Classroom Management: Identifying

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Classroom Management Identifying Teaching
Student Replacement Behaviors Jim
Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org
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Workshop Agenda
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RIOT/ICEL Framework Organizing Information to
Better Identify Student Behavioral Academic
Problems
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Data Collection Defining Terms
Evaluation. the process of using information
collected through assessment to make decisions or
reach conclusions. (Hosp, 2008 p. 364).
Example A student can be evaluated for ability
to comply with teacher requests by collecting
information using various sources (e.g., direct
observation, teacher and student interview,
teacher behavior log, Daily Behavior Report Card,
etc.), comparing those results to peer norms or
developmental expectations and making a decision
about whether the students current performance
is acceptable.
Assessment. the process of collecting
information about the characteristics of persons
or objects by measuring them. (Hosp, 2008 p.
364). Example The construct complying with
teacher requests can be assessed using various
measurements, including direct observation,
teacher and student interview, teacher behavior
log, Daily Behavior Report Card, etc.
Measurement. the process of applying numbers to
the characteristics of objects or people in a
systematic way (Hosp, 2008 p. 364). Example
Frequency counts can be used to measure the rate
of student behaviors that are brief in duration
and have a clear onset and end point.
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RIOT/ICEL Framework

• Sources of Information
• Review (of records)
• Interview
• Observation
• Test
• Focus of Assessment
• Instruction
• Curriculum
• Environment
• Learner

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RIOT/ICEL Definition

• The RIOT/ICEL matrix is an assessment guide to
  help schools efficiently to decide what relevant
  information to collect on student academic
  performance and behaviorand also how to organize
  that information to identify probable reasons why
  the student is not experiencing academic or
  behavioral success.  
• The RIOT/ICEL matrix is not itself a data
  collection instrument. Instead, it is an
  organizing framework, or heuristic, that
  increases schools confidence both in the quality
  of the data that they collect and the findings
  that emerge from the data.

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RIOT Sources of Information

• Select Multiple Sources of Information RIOT
  (Review, Interview, Observation, Test). The top
  horizontal row of the RIOT/ICEL table includes
  four potential sources of student information
  Review, Interview, Observation, and Test (RIOT).
  Schools should attempt to collect information
  from a range of sources to control for potential
  bias from any one source.

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• Select Multiple Sources of Information RIOT
  (Review, Interview, Observation, Test)
• Review. This category consists of past or present
  records collected on the student. Obvious
  examples include report cards, office
  disciplinary referral data, state test results,
  and attendance records. Less obvious examples
  include student work samples, physical products
  of teacher interventions (e.g., a sticker chart
  used to reward positive student behaviors), and
  emails sent by a teacher to a parent detailing
  concerns about a students study and
  organizational skills.

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• Select Multiple Sources of Information RIOT
  (Review, Interview, Observation, Test)
• Interview. Interviews can be conducted
  face-to-face, via telephone, or even through
  email correspondence. Interviews can also be
  structured (that is, using a pre-determined
  series of questions) or follow an open-ended
  format, with questions guided by information
  supplied by the respondent. Interview targets can
  include those teachers, paraprofessionals,
  administrators, and support staff in the school
  setting who have worked with or had interactions
  with the student in the present or past.
  Prospective interview candidates can also consist
  of parents and other relatives of the student as
  well as the student himself or herself.

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• Select Multiple Sources of Information RIOT
  (Review, Interview, Observation, Test)
• Observation. Direct observation of the students
  academic skills, study and organizational
  strategies, degree of attentional focus, and
  general conduct can be a useful channel of
  information. Observations can be more structured
  (e.g., tallying the frequency of call-outs or
  calculating the percentage of on-task intervals
  during a class period) or less structured (e.g.,
  observing a student and writing a running
  narrative of the observed events).

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• Select Multiple Sources of Information RIOT
  (Review, Interview, Observation, Test)
• Test. Testing can be thought of as a structured
  and standardized observation of the student that
  is intended to test certain hypotheses about why
  the student might be struggling and what school
  supports would logically benefit the student
  (Christ, 2008). An example of testing may be a
  student being administered a math computation CBM
  probe or an Early Math Fluency probe.

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Formal Tests Only One Source of Student
Assessment Information

• Tests are often overused and misunderstood in
  and out of the field of school psychology. When
  necessary, analog i.e., test observations can
  be used to test relevant hypotheses within
  controlled conditions. Testing is a highly
  standardized form of observation. .The only
  reason to administer a test is to answer
  well-specified questions and examine
  well-specified hypotheses. It is best practice to
  identify and make explicit the most relevant
  questions before assessment begins. The process
  of assessment should follow these questions. The
  questions should not follow assessment. p.170

Source Christ, T. (2008). Best practices in
problem analysis. In A. Thomas J. Grimes
(Eds.), Best practices in school psychology V
(pp. 159-176). Bethesda, MD National Association
of School Psychologists.
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ICEL Factors Impacting Student Learning

• Investigate Multiple Factors Affecting Student
  Learning ICEL (Instruction, Curriculum,
  Environment, Learner). The leftmost vertical
  column of the RIO/ICEL table includes four key
  domains of learning to be assessed Instruction,
  Curriculum, Environment, and Learner (ICEL). A
  common mistake that schools often make is to
  assume that student learning problems exist
  primarily in the learner and to underestimate the
  degree to which teacher instructional strategies,
  curriculum demands, and environmental influences
  impact the learners academic performance. The
  ICEL elements ensure that a full range of
  relevant explanations for student problems are
  examined.

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• Investigate Multiple Factors Affecting Student
  Learning ICEL (Instruction, Curriculum,
  Environment, Learner)
• Instruction. The purpose of investigating the
  instruction domain is to uncover any
  instructional practices that either help the
  student to learn more effectively or interfere
  with that students learning. More obvious
  instructional questions to investigate would be
  whether specific teaching strategies for
  activating prior knowledge better prepare the
  student to master new information or whether a
  student benefits optimally from the large-group
  lecture format that is often used in a classroom.
  A less obvious example of an instructional
  question would be whether a particular student
  learns better through teacher-delivered or
  self-directed, computer-administered instruction.

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• Investigate Multiple Factors Affecting Student
  Learning ICEL (Instruction, Curriculum,
  Environment, Learner)
• Curriculum. Curriculum represents the full set
  of academic skills that a student is expected to
  have mastered in a specific academic area at a
  given point in time. To adequately evaluate a
  students acquisition of academic skills, of
  course, the educator must (1) know the schools
  curriculum (and related state academic
  performance standards), (2) be able to inventory
  the specific academic skills that the student
  currently possesses, and then (3) identify gaps
  between curriculum expectations and actual
  student skills. (This process of uncovering
  student academic skill gaps is sometimes referred
  to as instructional or analytic assessment.)

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• Investigate Multiple Factors Affecting Student
  Learning ICEL (Instruction, Curriculum,
  Environment, Learner)
• Environment. The environment includes any
  factors in the students school, community, or
  home surroundings that can directly enable their
  academic success or hinder that success. Obvious
  questions about environmental factors that impact
  learning include whether a students educational
  performance is better or worse in the presence of
  certain peers and whether having additional adult
  supervision during a study hall results in higher
  student work productivity. Less obvious questions
  about the learning environment include whether a
  student has a setting at home that is conducive
  to completing homework or whether chaotic hallway
  conditions are delaying that students
  transitioning between classes and therefore
  reducing available learning time.

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• Investigate Multiple Factors Affecting Student
  Learning ICEL (Instruction, Curriculum,
  Environment, Learner)
• Learner. While the student is at the center of
  any questions of instruction, curriculum, and
  learning environment, the learner domain
  includes those qualities of the student that
  represent their unique capacities and traits.
  More obvious examples of questions that relate to
  the learner include investigating whether a
  student has stable and high rates of inattention
  across different classrooms or evaluating the
  efficiency of a students study habits and
  test-taking skills. A less obvious example of a
  question that relates to the learner is whether a
  student harbors a low sense of self-efficacy in
  mathematics that is interfering with that
  learners willingness to put appropriate effort
  into math courses.

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• The teacher collects several student math
  computation worksheet samples to document work
  completion and accuracy.

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• The students parent tells the teacher that her
  sons reading grades and attitude toward reading
  dropped suddenly in Gr 4.

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• An observer monitors the students attention on
  an independent writing assignmentand later
  analyzes the works quality and completeness.

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• A student is given a timed math worksheet to
  complete. She is then given another timed
  worksheet offered a reward if she improves.

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• Comments from several past report cards describe
  the student as preferring to socialize rather
  than work during small-group activities.

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• The teacher tallies the number of redirects for
  an off-task student during discussion. She
  designs a high-interest lesson, still tracks
  off-task behavior.

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Activity Use the RIOT/ICEL Framework

• Discussion How can this framework be used in
  your school to improve the quality of the data
  that you collect on student?

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Defining Student Problem Behaviors A Key to
Identifying Effective Interventions Jim
Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org
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Defining Problem Student Behaviors

• Define the problem behavior in clear, observable,
  measurable terms (Batsche et al., 2008 Upah,
  2008). Write a clear description of the problem
  behavior. Avoid vague problem identification
  statements such as The student is disruptive.
• A well-written problem definition should include
  three parts
• Conditions. The condition(s) under which the
  problem is likely to occur
• Problem Description. A specific description of
  the problem behavior
• Contextual information. Information about the
  frequency, intensity, duration, or other
  dimension(s) of the behavior that provide a
  context for estimating the degree to which the
  behavior presents a problem in the setting(s) in
  which it occurs.

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Defining Problem Student Behaviors

1. Develop examples and non-examples of the problem
   behavior (Upah, 2008). Writing both examples and
   non-examples of the problem behavior helps to
   resolve uncertainty about when the students
   conduct should be classified as a problem
   behavior. Examples should include the most
   frequent or typical instances of the student
   problem behavior. Non-examples should include any
   behaviors that are acceptable conduct but might
   possibly be confused with the problem behavior.

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Defining Problem Student Behaviors

1. Write a behavior hypothesis statement (Batsche et
   al., 2008 Upah, 2008). The next step in
   problem-solving is to develop a hypothesis about
   why the student is engaging in an undesirable
   behavior or not engaging in a desired behavior.
   Teachers can gain information to develop a
   hypothesis through direct observation, student
   interview, review of student work products, and
   other sources. The behavior hypothesis statement
   is important because (a) it can be tested, and
   (b) it provides guidance on the type(s) of
   interventions that might benefit the student.

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Defining Problem Student Behaviors

1. Select a replacement behavior (Batsche et al.,
   2008). Behavioral interventions should be focused
   on increasing student skills and capacities, not
   simply on suppressing problem behaviors. By
   selecting a positive behavioral goal that is an
   appropriate replacement for the students
   original problem behavior, the teacher reframes
   the student concern in a manner that allows for
   more effective intervention planning.

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Defining Problem Student Behaviors

1. Write a prediction statement (Batsche et al.,
   2008 Upah, 2008). The prediction statement
   proposes a strategy (intervention) that is
   predicted to improve the problem behavior. The
   importance of the prediction statement is that it
   spells out specifically the expected outcome if
   the strategy is successful. The formula for
   writing a prediction statement is to state that
   if the proposed strategy (Specific Action) is
   adopted, then the rate of problem behavior is
   expected to decrease or increase in the desired
   direction.

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Defining Academic Problems Get It Right and
Interventions Are More Likely to Be
EffectiveJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org
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Defining Academic Problems Recommended Steps

1. Be knowledgeable of the school academic
   curriculum and key student academic skills that
   are taught. The teacher should have a good
   survey-level knowledge of the key academic skills
   outlined in the schools curriculumfor the grade
   level of their classroom as well as earlier grade
   levels. If the curriculum alone is not adequate
   for describing a students academic deficit, the
   instructor can make use of research-based
   definitions or complete a task analysis to
   further define the academic problem area. Here
   are guidelines for consulting curriculum and
   research-based definitions and for conducting a
   task analysis for more global skills.

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Defining Academic Problems Recommended Steps

• Curriculum. The teacher can review the schools
  curriculum and related documents (e.g.,
  score-and-sequence charts curriculum maps) to
  select specific academic skill or performance
  goals. First, determine the approximate grade or
  level in the curriculum that matches the
  students skills. Then, review the curriculum at
  that alternate grade level to find appropriate
  descriptions of the students relevant academic
  deficit. For example, a second-grade student
  had limited phonemic awareness. The student was
  not able accurately to deconstruct a spoken word
  into its component sound-units, or phonemes. In
  the schools curriculum, children were expected
  to attain proficiency in phonemic awareness by
  the close of grade 1. The teacher went off
  level to review the grade 1 curriculum and found
  a specific description of phonemic awareness that
  she could use as a starting point in defining the
  students skill deficit.

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Defining Academic Problems Recommended Steps

• Research-Based Skill Definitions. Even when a
  schools curriculum identifies key skills,
  schools may find it useful to corroborate or
  elaborate those skill definitions by reviewing
  alternative definitions published in research
  journals or other trusted sources. For example,
  a student had delays in solving quadratic
  equations. The math instructor found that the
  schools math curriculum did not provide a
  detailed description of the skills required to
  successfully complete quadratic equations. So the
  teacher reviewed the National Mathematics
  Advisory Panel report (Fennell et al., 2008) and
  found a detailed description of component skills
  for solving quadratic equations. By combining the
  skill definitions from the school curriculum with
  the more detailed descriptions taken from the
  research-based document, the teacher could better
  pinpoint the students academic deficit in
  specific terms.

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Defining Academic Problems Recommended Steps

• Task Analysis. Students may possess deficits in
  more global academic enabling skills that are
  essential for academic success. Teachers can
  complete an task analysis of the relevant skill
  by breaking it down into a checklist of
  constituent subskills. An instructor can use the
  resulting checklist to verify that the student
  can or cannot perform each of the subskills that
  make up the global academic enabling
  skill.For example, teachers at a middle school
  noted that many of their students seemed to have
  poor organization skills. Those instructors
  conducted a task analysis and determined that--in
  their classrooms--the essential subskills of
  student organization included (a) arriving to
  class on time (b) bringing work materials to
  class (c) following teacher directions in a
  timely manner (d) knowing how to request teacher
  assistance when needed and (e) having an
  uncluttered desk with only essential work
  materials.

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Defining Academic Problems Recommended Steps

• Describe the academic problem in specific,
  skill-based terms (Batsche et al., 2008 Upah,
  2008). Write a clear, brief description of the
  academic skill or performance deficit that
  focuses on a specific skill or performance area.
  Here are sample problem-identification
  statements
• John reads aloud from grade-appropriate text much
  more slowly than his classmates.
• Ann lacks proficiency with multiplication math
  problems (double-digit times double-digit with no
  regrouping).
• Tye does not turn in homework assignments.
• Angela produces limited text on in-class writing
  assignments.

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Defining Academic Problems Recommended Steps

• Develop a fuller description of the academic
  problem to provide a meaningful instructional
  context. When the teacher has described the
  students academic problem, the next step is to
  expand the problem definition to put it into a
  meaningful context. This expanded definition
  includes information about the conditions under
  which the academic problem is observed and
  typical or expected level of performance.
• Conditions. Describe the environmental conditions
  or task demands in place when the academic
  problem is observed.
• Problem Description. Describe the actual
  observable academic behavior in which the student
  is engaged. Include rate, accuracy, or other
  quantitative information of student performance.
• Typical or Expected Level of Performance. Provide
  a typical or expected performance criterion for
  this skill or behavior. Typical or expected
  academic performance can be calculated using a
  variety of sources,

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Defining Academic Problems Recommended Steps

1. Develop a hypothesis statement to explain the
   academic skill or performance problem. The
   hypothesis states the assumed reason(s) or
   cause(s) for the students academic problems.
   Once it has been developed, the hypothesis
   statement acts as a compass needle, pointing
   toward interventions that most logically address
   the student academic problems.

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Defining Student Problem Behaviors Team Activity

• As a team
• Consider the 4-step process described in this
  workshop for defining student academic concerns.
• How would your school incorporate this approach
  into your RTI problem-solving model?