Creating Engaging School Wide PBIS Lessons

Introduction  Becca Rackley  School Wide PBIS Coach  Former Tier 2 Coach  Summerour Middle School, Gwinnett County Public Schools  Norcross, GA

 Engaging lessons are an integral part of a strong PBIS program.  However, they can be difficult to create.  Examples are out there, but it takes time to find them and modify them to fit the needs of your building and your students.  Today’s objectives are to address the critical components to an effective lesson and to collaborate with other PBIS teachers to create new lessons.

Effective PBIS Lessons  Effective PBIS lessons contain KEY components:  Identify the EXPECTED behavior  Demonstrate EXAMPLES and NON-EXAMPLES  MODEL the EXPECTED behavior  PRACTICE the EXPECTED behavior  ACKNOWLEDGE the EXPECTED behavior  Within this framework is room to modify lessons to fit the needs of individual schools and PBIS teams.

Identify the Behavior  Use your SWIS data to decide which behaviors to teach.  Look at the entire behavior: where is happening? when is it happening? who is demonstrating the behavior?  Identify & define the expected (this may be a replacement) behavior.  This should be consistent with the language of your PBIS matrix.  Ask yourself what it will LOOK LIKE when a student demonstrates the expected behavior.

Examples and Non-Examples  This is a non-negotiable part of an effective PBIS lesson. We cannot assume that students know what the behavior should look like.  At the beginning of the year and when teaching new students, teachers can tell students what the examples and non-examples are.  As students learn the expectations of the school, students can generate the descriptions of expected behaviors.  Many schools have ONLY teachers provide non-examples.  Non-examples can be presented in other formats, too: videos, pictures, anecdotes.

Model Expected Behavior  There is freedom to make this part unique for your school.  Use videos, pictures, and other interactive media if they are applicable to the lesson.  Students should be models of what you expect.  If the behavior is location-specific, how can you tie it into a skill that transfers across settings.

Practice Expected Behavior  This is the fun the part!  Students must have an opportunity to actually practice the expected behavior:  This is especially important at the beginning of a school year, or when introducing a new behavior.  There are so many ways for students to extend this practice:  Create images, posters, and videos.  Write scripts.  Create PBIS signage.

Acknowledge Expected Behavior  Use the existing reward system at your school!  Reward students within the PBIS lesson framework. Acknowledge students who demonstrate the skill at an exceptional level.  Make this your school-wide focus for acknowledgement in the days after the lesson.

And now … we practice!  Using the example behavior data and your choice of school behavior matrix, let’s create some sample lessons.  If you have some of your own school data, definitely feel free to use that!  Example templates are provided for you to help structure the lesson.  Talk with the people around, share ideas from successful lessons, and create, create, create!