Tier 1 Behavior Intervention ideas you can use to improve behavior as well as a free sheet to track your progress.
But by limiting those occurrences we can give our Tier 2 and 3 behavior specialists more of something that is really hard to come by…time. This means that we need some alternatives that are low-impact and preventative in nature.
These Tier 1 Interventions can often act as the steps in-between normal classroom management for a teacher and an office discipline referral.
Keep reading for some Tier 1 Intervention ideas as well as the handy Tier 1 Behavior Intervention Tracking Sheet you can use to gauge your effectiveness.
First, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Then as a team, what can we do to problem solve these issues?
Examples are tardies, time on task, and disruptive behavior during instructional time. As a team, what can you try to improve these situations when you do see some patterns developing?
What are students identifying as their own unproductive behaviors? Students often have great insight into what might be causing behavioral concerns.
I remember one of my students telling me early on in my teaching career, that “I talk too much and need to let us (students) talk more to each other”.
This same student told me that maybe I should go back to drawing school because my drawings of dogs look like horses”. Tough critic, but I took my humble pie nonetheless.
Although it was a bit on the nose and hurtful for me to accept…I did take a long look at the amount of direct instruction I was using as a result.
Once I altered the amount of direct instruction I found ways to gauge my success and I shared those results with my colleagues who also had this particular set of students in class. The result was a plan amongst our teaching team to chunk our lessons more and build in some group work to support their needs.
In my experience, when students are struggling with behavior and do not have an IEP or 504 plan that is needed to address this concern it can often be traced back to a few things:
I have learned this firsthand as a classroom teacher as well as a principal. When folks are not engaged and/or do not understand expectations, no one can be the best version of themselves.
Let’s take a look at some small levers you can pull to get your kiddos back on track:
This sounds counterintuitive, if you take more breaks…won’t students be off task more often? Won’t they have trouble transitioning back to the lesson?
Not necessarily. If they understand when the next “break” is coming then students can often stay more focused to get the task done.
Similar to when I go on a run and break up my miles with some short walks. Just knowing I have that reprieve coming can actually help me push a bit harder.
This is a movement break that can be done without the students' peers being privy to the situation. This is great for breaking up a long class period for a student who can manage short intervals more easily.
Very similar to the idea of the frequent break but you now get some movement going as well.
Simply keep a list of potential errands on hand and once a class period you ask the student to take the pass and run the note to the office or whatever it is you need to be done. This also works nicely with classroom jobs as well.
Can you take your class outdoors or to another location in the building? Sometimes you just need to change things up. I highly suggest incorporating some outdoor time into your teaching routine if you can make it work!
This also has the added benefit of breaking up your lesson with a short walk to the new location which can help students refocus.
Does a student perform better in one seat as opposed to another? Sometimes, yes. It has very little to do with the chair but this can be a great opportunity to provide a little choice to your students or it can provide you with an option to focus your kiddos during a lesson.
You could even go as far as making activity-dependent seating charts. During direct instruction, you may want students in one place, and during group instruction, you may prefer them in another.
This gives you some levers to pull when you notice a student or groups of students are off track which doesn’t further escalate the situation.
Now that you have a few ideas on interventions, let’s dive into the things you need to work out before you begin.
This needs to be pretty easy and not time-consuming. Consider a window of time to collect data: daily check-ins, hourly check-ins, and/or random times throughout the week.
It is recommended to focus on the same behavior in all spaces to ensure consistency. It is ideal for the front office, classroom staff, support staff, and the student's family to be aware of the focus for the period.
Share these expectations with your students. This should not be a surprise to them.
Not only should they know the expectations but you’ll also want to encourage and reinforce those positive behaviors whenever possible.
At the same time, you’ll need to determine how to support those students who are not meeting expectations regularly.
For those students, you can offer:
This can reinforce those students who are meeting the expectations if done intermittently and unexpectedly.
I would also consider having random checks on your goal progress. This will allow you to check progress and adjust accordingly.
Make sure as a group you determine what focused behaviors are selected and the expectations around each category.
If you can use a google form or something electronic this will help you track trends. Make these forms your own, and use words and phrases that make sense to your kiddos.
But by limiting those occurrences we can give our Tier 2 and 3 behavior specialists more of something that is really hard to come by…time. This means that we need some alternatives that are low-impact and preventative in nature.
These Tier 1 Interventions can often act as the steps in-between normal classroom management for a teacher and an office discipline referral.
Keep reading for some Tier 1 Intervention ideas as well as the handy Tier 1 Behavior Intervention Tracking Sheet you can use to gauge your effectiveness.
First, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Then as a team, what can we do to problem solve these issues?
Examples are tardies, time on task, and disruptive behavior during instructional time. As a team, what can you try to improve these situations when you do see some patterns developing?
What are students identifying as their own unproductive behaviors? Students often have great insight into what might be causing behavioral concerns.
I remember one of my students telling me early on in my teaching career, that “I talk too much and need to let us (students) talk more to each other”.
This same student told me that maybe I should go back to drawing school because my drawings of dogs look like horses”. Tough critic, but I took my humble pie nonetheless.
Although it was a bit on the nose and hurtful for me to accept…I did take a long look at the amount of direct instruction I was using as a result.
Once I altered the amount of direct instruction I found ways to gauge my success and I shared those results with my colleagues who also had this particular set of students in class. The result was a plan amongst our teaching team to chunk our lessons more and build in some group work to support their needs.
In my experience, when students are struggling with behavior and do not have an IEP or 504 plan that is needed to address this concern it can often be traced back to a few things:
I have learned this firsthand as a classroom teacher as well as a principal. When folks are not engaged and/or do not understand expectations, no one can be the best version of themselves.
Let’s take a look at some small levers you can pull to get your kiddos back on track:
This sounds counterintuitive, if you take more breaks…won’t students be off task more often? Won’t they have trouble transitioning back to the lesson?
Not necessarily. If they understand when the next “break” is coming then students can often stay more focused to get the task done.
Similar to when I go on a run and break up my miles with some short walks. Just knowing I have that reprieve coming can actually help me push a bit harder.
This is a movement break that can be done without the students' peers being privy to the situation. This is great for breaking up a long class period for a student who can manage short intervals more easily.
Very similar to the idea of the frequent break but you now get some movement going as well.
Simply keep a list of potential errands on hand and once a class period you ask the student to take the pass and run the note to the office or whatever it is you need to be done. This also works nicely with classroom jobs as well.
Can you take your class outdoors or to another location in the building? Sometimes you just need to change things up. I highly suggest incorporating some outdoor time into your teaching routine if you can make it work!
This also has the added benefit of breaking up your lesson with a short walk to the new location which can help students refocus.
Does a student perform better in one seat as opposed to another? Sometimes, yes. It has very little to do with the chair but this can be a great opportunity to provide a little choice to your students or it can provide you with an option to focus your kiddos during a lesson.
You could even go as far as making activity-dependent seating charts. During direct instruction, you may want students in one place, and during group instruction, you may prefer them in another.
This gives you some levers to pull when you notice a student or groups of students are off track which doesn’t further escalate the situation.
Now that you have a few ideas on interventions, let’s dive into the things you need to work out before you begin.
This needs to be pretty easy and not time-consuming. Consider a window of time to collect data: daily check-ins, hourly check-ins, and/or random times throughout the week.
It is recommended to focus on the same behavior in all spaces to ensure consistency. It is ideal for the front office, classroom staff, support staff, and the student's family to be aware of the focus for the period.
Share these expectations with your students. This should not be a surprise to them.
Not only should they know the expectations but you’ll also want to encourage and reinforce those positive behaviors whenever possible.
At the same time, you’ll need to determine how to support those students who are not meeting expectations regularly.
For those students, you can offer:
This can reinforce those students who are meeting the expectations if done intermittently and unexpectedly.
I would also consider having random checks on your goal progress. This will allow you to check progress and adjust accordingly.
Make sure as a group you determine what focused behaviors are selected and the expectations around each category.
If you can use a google form or something electronic this will help you track trends. Make these forms your own, and use words and phrases that make sense to your kiddos.
But by limiting those occurrences we can give our Tier 2 and 3 behavior specialists more of something that is really hard to come by…time. This means that we need some alternatives that are low-impact and preventative in nature.
These Tier 1 Interventions can often act as the steps in-between normal classroom management for a teacher and an office discipline referral.
Keep reading for some Tier 1 Intervention ideas as well as the handy Tier 1 Behavior Intervention Tracking Sheet you can use to gauge your effectiveness.
First, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Then as a team, what can we do to problem solve these issues?
Examples are tardies, time on task, and disruptive behavior during instructional time. As a team, what can you try to improve these situations when you do see some patterns developing?
What are students identifying as their own unproductive behaviors? Students often have great insight into what might be causing behavioral concerns.
I remember one of my students telling me early on in my teaching career, that “I talk too much and need to let us (students) talk more to each other”.
This same student told me that maybe I should go back to drawing school because my drawings of dogs look like horses”. Tough critic, but I took my humble pie nonetheless.
Although it was a bit on the nose and hurtful for me to accept…I did take a long look at the amount of direct instruction I was using as a result.
Once I altered the amount of direct instruction I found ways to gauge my success and I shared those results with my colleagues who also had this particular set of students in class. The result was a plan amongst our teaching team to chunk our lessons more and build in some group work to support their needs.
In my experience, when students are struggling with behavior and do not have an IEP or 504 plan that is needed to address this concern it can often be traced back to a few things:
I have learned this firsthand as a classroom teacher as well as a principal. When folks are not engaged and/or do not understand expectations, no one can be the best version of themselves.
Let’s take a look at some small levers you can pull to get your kiddos back on track:
This sounds counterintuitive, if you take more breaks…won’t students be off task more often? Won’t they have trouble transitioning back to the lesson?
Not necessarily. If they understand when the next “break” is coming then students can often stay more focused to get the task done.
Similar to when I go on a run and break up my miles with some short walks. Just knowing I have that reprieve coming can actually help me push a bit harder.
This is a movement break that can be done without the students' peers being privy to the situation. This is great for breaking up a long class period for a student who can manage short intervals more easily.
Very similar to the idea of the frequent break but you now get some movement going as well.
Simply keep a list of potential errands on hand and once a class period you ask the student to take the pass and run the note to the office or whatever it is you need to be done. This also works nicely with classroom jobs as well.
Can you take your class outdoors or to another location in the building? Sometimes you just need to change things up. I highly suggest incorporating some outdoor time into your teaching routine if you can make it work!
This also has the added benefit of breaking up your lesson with a short walk to the new location which can help students refocus.
Does a student perform better in one seat as opposed to another? Sometimes, yes. It has very little to do with the chair but this can be a great opportunity to provide a little choice to your students or it can provide you with an option to focus your kiddos during a lesson.
You could even go as far as making activity-dependent seating charts. During direct instruction, you may want students in one place, and during group instruction, you may prefer them in another.
This gives you some levers to pull when you notice a student or groups of students are off track which doesn’t further escalate the situation.
Now that you have a few ideas on interventions, let’s dive into the things you need to work out before you begin.
This needs to be pretty easy and not time-consuming. Consider a window of time to collect data: daily check-ins, hourly check-ins, and/or random times throughout the week.
It is recommended to focus on the same behavior in all spaces to ensure consistency. It is ideal for the front office, classroom staff, support staff, and the student's family to be aware of the focus for the period.
Share these expectations with your students. This should not be a surprise to them.
Not only should they know the expectations but you’ll also want to encourage and reinforce those positive behaviors whenever possible.
At the same time, you’ll need to determine how to support those students who are not meeting expectations regularly.
For those students, you can offer:
This can reinforce those students who are meeting the expectations if done intermittently and unexpectedly.
I would also consider having random checks on your goal progress. This will allow you to check progress and adjust accordingly.
Make sure as a group you determine what focused behaviors are selected and the expectations around each category.
If you can use a google form or something electronic this will help you track trends. Make these forms your own, and use words and phrases that make sense to your kiddos.
But by limiting those occurrences we can give our Tier 2 and 3 behavior specialists more of something that is really hard to come by…time. This means that we need some alternatives that are low-impact and preventative in nature.
These Tier 1 Interventions can often act as the steps in-between normal classroom management for a teacher and an office discipline referral.
Keep reading for some Tier 1 Intervention ideas as well as the handy Tier 1 Behavior Intervention Tracking Sheet you can use to gauge your effectiveness.
First, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Then as a team, what can we do to problem solve these issues?
Examples are tardies, time on task, and disruptive behavior during instructional time. As a team, what can you try to improve these situations when you do see some patterns developing?
What are students identifying as their own unproductive behaviors? Students often have great insight into what might be causing behavioral concerns.
I remember one of my students telling me early on in my teaching career, that “I talk too much and need to let us (students) talk more to each other”.
This same student told me that maybe I should go back to drawing school because my drawings of dogs look like horses”. Tough critic, but I took my humble pie nonetheless.
Although it was a bit on the nose and hurtful for me to accept…I did take a long look at the amount of direct instruction I was using as a result.
Once I altered the amount of direct instruction I found ways to gauge my success and I shared those results with my colleagues who also had this particular set of students in class. The result was a plan amongst our teaching team to chunk our lessons more and build in some group work to support their needs.
In my experience, when students are struggling with behavior and do not have an IEP or 504 plan that is needed to address this concern it can often be traced back to a few things:
I have learned this firsthand as a classroom teacher as well as a principal. When folks are not engaged and/or do not understand expectations, no one can be the best version of themselves.
Let’s take a look at some small levers you can pull to get your kiddos back on track:
This sounds counterintuitive, if you take more breaks…won’t students be off task more often? Won’t they have trouble transitioning back to the lesson?
Not necessarily. If they understand when the next “break” is coming then students can often stay more focused to get the task done.
Similar to when I go on a run and break up my miles with some short walks. Just knowing I have that reprieve coming can actually help me push a bit harder.
This is a movement break that can be done without the students' peers being privy to the situation. This is great for breaking up a long class period for a student who can manage short intervals more easily.
Very similar to the idea of the frequent break but you now get some movement going as well.
Simply keep a list of potential errands on hand and once a class period you ask the student to take the pass and run the note to the office or whatever it is you need to be done. This also works nicely with classroom jobs as well.
Can you take your class outdoors or to another location in the building? Sometimes you just need to change things up. I highly suggest incorporating some outdoor time into your teaching routine if you can make it work!
This also has the added benefit of breaking up your lesson with a short walk to the new location which can help students refocus.
Does a student perform better in one seat as opposed to another? Sometimes, yes. It has very little to do with the chair but this can be a great opportunity to provide a little choice to your students or it can provide you with an option to focus your kiddos during a lesson.
You could even go as far as making activity-dependent seating charts. During direct instruction, you may want students in one place, and during group instruction, you may prefer them in another.
This gives you some levers to pull when you notice a student or groups of students are off track which doesn’t further escalate the situation.
Now that you have a few ideas on interventions, let’s dive into the things you need to work out before you begin.
This needs to be pretty easy and not time-consuming. Consider a window of time to collect data: daily check-ins, hourly check-ins, and/or random times throughout the week.
It is recommended to focus on the same behavior in all spaces to ensure consistency. It is ideal for the front office, classroom staff, support staff, and the student's family to be aware of the focus for the period.
Share these expectations with your students. This should not be a surprise to them.
Not only should they know the expectations but you’ll also want to encourage and reinforce those positive behaviors whenever possible.
At the same time, you’ll need to determine how to support those students who are not meeting expectations regularly.
For those students, you can offer:
This can reinforce those students who are meeting the expectations if done intermittently and unexpectedly.
I would also consider having random checks on your goal progress. This will allow you to check progress and adjust accordingly.
Make sure as a group you determine what focused behaviors are selected and the expectations around each category.
If you can use a google form or something electronic this will help you track trends. Make these forms your own, and use words and phrases that make sense to your kiddos.
Faith resides in Oak Park, IL with her husband and son. She currently serves as Assistant Superintendent of Student Services for D212. She is a passionate leader with 18 years of educational experience in K-12th grade. She has extensive experience in MTSS, PBIS, Equity and Justice, Teacher and Principal Mentoring, Special Education, Restorative Practices, and Student Services.
When it comes to behavior support the first job for everyone should be to support students in a way that limits office referrals. It doesn’t mean there won’t be any.
But by limiting those occurrences we can give our Tier 2 and 3 behavior specialists more of something that is really hard to come by…time. This means that we need some alternatives that are low-impact and preventative in nature.
These Tier 1 Interventions can often act as the steps in-between normal classroom management for a teacher and an office discipline referral.
Keep reading for some Tier 1 Intervention ideas as well as the handy Tier 1 Behavior Intervention Tracking Sheet you can use to gauge your effectiveness.
First, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Then as a team, what can we do to problem solve these issues?
Examples are tardies, time on task, and disruptive behavior during instructional time. As a team, what can you try to improve these situations when you do see some patterns developing?
What are students identifying as their own unproductive behaviors? Students often have great insight into what might be causing behavioral concerns.
I remember one of my students telling me early on in my teaching career, that “I talk too much and need to let us (students) talk more to each other”.
This same student told me that maybe I should go back to drawing school because my drawings of dogs look like horses”. Tough critic, but I took my humble pie nonetheless.
Although it was a bit on the nose and hurtful for me to accept…I did take a long look at the amount of direct instruction I was using as a result.
Once I altered the amount of direct instruction I found ways to gauge my success and I shared those results with my colleagues who also had this particular set of students in class. The result was a plan amongst our teaching team to chunk our lessons more and build in some group work to support their needs.
In my experience, when students are struggling with behavior and do not have an IEP or 504 plan that is needed to address this concern it can often be traced back to a few things:
I have learned this firsthand as a classroom teacher as well as a principal. When folks are not engaged and/or do not understand expectations, no one can be the best version of themselves.
Let’s take a look at some small levers you can pull to get your kiddos back on track:
This sounds counterintuitive, if you take more breaks…won’t students be off task more often? Won’t they have trouble transitioning back to the lesson?
Not necessarily. If they understand when the next “break” is coming then students can often stay more focused to get the task done.
Similar to when I go on a run and break up my miles with some short walks. Just knowing I have that reprieve coming can actually help me push a bit harder.
This is a movement break that can be done without the students' peers being privy to the situation. This is great for breaking up a long class period for a student who can manage short intervals more easily.
Very similar to the idea of the frequent break but you now get some movement going as well.
Simply keep a list of potential errands on hand and once a class period you ask the student to take the pass and run the note to the office or whatever it is you need to be done. This also works nicely with classroom jobs as well.
Can you take your class outdoors or to another location in the building? Sometimes you just need to change things up. I highly suggest incorporating some outdoor time into your teaching routine if you can make it work!
This also has the added benefit of breaking up your lesson with a short walk to the new location which can help students refocus.
Does a student perform better in one seat as opposed to another? Sometimes, yes. It has very little to do with the chair but this can be a great opportunity to provide a little choice to your students or it can provide you with an option to focus your kiddos during a lesson.
You could even go as far as making activity-dependent seating charts. During direct instruction, you may want students in one place, and during group instruction, you may prefer them in another.
This gives you some levers to pull when you notice a student or groups of students are off track which doesn’t further escalate the situation.
Now that you have a few ideas on interventions, let’s dive into the things you need to work out before you begin.
This needs to be pretty easy and not time-consuming. Consider a window of time to collect data: daily check-ins, hourly check-ins, and/or random times throughout the week.
It is recommended to focus on the same behavior in all spaces to ensure consistency. It is ideal for the front office, classroom staff, support staff, and the student's family to be aware of the focus for the period.
Share these expectations with your students. This should not be a surprise to them.
Not only should they know the expectations but you’ll also want to encourage and reinforce those positive behaviors whenever possible.
At the same time, you’ll need to determine how to support those students who are not meeting expectations regularly.
For those students, you can offer:
This can reinforce those students who are meeting the expectations if done intermittently and unexpectedly.
I would also consider having random checks on your goal progress. This will allow you to check progress and adjust accordingly.
Make sure as a group you determine what focused behaviors are selected and the expectations around each category.
If you can use a google form or something electronic this will help you track trends. Make these forms your own, and use words and phrases that make sense to your kiddos.
When it comes to behavior support the first job for everyone should be to support students in a way that limits office referrals. It doesn’t mean there won’t be any.
But by limiting those occurrences we can give our Tier 2 and 3 behavior specialists more of something that is really hard to come by…time. This means that we need some alternatives that are low-impact and preventative in nature.
These Tier 1 Interventions can often act as the steps in-between normal classroom management for a teacher and an office discipline referral.
Keep reading for some Tier 1 Intervention ideas as well as the handy Tier 1 Behavior Intervention Tracking Sheet you can use to gauge your effectiveness.
First, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:
Then as a team, what can we do to problem solve these issues?
Examples are tardies, time on task, and disruptive behavior during instructional time. As a team, what can you try to improve these situations when you do see some patterns developing?
What are students identifying as their own unproductive behaviors? Students often have great insight into what might be causing behavioral concerns.
I remember one of my students telling me early on in my teaching career, that “I talk too much and need to let us (students) talk more to each other”.
This same student told me that maybe I should go back to drawing school because my drawings of dogs look like horses”. Tough critic, but I took my humble pie nonetheless.
Although it was a bit on the nose and hurtful for me to accept…I did take a long look at the amount of direct instruction I was using as a result.
Once I altered the amount of direct instruction I found ways to gauge my success and I shared those results with my colleagues who also had this particular set of students in class. The result was a plan amongst our teaching team to chunk our lessons more and build in some group work to support their needs.
In my experience, when students are struggling with behavior and do not have an IEP or 504 plan that is needed to address this concern it can often be traced back to a few things:
I have learned this firsthand as a classroom teacher as well as a principal. When folks are not engaged and/or do not understand expectations, no one can be the best version of themselves.
Let’s take a look at some small levers you can pull to get your kiddos back on track:
This sounds counterintuitive, if you take more breaks…won’t students be off task more often? Won’t they have trouble transitioning back to the lesson?
Not necessarily. If they understand when the next “break” is coming then students can often stay more focused to get the task done.
Similar to when I go on a run and break up my miles with some short walks. Just knowing I have that reprieve coming can actually help me push a bit harder.
This is a movement break that can be done without the students' peers being privy to the situation. This is great for breaking up a long class period for a student who can manage short intervals more easily.
Very similar to the idea of the frequent break but you now get some movement going as well.
Simply keep a list of potential errands on hand and once a class period you ask the student to take the pass and run the note to the office or whatever it is you need to be done. This also works nicely with classroom jobs as well.
Can you take your class outdoors or to another location in the building? Sometimes you just need to change things up. I highly suggest incorporating some outdoor time into your teaching routine if you can make it work!
This also has the added benefit of breaking up your lesson with a short walk to the new location which can help students refocus.
Does a student perform better in one seat as opposed to another? Sometimes, yes. It has very little to do with the chair but this can be a great opportunity to provide a little choice to your students or it can provide you with an option to focus your kiddos during a lesson.
You could even go as far as making activity-dependent seating charts. During direct instruction, you may want students in one place, and during group instruction, you may prefer them in another.
This gives you some levers to pull when you notice a student or groups of students are off track which doesn’t further escalate the situation.
Now that you have a few ideas on interventions, let’s dive into the things you need to work out before you begin.
This needs to be pretty easy and not time-consuming. Consider a window of time to collect data: daily check-ins, hourly check-ins, and/or random times throughout the week.
It is recommended to focus on the same behavior in all spaces to ensure consistency. It is ideal for the front office, classroom staff, support staff, and the student's family to be aware of the focus for the period.
Share these expectations with your students. This should not be a surprise to them.
Not only should they know the expectations but you’ll also want to encourage and reinforce those positive behaviors whenever possible.
At the same time, you’ll need to determine how to support those students who are not meeting expectations regularly.
For those students, you can offer:
This can reinforce those students who are meeting the expectations if done intermittently and unexpectedly.
I would also consider having random checks on your goal progress. This will allow you to check progress and adjust accordingly.
Make sure as a group you determine what focused behaviors are selected and the expectations around each category.
If you can use a google form or something electronic this will help you track trends. Make these forms your own, and use words and phrases that make sense to your kiddos.
All the behavior resources you need to create the positive culture your school community deserves.
