Using Assessment to Guide Intervention
For A Student Who Calls Out Answers
Author: Amanda Hoffman

    
I.    Introduction: In my first grade special education, I have a student who is constantly calling out and distracting myself and the entire class during lessons. Throughout the school year I have tried numerous techniques to reduce the distractions and to teach the student in several ways that in school we raise our hand and wait to be called upon.  When this student is reminded he does follow through but then a few moments’ later regresses back to his negative behavior.

II.    Goal: For this assignment I decided to conduct a behavioral record on how often and in what settings this student distracts the class by calling out.  For two weeks (10 school days) I kept a record in a chart that was not shared with the student at anytime.  My co-teacher completed the chart during the same two weeks. This allowed us to compare information to see if we had the same findings.  The goal of the behavior chart was to help identify when the problem occurs and try to find out why to then help change the behavior.

III.    Results: After observing the behavior for two whole weeks I sat down with my co-teacher and we examined our findings. The number of times the student called out on an average day was 34!  This number is extremely high. The times of the day when this behavior occurred most were during math and science. During all other areas the behavior was significantly lower.  This information was very interesting because it was something I had never realized earlier. It made sense that these two times were the highest because math and science are the student’s strongest areas where he is successful and enjoys sharing outside information.

IV.    Implementation: Due to our findings we decided to create a math and science schedule for the student which would allow him special times to share information with the class.  It also setup a very structured schedule for the student which was helpful.  If it was not the child’s time to share with the group then he had to write his thoughts down on paper which could be shared at a later time or put the information in his brains “later box”.  The student does know that in order to get his special time to share information with the class he must follow class directions such as raising your hand.  The special sharing time has become a motivator. Additionally we created a visual raising your hand reminder chart for the student which was placed on his desk as well as in the front of the classroom.

V.    What happened? The new interventions have been used for the past few weeks and they truly have made a difference for this student.  He really looks forward to and enjoys his special math and science sharing time where he shares experiments he has done at home or a math problem he figured out.  The student is motivated by this special time which was greatly reduced calling out in the classroom.  Due to my positive experiment with a behavior record I would use this idea again when necessary.



This description of assessment and intervention was written by Amanda Hoffman while a graduate student in the Department of Special Education at Hunter College of the City University of New York.  It is used with her permission.

Thanks Amanda!


Uploaded to www.BehaviorAdvisor.com on 7/2/06