknowledge the appropriate behavior of an individual student or multiple students engaging in academic and non-academic tasks. It is a simple and effective strategy that is cost-free and time-efficient. For more information and resources on this strategy, please see Chapter 3 in Supporting Behavior for School Success: A Step-by-Step Guide to Key Strategies (Lane, Menzies, Ennis, & Oakes, 2015) available from Guilford Press. Download all documents for behavior specific praise, or download individual items:

DIRECT BEHAVIOR RATING (UPDATED January 09, 2020)

Direct Behavior Rating (DBR; Chafouleas, Riley-Tillman, Christ, & Sugai, 2009), also known as Daily Behavior Report Card (DBRC; Chafouleas, Riley-Tillman, Sassu, LaFrance, & Patwa, 2007), is an intervention and progress-monitoring tool that uses teacher feedback and home-school communication to help students meet behavior expectations to facilitate school success. There are two primary components of DBR: (a) frequent, structured teacher feedback to the student about his/her behavior, and (b) a DBR form used to rate one or more specific behaviors and share this information with other stakeholders, such as a student’s parents (Music, Riley-Tillman, & Chafouleas, 2010). DBRs are flexible tools that can be used to target one or more behaviors across one or more time periods per day. For more information, DBR training, and materials please visit: http://dbr.education.uconn.edu.

Download all documents for DBR, or download individual items:

HIGH-P REQUEST SEQUENCE (HIGH-P) (POSTED November 03, 2016)

High-p TRANSCRIPT High-p Request Sequence (High-p) is a positive behavior support strategy that is relatively easy to implement with a little planning. High-p is an antecedent-based strategy, meaning it is both a proactive and preventative strategy which promotes success and does not require a problem behavior to occur before responding. The high-p strategy builds behavior momentum to increase responding to low-p behavior. High-p is used to engage learners while reducing the chance of reinforcing noncompliant behavior. At the same time, this strategy offers students high rates of reinforcement for appropriate responding. While there are different strategies associated with behavior momentum and high-p requests, we look to the definition offered by Cooper, Heron, and Heward (2007), which defines high-p strategy as “an antecedent intervention in which two to five easy tasks with a known history of learner compliance (the high-p requests) are presented in quick succession immediately before requesting the target task, the low-p requests” (p. 697). In these materials, you will learn about high-p strategy; how it is effective; the research supporting its use; benefits and challenges; and how to design, implement, and evaluate high-p strategy in your classroom including treatment integrity and social validity. For more information and resources on this strategy, you may also read Chapter 6 in Supporting Behavior for School Success: A Step-by-Step Guide to Key Strategies (Lane, Menzies, Ennis, & Oakes, 2015) available from Guilford Press. Download all documents for High-P, or download individual items:  

INSTRUCTIONAL CHOICE (POSTED AUGUST 14, 2015)

Instructional Choice TRANSCRIPT Instructional choice is an antecedent-based strategy, meaning one changes instructional conditions to prevent or reduce the occurrence of challenging behaviors. Across-activity choices and within-activity choices are two types of instructional choice that promote decision making and other self-determined behaviors, as well as offering students an element of control. Instructional choice is a positive behavior support that can be easily implemented by practitioners as part of their instructional repertoire to support content instruction, decrease problem behaviors, and increase students’ academic engagement and work completion. While there are many different definitions of instructional choice, we look to the definition offered by Jolivette and colleagues “...opportunities to make choices means that the student is provided with two or more options, is allowed to independently select an option, and is provided with the selected option." For more information and resources on this strategy, please see Chapter 8 in Supporting Behavior for School Success: A Step-by-Step Guide to Key Strategies (Lane, Menzies, Ennis, & Oakes, 2015) available from Guilford Press. Download all documents for instructional choice, or download individual items:

Preparing for Success

Instructional choice training materials Instructional choice direct observation training materials
(download all documents in a .zip [17.3 MB] file or individual files below): (download all documents in a .zip [27.4 MB] file or individual files below):
 

INSTRUCTIONAL FEEDBACK (POSTED NOVEMBER 2, 2015)

Instructional Feedback TRANSCRIPT Instructional feedback is an essential component of Tier 1 (primary) prevention frameworks used to confirm understandings, fine-tune them, and provide error correction. This strategy is used closely with active supervision and behavior specific praise. In addition to being a core component of Tier 1 efforts, instructional feedback can also be used as a targeted support at Tier 2 and as an element of Tier 3 supports. In these materials we invite you to learn more about the how and why of instructional feedback. Background: Instructional Feedback is a teaching strategy for providing specific information to students about their performance, with the purpose of clarifying misinformation, confirming understandings, or restructuring current schemas. Instructional Feedback should be used when students have a base understanding of new learning and are working towards proficiency and fluency. When students have not yet attained base understanding, instruction is needed instead of feedback. Closely monitoring student data guides teachers in deciding when feedback should be used and when instruction is needed. In these materials, you will learn more about Instructional Feedback, why it is effective, the research supporting the use of Instructional Feedback, the benefit and challenges, and how to evaluate treatment integrity and social validity. For more information and resources on this strategy, please see Chapter 5 in Supporting Behavior for School Success: A Step-by-Step Guide to Key Strategies (Lane, Menzies, Ennis, & Oakes, 2015) available from Guilford Press. Download all documents for instructional feedback, or download individual items:  

INCREASING OPPORTUNITIES TO RESPOND (POSTED DECEMBER 1, 2015)

OTR TRANSCRIPT Increasing opportunities to respond (OTR) is a teacher strategy that helps students review material, acquire fluency, or commit material to memory while simultaneously increasing on-task behavior and reducing inappropriate behavior. Just as the term implies, increasing opportunities to respond offers students frequent opportunities within a set time period to respond to teacher questions or prompts about targeted academic, behavioral, or social skills material. Increased opportunities to respond is a very flexible strategy that is ideal with materials or concepts a student has a basic understanding of with the goal of increasing fluency and information retrieval. It was developed to help students respond to teacher inquiries rapidly and accurately. OTR strategies can be conducted so that students respond individually or in unison with verbal, written, signal, or choral responses. In these materials you will learn about increasing the teacher-delivered strategy of opportunities to respond, why it is effective, the research supporting the use of OTR, benefits and challenges, and how to evaluate treatment integrity and social validity. For more information and resources on this strategy, please see Chapter 2 in Supporting Behavior for School Success: A Step-by-Step Guide to Key Strategies (Lane, Menzies, Ennis, & Oakes, 2015) available from Guilford Press. Download all documents for opportunities to respond, or download individual items:  

PRECORRECTION (POSTED DECEMBER 18, 2015)

Precorrection TRANSCRIPT Precorrection is a preventative behavior strategy used to identify predictable context in which problem behavior often occurs and providing students with prompts, supports, and reinforcement for engaging in appropriate behavior. When using precorrection strategy, you shift from responding to behavior with consequences to proactively reminding students of expectations before entering an environment or an activity. One example of using precorrection is when a teacher reminds students of expectations for working with partners before beginning the activity. Then the teacher can focus on reinforcing students meeting expectations with behavior-specific praise. Another example is how a teacher reminds and practices expectations for the hallway and the playground while students are waiting in line to go out to recess. In these materials you will learn more about precorrection, why it is effective, the research that supports precorrection, benefits and challenges, and how to evaluate treatment integrity and social validity. For more information and resources on this strategy, please see Chapter 7 in Supporting Behavior for School Success: A Step-by-Step Guide to Key Strategies (Lane, Menzies, Ennis, & Oakes, 2015) available from Guilford Press. Download all documents for precorrection, or download individual items:  

REPEATED READINGS (POSTED DECEMBER 28, 2015)

Repeated readings is an instructional strategy used to support students in developing oral reading fluency. Students have multiple opportunities to practice the reading aloud of passages at their independent level, meaning they are able to read the text with at least 95% accuracy. When using repeated reading as an instructional strategy, identify a tutor (e.g., teacher, paraprofessional, peer), appropriate text (i.e., passages, Readers Theater, class texts), and other materials for implementation (e.g., timer, graph for student and tutor progress recording). The student and tutor set a fluency goal and monitor progress toward the goal, increasing the rate until the student is reading at the expected rate. Tutors provide instructive feedback to the student as necessary, focusing on accurate word decoding, prosody (e.g., intonation), and rate of reading. The use of repeated readings enables students to develop reading fluency, as the repetitive process increases familiarity with the text as well as comprehension through multiple exposures. In these materials you will learn more about the use of repeated readings, why it is effective, the research that supports repeated readings, benefits and challenges, and how to evaluate treatment integrity and social validity. Download all documents for repeated readings, or download individual items:  

SELF-MONITORING (POSTED AUGUST 11, 2015)

Self Monitoring TRANSCRIPT Self-monitoring is a versatile intervention that can be used to address behavioral, social, or academic needs. In addition, it is relatively simple to implement. When teaching a student to improve self-monitoring, two processes must occur: observing and recording. The observation component requires that a student be able to determine whether a given behavior occurred. This requires that the student be very clear as to the exact definition of the required behavior. At the end of a given interval, the student must make a determination as to whether or not he or she was engaged during that entire period. Then the student needs to record his or her behavior – the second process of self-monitoring. Some students may require an external reinforce that meets the function of the behavior. In brief, people engage in behaviors to either obtain or avoid attention, activity, or sensory experiences. However, for other students, the act of monitoring and recording their behavior is reinforcing enough to increase the future probability of the target behavior occurring.

Download all documents for self-monitoring, or download individual items:

SELF-REGULATED STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT (SRSD) FOR WRITING (POSTED APRIL 22, 2016)

Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) for writing (Harris & Graham, 1992) is an evidence-based strategy to teach genre-specific and general writing, and the knowledge needed to use these strategies. This model is designed to teach the elements of the writing process across six stages of instruction. The number and duration of lessons varies because each stage of the model is taught to mastery (Harris, Graham, Mason, & Friedlander, 2008). The subsequent materials provide teachers a procedural checklist for implementing SRSD for writing as an intervention, sample writing cues, treatment integrity checklist, and pre/post-intervention social validity measures for students and teachers. For more information and resources on this strategy, please see Powerful Writing Strategies for all Students (Harris, Graham, Mason, & Friedlander, 2008). Download all documents for SRSD, or download individual items: For more information and resources, such as assessments, unit plans, and mini-lessons, visit the Think SRSD website (http://www.thinksrsd.com/) or to view an IRIS Center module on SRSD click here or visit http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/srs/.

TIER 3: INDIVIDUALIZED DE-ESCALATION SUPPORT PLAN for MANAGING THE ACTING OUT CYCLE (POSTED AUGUST 10, 2016)

Acting-Out-Tier-3-Grid-with-Books2
  • Intervention grid: PDF or MS-Word
  • Individualized De-escalation Support Plan TEMPLATE: PDF or MS-Word
  • Individualized De-escalation Support Plan SAMPLE: PDF or MS-Word
For more information and examples of how to use this strategy, please see the following references: Colvin, G. (2010). Defusing disruptive behavior in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Colvin, G., & Scott, T. (2015). Managing the cycle of acting-out behavior in the classroom (2nd Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

 


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