Teaching the Rules - For Better Management and Instruction

Susan Osborne
College of Education & Psychology
North Carolina State University

M. Megan Ambrogi
Self Employed Behavior Specialist Consultant

Abstract

In this article, we describe a project to improve classroom behavior and academic functioning in a middle school special education class of students with learning and behavior problems. A first year special education teacher walked into a language arts class several months into the school year to find students performing poorly and engaging in disruptive behavior. Students arrived late and unprepared for class. Some students simply refused to engage in any academic work. Others engaged in verbal and physical aggression against their peers. We describe how we planned and implemented a proactive program to teach students how to behave appropriately and how to improve their academic skills in language arts. We explicitly taught and reinforced students for coming to class prepared, listening to the person speaking, raising their hands to be recognized, and doing their best work. Students responded positively to the intervention and improved both their school behavior and their academic productivity.

Teaching the Rules - For Better Management and Instruction

"My language arts class is a mess," Ms. Allen, a first year teacher who had taken over a class mid-year, recently told me. "Some of the students don't like each other and they disrupt the class. They aren't interested in doing the work so half of them are failing. I find myself raising my voice and they don't even care. I don't want to quit but I feel like I'm not doing any good. It's just a constant battle."

Although these students had been pulled together in a class because they had disabilities that affected their ability to function in school, I've heard the same concerns from teachers of "typical" students as well. In fact, difficulty with classroom management is one of the biggest challenges teachers face (Walker & Sylwester, 1998) -- and it contributes to stress that may influence teachers' decisions to leave the field (Miller, Brownell, & Smith, 1999; Whitaker, 2000).

Many teachers in general and special education are not well prepared to manage disruptive behavior. In special education, preservice behavioral intervention projects often focus on the needs of a individual rather than a group. Opportunities to develop and implement management plans during field placements are further limited because we try to place student interns with effective teachers who have already established good classroom order. The purpose of this paper is to describe our efforts to establish better order and improve academic engagement for 10 students attending a middle school language arts class for students with behavior and learning problems.

Why We Need to Teach Classroom Rules

All too often, teachers in general and special education assume that by the time students reach middle school, they will know what appropriate school behavior is and be able to practice it with only occasional reminders. In fact, as Kameenui and Darch (1995) make clear, even middle and high school teachers often must proactively teach the skills necessary for students to behave appropriately. Because students can recite school rules, and perhaps even give examples of good school behavior, does not mean that they actually know how to behave in ways that are acceptable (Nelson, Crabtree, Marchand-Martella, & Martella, 1998). In this article, we will describe how we actively and directly taught students what we meant by rules like coming to class prepared and waiting to be recognized. We will show you how to use proactive management techniques to teach and reinforce the academic and behavior skills we want students to exhibit.