Reinforce and Reward Appropriate/Desired Behavior

Behavior-Specific Praise Comments
​Praise desired behavior explicitly (“I notice and appreciate how you’re completing your assignment with your table mates”) instead of a general positive statement (“You’re doing great!”) or a negative statement (“You’re not getting your work done again.”)

Praise and Ignore Approach

• When the behavior of a student is to gain your attention, this approach may work for the negative behavior.
• Give more positive praise to the student when they are following class expectations
  

Redirection
Instead of pointing out the inappropriate behaviors of the student, provide them specific guidance and instruction to change the behavior and get back on-task.

Extinction
Ignore the difficult behavior; the behavior may increase before decreasing, so stick to the plan!

• Purposefully ignore the undesired behavior. Praise the student for on-task/appropriate behavior and gently redirect for off-task behaviors. If student is engaging in the behaviors to receive attention, they will no longer be successful. Instead, positive, expected behaviors will result in attention from the teacher.
• This is very difficult! Ignoring problematic behaviors may seem to be an implicit approval of or acceptance of those behaviors, and teachers often feel like other students will then engage in similar inappropriate behavior. This is why ignoring the inappropriate behaviors needs to be paired with reinforcement of positive behaviors.

References:
Alberto, P. A. & Troutman, A. C. (2009). Applied behavior analysis for teachers. Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson.

​Austin, J. L., & Soeda, J. M. (2008). Fixed-time teacher attention to decrease off-task behaviors of typically developing third graders. Journal of Applied
         Behavior Analysis, 41, 279-283. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2008.41-279  

Resources:

• ABC Chart (docx)
  
• ABC Chart (pdf)
  

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