Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Preparing for State Testing
As we prepare my students for the California Standards Test (CST), we are seeing a lot of behaviors return that had previously been replaced. We use a star system for our token economy and students earn stars for completing assignments and being on task. After lunch they are able to spend stars for items like computer time or some time to play outside with an Instructional Assistant monitoring. We are noticing that several of our students who started out this year refusing to work are starting to return to that. Most of the class took to the star system quite effectively and work hard. Now we are seeing one or two of those students no longer care about earning stars to have those extra privileges. The students are asked everyday if they want to use some of their stars and reminded of the options of what they can do with them. We are stuck for ideas on how to motivate the students to completing their assignments and get back on track. Any ideas or suggestions would be great.
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remember the definition for "positive reinforcement?" Well, if what you are doing is not increasing or maintaining the desired behavior...then, this is no longer reinforcing for your students...I think you know this. So, where do you go from here?
My first suggestion would be to find out from the students what they are willing to work for (preference assessment). Once you do that, you may have to tweak your token system to get things back on track...it may be possible that the reinforcers may need to be more individualized or possibly provide more opportunities for trading in tokens earned for privileges and activies...
If there were ever instances in which students experienced an inability to trade tokens for items, then, they may no longer have a buy-in into the system...which means that you will need to involve them heavily in the re-designing of the token economy so that they feel invested in it.
There are other issues at play here, mainly that the other problem behaviors they are engaging in are MUCH MORE reinforcing than the system you currently have in place...so, your job is to reinforce alternative/replacement behaviors that lead to the same functions and reinforce them on an initial dense schedule.
Hope this helps.
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