📝Takeaways :
💎Today’s GEM: Try using one of these data sheets to get objective behavior data as a starting point for behavior consult. Can also increase student motivation toward behavioral goals! 🎉
⏰ We have something to save you TIME this week! ⏰
Links:
These printable and digital point charts (with numerical scores or emojis ☺️) allow for user-friendly data collection for teachers and visual goal charts for students!
😍 More, you say? We’re here for you!
🖱️ Rate, Review, Like & Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!
📝Takeaways :
💎Today’s GEM: Try using one of these data sheets to get objective behavior data as a starting point for behavior consult. Can also increase student motivation toward behavioral goals! 🎉
⏰ We have something to save you TIME this week! ⏰
Links:
These printable and digital point charts (with numerical scores or emojis ☺️) allow for user-friendly data collection for teachers and visual goal charts for students!
😍 More, you say? We’re here for you!
🖱️ Rate, Review, Like & Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!
Audra Jensen: I found that students if they can, if they can identify themselves that they had a rough time that that's more acceptable than you telling them that had had a rough time. So if they can say yeah, that was then that's okay. But if you have to give them that feedback, that's much more difficult.
Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast. Join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Caitlin Beltran, here to bring you evidence based strategies with a student centered focus. Listen weekly for practical and functional advice, along with actionable tips tailored for ABA professionals, special education teachers, and anyone dedicated to supporting students with diverse needs. Ready? Let's get started.
Caitlin Beltran: Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviors podcast. So today we are going to be talking about supporting teachers and students in the general education setting. So what I mean by that is, I'm just going to speak from personal experience. I am the only BCBA in a relatively small district, but a lot of times I am consulting with teachers, working with students in our special education settings, resource room, self contained, inclusion, but often I'm asked to support in, you know, can you help this teacher with this student or these group of students here having a rough time during recess?
Like, what can you do to help? And so it's just a different world. And so I want to dive into that a little bit today. Audra, what's your experience like with that type of setting?
Audra Jensen: I'm excited about that just because, there's such a great variety of students that we have that we have to support and a great variety of classrooms and a great variety of different teachers and their abilities to support the students and so we as BCBAs and others in the Behavior support people have to really have a huge toolbox that we carry around, and so I'm always looking for new ideas and how to use different data collection methods and different strategies.
I was just contacted this week by a school district that I consult with about a student with Tourette's. Was looking for some strategies for that. And so I'm probably going to talk to you offline about some strategies of how to support this particular classroom. So yeah, I'm, I'm super excited about talking about different ways to support classrooms in a general education classroom and students with behavioral challenges in there. So that's great.
Caitlin Beltran: Awesome. So I want to start by saying you like you mentioned that toolkit and it grows every year. We have the visuals, we have the picture cues, the story. So that's, I would say, sometimes like my first line of defense, like if a teacher says okay, my kindergarten classroom, like, not classified student, no diagnosis, just the students calling out, the students having trouble keeping hands to themselves.
I'm going to start by just maybe observing, if I can, and also just giving her those tools. Like, try this visual, you can use it this way, just some pointers, like, strategies that we know and live by. But, if I find myself, I'm called back that second or third time, I guess that's where I'm honing in on today. And I do want to share some data collection methods that I can then give that teacher that are super user friendly because again, this is a classroom that doesn't have a para. It doesn't have a second teacher. So they're really on their own. They need something really quick and easy.
So this is something and I have a couple different versions that I'm sure people have seen before, but just like a very simple point sheet that you can use for learners to kind of check in and check out, and so right away, I'm getting a period by period version of how that student's day is, hopefully I'm talking to the teacher about in the comment section, writing like what was the trigger? What happened? If they're able to take that ABC data for me? Okay. Right from the bat, that's amazing, but I can't always ask every teacher to do that every single time from day one. It's just, it's not always practical and I want to get invited back. So this is something where maybe some people might say, like, I'm jumping the gun.
I don't know the function. I don't know the triggers yet. I haven't done the full package. But again, it's just something to save me time, and there's plenty of times where we try these different things and then it ends up, you know what, I'm moving to that full FBA, we're getting that consent, we're doing those things because it's larger than that, but sometimes just something like this gives me the teacher and also the student, at least we're getting an idea of patterns, at least we're getting an idea of how often the goals are met and how often they're not.
It also helps give me a starting point if I am moving to an FBA because I'm able to see, you know, if I'm talking to three different teachers and three of them, three different teachers say, it's a really rough day, that could still kind of mean three different things just because we're all human. So every, that subjective language is tough.
So I'm sharing this on screen if you're watching on YouTube, but if you're listening, it's basically just a breakdown of period by period. I'm going to link it in the show notes so everyone can grab it if they're interested. Obviously, you could fill in period one's reading, period two is math, period three is library, and then potentially a goal, maybe keeping hands to self is goal one, and goal two is raising hand to speak if they're calling out. Have you ever used anything like this, Audra?
Audra Jensen: Yeah, I've used a variety of different things. What I really like about this is when you add that sort of very simple numeric value to it, then you're creating an ability to track it objectively over time. So you could create this over time, day by day, create a percentage each day, and then kind of gather, you know, a line graph over the last couple of weeks.
You know, are we on a trajectory of improvement? Are we going, do we have a downward trend, you know, and you can kind of get that, that overview of how we're going and it's very simple and quick way. I used a variety of different ones that are similar to this. It's very quick and easy for a teacher to do. And it gives them an objective way to just say, you know, yes, yay or nay.
Caitlin Beltran: Exactly, that's exactly where I was coming from and I feel like we're almost killing 2 birds with 1 stone because, as you said, we're gathering the data. It's not all the data we're ever going to need, of course, but at least it's like preliminary data.
But the bonus is, if you have a teacher that's willing to implement this with the student and have a student who's receptive to, you know, what are we earning points for at the end of the day? If you have seven periods and you can earn up to two points each out of 14 points, let's start with 10. Can we earn 10 points for your goals?
You're roping the student in again, if it's, if they're able to, introducing the motivation in a really tangible way. But again, that whole time, if it's working great, if not, I'm still getting data so that I can move to something more intensive.
Audra Jensen: And I have a question for you. Do you send these home?
Caitlin Beltran: Oh, great question. If it's, if I'm doing something like this, and I guess I should preface, like, you could certainly use this as just a data collection tool to start with. Like, if you have a teacher who's not used to taking frequency or interval or ABC yet, and this might be just a user friendly way for them to circle at a glance.
But most of the times, if I'm using this one, the student's involved at that point. And sometimes I have them I'll bring it up, but I'll leave the boxes empty. And it's so funny because I'm, I'll introduce it, but so that they can have involvement in making it. And then I'm also taking something off the teacher's plate, hopefully, but I'm always surprised because sometimes I'll say to the student, oh, we could do numbers points.
We could do thumbs up, thumbs down, and they'll come up with something different. Like, no, we should do, you know, Roblox character for yes and, you know, Minecraft for no. And so I love that because it's still the same thing. It's still giving them objective data and they're working towards the goal, but like now it's their personal sheet and I love that.
Audra Jensen: I can tell you that from a parent perspective, getting this type of information home is just so important and so helpful. When, especially if you have a student who can't communicate, even if they can communicate, but don't communicate how their day was, you know, effectively, I mean, something like this as a communication method and how their day was, it's just so appreciated from the home front.
Caitlin Beltran: Yeah, so to get back to your original question, I'm usually sharing it with parents daily. Sometimes, I guess, like you were talking about graphing and we'll get there. it depends on parent preference, really. What we've been doing a lot lately is the teacher or I will take a picture of it, send the picture home through email, and keep the sheet. So that way we don't have to do the photocopy.
Audra Jensen: Yes, that was my next question.
Caitlin Beltran: Because then we'd never want to lose the original. Back in the day.
Audra Jensen: Happened too many times.
Caitlin Beltran: Yeah. My oops was like, we're sending it home. This is great. And then I'm like, where, where's my copy? I have no data. So I was like, can I have this back from last week?
And usually what I'm doing is obviously the lines of communication by that point, even though it's early on, I'm opening with a parent. I just made one of these last week, something similar. I think first I emailed the parents that I'm looking to sit with your child and come up with something like this to frame it like a positive work on goals.
Then once the student and I did that, I would send it home. It's like the blank one 1st, just to explain it. And then it starts going home on a regular basis. Great. So, yeah, I can't think of any time where my parent hasn't wanted to get at home. Sometimes they have more feedback than others, but whatever they're comfortable with.
Audra Jensen: That's great.
Caitlin Beltran: And then, I guess moving into the digital world kind of, you know, again, as able and every situation is different, but I am going to share, a Google sheet that I made and again, if you're watching, you'll be seeing it now. And if not, I will link it so you could explore it on your own. And these are different ways to, use, you know, use your computer, use something you have open on your desk all the time, not have another piece of paper floating around. I tend to think for the younger guys that visual is so important. It's right in front of them. For the older students sometimes you have learners who are like, like, get the clipboard off my desk.
Like, I don't want everyone to know it's mine kind of thing. So this is an example of literally just like a digital point sheet here. I have the goals. These are just examples. Respectful speech, hands to self. Here I have the point value. You could easily make it yes, no. I find like if you're obviously trying to hone in on the most important things, right?
So one to two, three goals max. And maybe the point value is just yes or no. Did it happen? But maybe if it's like work completion or something, you have a middle ground. This is an example kind of to get at what you were saying earlier. This one's a little more complicated than something I would normally start with, but I just put a quick drop down menu so that each period by period the teacher can score the student or the student can come to the teacher if we can say, listen, at the end of the period, I'm going to give you just a a little hand signal.
No one's got to know what we're doing again. It's all explained in advance so that the student has buy in. And then I might say, how do you feel like you did? Did you feel like the goals were achieved or not so much? And then we do it like me being the teacher. We do it together. And then here, of course, I have, like, the auto sum of the points.
So you can see right away, we got 19 points, then 16, then 21. So we can see the patterns, and that could easily be plugged into a graph over time, just to give us that objective point. And usually in a case like this, it's one teacher, so you're, you know that you're comparing apples to apples, but if even you do have like an inclusion teacher or a parent in the room, I just try to really specifically write out the definition. So everyone's consistent.
Audra Jensen: How's been your history, your buy in with the different teachers you've worked with over time?
Caitlin Beltran: So I am, I think, fairly lucky that I work in a small district and I'm able to circle back to teachers enough that when I do give them something, if they don't like it, they tell me right away in a respectful way. And so that's fine. I don't have a lot of instances where teachers are just like not willing to try something. Sometimes I do have teachers who are like, this is great, but I just don't think I could do this. And that's the time where I think, especially if I'm working in a situation where this is a gen ed classroom, I try to take on maybe not the scoring, but as much as I can.
So I'll take on, I'll create the chart, obviously. I'll sit with the student and explain it. So I love having the teacher involved as much as they're willing to be. But there's times where the teacher is just The value of classroom are just so overwhelmed.
And if they're not fully bought in, maybe I'd rather come from me first, have them see the value and then over time, make sure they're were all equal parts in the process. But if I'm able to, I do like to sit with a student myself, take that off the teacher's plate and then even either whether they're coming to me for rewards, coming to me for a 10 minute check in a day or a week, and that's where I think I can be a value where not only am I looking at the data. But again, if the student's able to, if it's a younger child, maybe I'm like, how did last week go?
I see a lot of thumbs up. If it's an older learner, I've had learners be like, did I hit my goal last week? Really getting them involved in that process so that I can have those conversations with them that a general education teacher just probably doesn't have time for in their day. But overall positive, and I think that offering different choices always helps, too. Like, I might go to a teacher and say, Look, I have something like this. It's
Audra Jensen: That's what I was going to ask you. You fine. do you find a certain more one way or the other?
Caitlin Beltran: I think that some people love the idea of using anything digital when they can. And some people are the complete opposite. And then you have everything in between. Like I have tons of teachers that are like, well, what do you think and I'm like, alright, we'll start with this and see how it goes.
But, I think it's just teacher preference because again, like some of those teachers are like, oh, like, I'm never going to check my computer. I don't go near it and others and I don't want to overgeneralize, but sometimes the younger teachers coming in they're so savvy with like Google Drive and bookmarking and pinning tabs and things like that. It's easy for them to remember to do it that way, rather than the papers floating around.
Audra Jensen: Excellent.
Caitlin Beltran: And then I think in this one, I have the example point. You could easily pop that into a graph. I do have this was something I was just playing around with where, it gives you the little like emoji visual and then I added the conditional formatting because obviously, so that like, if you know, if it's whatever today's date and then your period one went great.
Okay. Period two not so good, or rather I'd be doing it this way and then it automatically shades like green, yellow, red, so that again if they keep coming over, hopefully which if you're using something like this they are, and if you're using a period by period chart and you're not showing it to the child until the end of the day, that's kind of like a little risky.
It's kind of, I could see that where that might work for some, but the whole point of breaking it down period by period, not just for us to get the objective data, but for the visual feedback. And if it's not motivating, I mean, forget it. You also learn pretty quickly if I'm like, well, period three was tough and period four was tough. We need to do an about face and rework.
Audra Jensen: I found that students if they can, if they can identify themselves that they had a rough time that that's more acceptable than you telling them that had had a rough time. So if they can say yeah, that was then that's okay. But if you have to give them that feedback, that's much more difficult.
Caitlin Beltran: Yeah, so true, right? And that's why I kind of like some of these pre made ones because you, I'm giving the student like a controlled choice. I'm like, what do you think? Was it great? Was it okay? Or was it not my best day? And then they don't have to come up with the language of like, I don't think I did terrible, you know, it's just a pre formatted response, but they have some ownership.
And I would be surprised sometimes I'm like, I have kids all the time. I always feel like they're cutting themselves short. They're like, oh, not my best. And I'm like, no, I was going to say decent. Or if I say, if they say decent, I'm like, no, I thought it went pretty well. And that's where it's important, I think, to really individualize those goals for learner, because even hands to self, you might say to the teacher, look, they're five years old. Kids are talking about perfection here. I'm talking about for their history.
Audra Jensen: And then this is great. I, I really like this, this style using the emojis and the conditional formatting. That's very cute.
Caitlin Beltran: I like the emojis. And then when I was doing it, I was like, Oh, they all kind of look alike when they're small. So then I ended up the color pop. And just to kind of reiterate, like if it was looking like this every day, that's where the importance of checking them every day, every week. We know behavior change takes time, but I think sometimes a reminder to myself is if I'm working with a gen ed teacher and I do give them something like this and it just slips to the back of my mind and I don't get to check in for a week or two and they might be like, yeah, I'm still doing it.
You know, they've been, they haven't earned in two weeks and I'm like, oh no, like totally my bad, but I need to have that, remember to have that conversation of if they're not earning a day or two days, that could be, you know, motivation, but if it's not working beyond that, it's just not working. So like anything else, this is not an end all be all.
Audra Jensen: I have a question. This is something that I've run into many times that I wonder if you've had the same experience that I have to train the teachers and the staff to learn to take those recordings at the time that they happen and not try to remember how the day was later because then you don't get an accurate portrayal of what really happened when you're trying to remember what happened later and that's hard for them to get that into that mindset that at the end of each period I need you to take the 30 seconds at that time rather than try to go and fill it in every period from the at the end of the day and try to remember what happened and that I found is really challenging for some teachers to kind of wrap their heads around like I can remember what happened and that's really been a challenge for them.
Caitlin Beltran: And I think it's almost good when you frame it like, okay, the plan is not just to do this. And if they earn at the end of the day, the plan is to check in at each period, because even having that student come up to you as your prompt to score, I mean, maybe here or there you forget a period, but that's where it comes into play, too.
If you do have a learner who really is bought into it. Then I put maybe a little visual on their desk and it's like, ask my teacher how I did and I know it's just to me like anything I can take off of the plate for that one teacher in the room, whether it's me or the student, not that you want the student to be given more work, but if they're interested, and that's great, and that's not going to work for every student for every classroom, but 100 percent if we're scoring this at the end of the day, thinking, oh, I don't know. How was library?
It's so not worthwhile. So, and that's like kind of goes along with the theme of whether we're not remembering to do it or the child's not earning frequently, there's going to be times where we can just say this didn't work. Let's try a new strategy. But I've seen it work where it's pretty cool where once the learner buys in, if I'm able to help out with a few things, it ends up being like, I've worked with so many amazing teachers who I would never think that they would be able to keep up with it.
And like the teacher's like, Oh, I set an alarm on my phone every 40 minutes. And I'm like, Whoa, like I, you know, I wouldn't even ask someone to do that. Or they have it scheduled, send on their email, like a couple times a day or something like that, or just the post it or whatever it might be. just like really cool ways that over time it becomes part of their day.
And the whole point is that it just takes a minute. Like I'm not trying to say every 40 minutes you have to elaborate conversation, like. It's hope meant to be really quick over time.
Audra Jensen: I'm excited about this. I'm, I'm actually going to take your, this one that you showed me, the, the, probably the emoji one. I'm going to take this. I'm going to give this a try. I'll let her choose.
Caitlin Beltran: You can use any emoji. So, you know, the world is your oyster, but you don't have to stop at those smiley faces.
Audra Jensen: I'll let him choose because he's, you know, he's old enough and he's completely normal.
Caitlin Beltran: That could be really creative.
Audra Jensen: Yeah, that's a great idea. I'm going to do that.
Caitlin Beltran: And just put a little key so the teacher knows, like, the bike means a great day. Like, you know, so we're all speaking the same language.
Audra Jensen: What's our one thing for this week?
Caitlin Beltran: I think the one thing would be if you are a behaviorist or a special education service provider collaborating with teachers in the gen ed settings, just giving something like that a try. If you have a student who's kind of borderline, maybe you're like, okay, I need to observe more. I need to get more information. Seeing if the teacher's willing and if that could be a good strategy. Again, you're killing two birds, you're getting the data and maybe introducing some motivation in one package. And then just always as always checking back in with us and see how it worked.
Audra Jensen: Love it.
Caitlin Beltran: I think that's about it. So join us next week. Don't forget to follow us, subscribe, do all the things, leave us those ratings, help our algorithm keep playing along. And, yeah, that's it from us. We'll see you next week.
Audra Jensen: We will see you next week. See ya.
Thanks for listening to the Misfit Behaviorist. And be sure to tune in next week for more tips and tricks. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.