Classroom Intervention Program in Kids Behaviors - Case Study Example

Running Head: Programming an Intervention Programming an Intervention Customer’s Name: Customer’s Course: Tutor’s Name: April 20, 2012 Overview In early years of a child’s development, children rely on peers and adults to understand the environment around them. In school, children tend to communicate using emotions and other physical ways to express their needs to peers and to the caretaker. The physical and emotions communication for example gesturing, crying and pushing are used by young children because they have not mastered enough communication skills required to express them-selves in a coherent and conventional manner. Therefore, challenging behaviours characterize most of the children’s behaviour both in school and at home. At these occasions, caretakers and teachers are encouraged to help children showing these challenging behaviours so that they can acquire necessary skills to communicate (Hunter & Hemmeter, 2009). The assistance helps the challenged children to learn the rule, word or the routine that will guide them past the circumstances where they are facing challenges. So, teachers and families respond and use child guidance to assist in developing and learning both the language and the behaviour that are necessary to cope with the social world. Nonetheless, some of the children have behaviours that are stubborn and insensitive to the efforts of the caretakers or teachers. The characteristic of such challenging behaviours is that they take a longer duration, and are of high intensity than the normal levels of behaviours that develop normally. For example, it is abnormal for a 3 years old child to intentionally hurt peers in class or animals without showing empathy or regret. If such challenging behaviours are persistent, it calls for educators and family to address the needs of that child so that he/she can develop social skills. Therefore, they (educators and family) develop an individualized plan (program of intervention) to ensure that the child’s early education is successful (Murdick & Petch-Hogan, 1996). Description of the challenging behaviour Most of the children’s behaviours at the age of 3 year are irrational, but there are others that are not only annoying and persistent. John who is a kid in my preparatory class have a very annoying behaviour of hitting the desk and any other object around him and worse still he hits on class mates if they argue about something. The behaviour has continued even after telling John that such reactions are not welcome in class and in the society. For example, John would hit on his toys that he is playing with if they don’t function as he commands them to. Another example is when John hits and bite’s his mother after dropping him to school and he is not in the mood to school (Durand & Heinemann, 2008). The behaviour depicts that John is emotionally challenged in reacting to decisions that are not on his favour. As a teacher, I’m concerned not only about John’s wellbeing but also that of peers whom he could be playing with. In other occasions, John threatens to hit or bite peers if they do not respond to his demands. If you caution him about the behaviour and the threats, he starts to argue supporting his reactions. Even after punishing him, he does not show empathy or sorrow for the behaviour no matter the consequences. The behaviour has affected him because classmate and other peers are voiding him not only in class but also in playgrounds, but his reactions still continues. At home, his family has continuously cautioned him about the same reactions but he responds the same. John’s behaviour can be learnt from his father who is a habitual drunk and reacts violently whenever he arrives at home from his social joints. I say this because, children learn through imitations and observations of adults’ behaviours and mostly from the people they trust dearly in their life. To support these insinuations, in one of the incidences John argued that even his Dad hits his Mum and he was not punished by anybody. Due to this, I tend to believe that the problem started at home and John brought it to school, thinking it is normal as he had observed back home. From other observations, I believe that most of the challenging behaviours start from home and children bring them to school without realizing that the behaviours are challenging. Though, some of the challenging behaviours can be learnt in school, they are containable using punishment and other negative reinforcements whenever such challenging behaviours are portrayed. In addition, the challenging behaviours learnt from home are difficult to curb since children spent most of their early years of development at home and again, after school they go back to the same environment. If say, the teacher negatively reinforces the behaviour at school and at home this is not the case, it will be difficult for the teacher to mitigate the challenging behaviours. But if both the teacher and the parents or the family of the children respond to the management of the challenging behaviours, the mitigation would be easy. To address John’s challenging behaviour we develop an individualized intervention programme to mitigate and curb the behaviour. Collecting information about the behaviour To gather information about John’s challenging behaviour, we apply a functional assessment system, which is used to collect the necessary information that will determine why the behaviour is persistent and challenging (Patterson & Chamberlain, 1994). The system focus on the following main areas; the necessary conditions under which the behaviour is most and least likely to occur, the circumstances under which the challenging behaviour is maintained and through which means, and the possible message the child with challenging behaviour could be communicating. This information will help in determining the best remedies to the behaviour. The aims of a challenging behaviour is identified by reviewing the context under which it helps and understanding the purpose of the behaviour as applied by the child (John). Again, through this information, we will identify what John gains, what he avoids and what he controls through the behaviour. For successful program of intervention, the functional assessment process should involve all the persons cross to the child with the challenging behaviour. It is done by giving a copy of the questions and the procedure to be used so that everyone knows his or her role in the intervention program. In this step, we look at John’s previous records such as developmental profile and family records about the behaviour (Janney & Snell, 2008). Form the findings from after consultation with the John’s Mum; we concluded that the challenging behaviour has been persistent since the John attained age 2. Again, despite the efforts from Mum to curb the behaviour it has not stopped but instead it has grown to other levels of biting. In addition, we learn that there has not been any other behaviour intervention program to mitigate John’s persistent behaviour. The family definitions the behaviour as John hits his toys with his fist and bites anybody who he does not like. We prioritized the hitting behaviour as the most serious because it happens most of the time and in both environments i.e. at school and at home. In addition, this behaviour hinders John’s participation with his peer both in class and at home. To collect a useful data, we used the following set of questions in our interviews and we analysed the results to come-up with the answers listed below each question. 1. When do these behaviours occur? Most of the time when John is vexed 2. How often do these behaviours occur? Moderately when at home and frequently while at school 3. Is there any circumstance under which the behaviour does not occur? If John is happy and emotionally elated 4. Is there any circumstance under which the behaviour always occurs? If he is involved in a discussion and the peers or the teacher is against his opinions 5. Does the behaviour occur more often during certain times of the day? John is more moody when he is hungry, it was observed that John; more often than not portray the behaviour some minutes to lunch time both at school and at home. 6. Does the behaviour occur in response to the number of people present? The behaviour is not dependent to the people around him. 7. Does the behaviour occur only with certain people? No; anybody who annoys John, is likely to trigger the behaviour. 8. Does the behaviour occur only during certain subjects? Through some behaviour are triggered by hate or dislike of the subject, and the teacher himself, this is not the case with Johns behaviour. 9. Could the behaviour be related to any skill deficits? Yes; John lacks the necessary skill to think and reason rationally without being egocentric with his opinions. 10. What observable events signal that the behaviour is about to occur? If is about lunch time or if John is vexed by peers, toys or anybody else. Form the finding and the analysis; we form a hypothesis (an informed guess) about the behaviour (Chandler & Dahlquist, 2002). The behaviour serves as a defence mechanism to express John’s needs and desires. It can also be argued that the behaviour is to threaten peers or person near John in order to conform to his opinions and hence win the argument. The behaviour is more persistent at school because most of the persons interacting with him are peers who similarly have not developed the necessary cognitive skills to communicate and reason rationally. Hence, if any dispute crops in between the John and probably his desk mate the most way out according to John is to hit or bite the desk mate. Again, John eating routine is change such that there is no one time that he is hungry, the behaviour is believed it can subside. Classroom intervention program Due to individualized nature of the challenging behaviour, the program of intervention should be centred to helping only the child with the challenging behaviour (Bambara & Kern, 2005). The ultimate way in addressing a challenging behaviour in the young children education is to make sure that the behaviour never occurs. Through there are several ways for preventing challenging behaviour, three of them are suggested for children with challenging behaviour in a classroom. These are; scheduling, changing the classroom environment and setting rules such as the routines, rituals and rules (Ratcliff, 2001). This way, the program will concentrate more on the challenging behaviour and give a refuting solution to the cited problem. We concluded that, to mitigate John’s challenging behaviour, we will use a classroom based program. This kind of challenging behaviours requires addressing both the circumstances under which the behaviour occurs or that facilitates the occurrence of the behaviour and developing a replacement behaviour (Murdick & Petch-Hogan, 1996). To develop the replacement behaviour, it requires that the teacher to design a functionally-equivalent behaviour that will be taught to the child with the challenging behaviour such that the new behaviour will serve the purpose of the old behaviour. The new behaviour to be taught should be; easy to for the child to learn, serve the same purpose as the old challenging behaviour, and be better than the challenging behaviour, in the sense that it will be entertaining to the kid so as to embrace it. Therefore, to mitigate John’s behaviour we used this method so that he will learn to apply the new behaviour instead of the old one. We introduced “ask before acting program” in which John has to ask everything he does. This way, he will develop a habit of questioning therefore acquiring the necessary skills of interacting with others without hitting or biting anyone. As a teacher, I will question John of every action that he undertakes without asking and if necessary negatively reinforce that behaviour. If on the other hand, he shows positive change with the new behaviours, I will positively reinforce the behaviour by rewarding the right actions. Hence, John will be required to continuously apply the method in order for him to suppress the challenging behaviour. In terms of rearranging the classroom environment we changed the activities inside the class such that there is no direct interaction of peers without teacher’s assistance (Nordquist et al, 1991). This way, John will not be able to directly quarrel with peers. In addition, we encouraged John to play with peers without fighting or quarrelling with them by rewarding him with playing toys. We applied ‘catch them being good and reinforce them for it’ strategy of acquiring appropriate behaviours from peers. Finally, we introduce new rules, set of rituals and routines. We changed these classroom aspects so that we incorporate rituals and rules that will mitigate John’s behaviour and any other challenging behaviour in the class. This involved songs that discourage vexing others and fighting, the lyrics and the tone of the song is frightening which will make John to avoid the actions. Non-success and Success of the program The program was designed to mitigate the behaviour from the school (classroom) environment perspective. Therefore, the program neglected any other influence outside the classroom that can accelerate or encourage the problem. The program would have involved family intervention so that to completely tackle the challenging behaviour (Lucyshyn, et al, 2002). Especially the involvement John’s Dad would have problem of hitting everything when he is drunk. As the program implement, I with help of other experts would have visited John’s family and discussed with them about the problem. Alternatively, we would have invited the family (father and mother) in the school and ask for their support in the intervention process. This way, John’s father would form part in the intervention and stop auctioning the way he does in presence of John. Consequently, John will have no one to imitate hence behaviour will eventually subside. Furthermore, the method of data collection clustered around the challenging behaviour without more emphases on the purpose of which it served. The information collected generally solved one aspect of the problem and neglected other aspects of the problem. This serves as a loophole from which the behaviour can still thrive irrespective of the intervention program. From observation and analysis of information collected after some time after the program was instigated, it is clear there are some improvement records about John’s challenging behaviour. One of the changes is that, the number of times of the occurrence of the behaviour has significantly reduced. For example, on average; the number of times the behaviour would happen in a given week was seventeen, showing that at least the behaviour occurred twice or more times in a day. After the program, the number of times it would occur in a certain week would be seven (on average) depicting a decrease of ten occurrence in a week. From my perspective, the program has done a commendable job of curbing the behaviour. In conclusion, it is may believe after reviewing the areas of difficultly and involving the family in the program, the intervention program will be a success to John and to others with the same persistent behaviour. References Bambara, L. M., & Kern, L (2005) .Individualized supports for students with problem behaviours: Designing positive behaviour plans. New York: Guilford Press. Chandler, L & Dahlquist, C (2002) .Functional assessment: Strategies to prevent and remediate challenging behaviour in school settings. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Durand, V & Heinemann, M (2008) .Helping parents with challenging children: Positive Family Intervention facilitator guide. New York: Oxford University Press. Hunter, A & Hemmeter, M (2009) .The Centre on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning: Addressing challenging behaviours in infants and toddlers. Zero to Three, 29(3), 5-12 Janney, R, & Snell, M (2008) .Teachers’ guide to inclusive practices: Behavioural support second edition. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. Lucyshyn, J. Dunlap, G & Albin, R (2002) .Families and positive behaviour support. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. Murdick, N & Petch-Hogan, B (1996) .Inclusive classroom management: Using pre-intervention strategies. Intervention in School & Clinic, 31, 172-177 Nordquist, V., Twardosz, S., & McEvoy, M (1991) .Effects of environmental reorganization in classrooms for children with autism: Journal of Early Intervention, 15 (2), 135-15 Patterson, G & Chamberlain, P (1994) .A functional analysis of resistance during parent training therapy. Clinical Psychology Science and Practice, 1(1), 53-70. Ratcliff, N (2001) .Use the environment to prevent discipline problems and support earning: Young Children, 56 (5), 84-87 Read More

 

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