1. Pyramid Model Overview Module
This initiative is made possible with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding CFDA # Special Education –Preschool Grants and CFDA # Special Education –Grants for Infants & Families.

2. Is The Pyramid Model Right for Your Program?
What is the Pyramid Model?
Why Focus on Social Emotional Development?
How Does the Pyramid Model Work?
Stages of Implementation
Benchmarks of Quality
Data Collection
Implementation Team
Internal Coaching
How Will We Know if We are Ready?
What are the Benefits to Our Program?
What are the Next Steps?

3. What is the Pyramid Model?
Tertiary Intervention: Few Children
Secondary Prevention: Some Children
Universal Promotion: All Children
Tier 1: All Children
Tier 2: 5-15% of children
Tier 3: 1-10%
Pyramid Model was initially described as an intervention framework for children 2 ‐ 5 years old within early childhood settings. However, newer iterations of the model provide guidance for the implementation of the framework with infants, toddlers and preschoolers, and include interventions needed to support children who are typically developing and who have or are at risk for developmental delays or disabilities.
The term social-emotional development refers to the developing capacity of the child from birth through five years of age to form close and secure adult and peer relationships; experience, regulate, and express emotions in socially and culturally appropriate ways; and explore the environment and learn – all in the context of family, community, and culture. Caregivers promote healthy development by working to support social-emotional wellness in all young children, and make every effort to prevent the occurrence or escalation of social-emotional problems in children at-risk, identifying and working to remediate problems that surface, and when necessary, referring children and their families to appropriate services. 3 3

4. Foundation: Effective Workforce
The foundation for all practices in the Pyramid Model are the systems and policies necessary to ensure a workforce that is able to adopt and sustain the evidence-based practices.
Yellow Foundation-Effective Workforce
Evidence-based teaching practices and intervention approaches that promote children’s social development or are effective in addressing challenging behavior.

5. Nurturing & Responsive Caregiving Relationships and High Quality Supportive Environments : TIER 1
Supportive and responsive relationships among adults and children is an essential component to promote healthy social emotional development.
High quality early childhood environments promote positive outcomes for ALL children.
Blue Tier: Universal support for all children through nurturing and responsive relationships and high quality environments.
► Nurturing and Responsive Caregiving Relationships
Provides a foundation for the pyramid, based upon an effective workforce
►Essential to healthy social emotional development
►Includes relationships with children, families, and team members
Primary focus is on positive interactions between child and caregivers, in addition to developing partnerships with families.
Examples:
Actively supporting children’s engagement
Embedding instruction within children’s routine, planned, and play activities
Responding to children’s communicative attempts
Encouraging skill learning and development
Promoting communication in children with speech delays
For young children in early intervention, examples include:
Developing strong collaborative partnerships
Providing support to caregivers in response to infant and toddler needs
Guiding caregivers in establishing responsive and nurturing interactions that promote a child’s social development
► High Quality Supportive Environments
Natural environments, including inclusive early care and education environments and supportive home environments that offer rich social context essential to the development of social skills and peer relationships.
► Refers to predictable and supportive environments and family interactions that promote social emotional development.

6. Targeted Social Emotional Supports: TIER 2
Provides explicit instruction around social emotional skills.
Addresses self regulation, expressing and understanding emotions, and developing social relationships.
Some children need systematic and focused instruction to learn discrete social emotional skills.
Green Tier: Prevention which represents practices that are targeted social emotional strategies to prevent problems.
Examples of topics to provide more instruction on to children in a classroom setting include:
Identifying and expressing emotions
Self regulation
Social problem solving
Initiating and maintaining interactions
Strategies for handling disappointment and anger
Building friendship skills
Examples of topics to provide guidance on to families in early intervention:
How to promote social emotional development
How to help young children regulate emotions
How to help young children regulate stress
How to understand the emotions of others

7. Individualized Intensive Interventions: TIER 3
Individualized Intervention
When children have ongoing challenging behavior, comprehensive interventions are developed to resolve problem behaviors and support the development of new skills.
► Family-Centered Intervention
► Assessment Based
► Focus on Skill Building
Red Tier: Intervention which is comprised of practices related to individualized intensive interventions.
Develop and implement a plan of intensive individualized intervention.
Address challenging behavior :
that is individually designed,
can be applied within all natural environments by a child’s caregivers, and
is focused on supporting a child in developing new skills.
Steps of PBS (Positive Behavior Support):
1.) Convene a team (family must be the center)
2.) Conduct a functional assessment
- Helps gain a better understanding of the factors related to the child’s engagement in challenging behavior
3.) Identify an hypothesis
- Based off of the functional assessment
4.) Develop a behavioral support plan for all relevant environments, utilizing the hypothesis developed.
Behavioral Support Plan should include:
- Prevention strategies to address the triggers of the child’s challenging behaviors
- Replacement skills to use as alternatives to challenging behaviors
- Strategies to ensure that challenging behavior is not reinforced or maintained.
The Behavioral Support Plan is to be used in the home, community, and classroom routines where the challenging behavior is taking place.
TEAM SHOULD ALSO CONSIDER SUPPORTS TO THE FAMILY!!!

8. Why focus on social-emotional development?
Incidence & Prevalence
Statistics
Link to academic achievement
An estimated 9 to 13% of American children and adolescents between ages nine to 17 have serious diagnosable emotional or behavioral health disorders resulting in substantial to extreme impairment.
(Friedman, 2002)
More than half of students with SED drop out of grades 9-12, the highest rate for all disability categories.
(U.S. Department of Education, 2002; 2006)
At 2 years post high school, 58% of youth have been arrested at least once and 42% are on probation or parole. (NLTS2, 2005).
Students with ED reported use of alcohol (54%), illegal drug use (36%), marijuana use (33%), and smoking (53%) at rates higher than all other disability categories (NLTS2, 2008)
Campbell (1995) estimated that approximately 10-15% of all typically developing preschool children have
chronic mild to moderate levels of
behavior problems.
Children who are poor are much more likely to develop behavior problems with prevalence rates that approach 30% (Qi & Kaiser, 2003).
The proportion of preschool children meeting the criteria for the clinical diagnosis of ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) ranges from 7% to 25% of children in the United States, depending on the population surveyed ( Webster-Stratton, 1997) .
Children who are identified as hard to manage at ages 3 and 4 have a high probability (50:50) of continuing to have difficulties into adolescence (Campbell & Ewing, 1990; Campbell, 1997; Egeland et al., 1990).
Early Predictors
Temperamental Difficulties
Early Aggression
Language Difficulties
Noncompliance
Family Factors
Maternal Depression
Harsh Parenting
Stressful Family Life Events
Low Social Support
Family Instability
Children of mothers who were depressed in their infancy are more likely to be delayed
Children of depressed mothers are at increased risk for behavior problems, depression, and mood disorders in adolescence
The correlation between preschool-age aggression and aggression at age 10 is higher than that for IQ. (Kazdin, 1995
Early appearing aggressive behaviors are the best predictor of juvenile gang membership and violence. (Reid, 1993
When aggressive and antisocial behavior has persisted to age 9, further intervention has a poor chance of success. (Dodge, 1993)
Young Children with Challenging Behavior:
Are rejected by peers
Receive less positive feedback
Do worse in school
Are less likely to be successful in kindergarten
Preschool children are three times more likely to be “expelled” than children in grades K-12 (Gilliam, 2005)
Faculty in higher education early childhood programs report that their graduates are least likely to be prepared to work with children with persistently challenging behavior (Hemmeter, Santos, & Ostrosky, 2004)
Of the young children who need mental health services, it has been estimated that fewer than 10% receive services for these difficulties. (Kataoka, Zhang, & Wells, 2002)
There are evidence-based practices that are effective in changing this developmental trajectory…the problem is not what to do, but rests in ensuring access to intervention and support (Kazdin & Whitley, 2006)

9. Why this Deserves Attention
A child’s delayed development can lead to more severe problem behavior.
Social development and the ability to be engaged is essential for school readiness.
Children with severe behavior problems are deeply at risk for social exclusion and academic failure.
The Pyramid Model has a particular focus on supporting the social development and relationships of young children with or at risk for delays or disabilities.
Teachers in the experimental condition who received training and coaching demonstrated statistically significant differences in their implementation of Pyramid Model practices.
Children enrolled in the experimental classrooms implementing the Pyramid Model demonstrated statistically significant differences in their social skills.  
Target children in the experimental classrooms had statistically significant reductions in problem behavior.

10. How does Program Wide Adoption of the Pyramid Model Work?
Process for implementing the Pyramid Model to fidelity:
Content & Strategies:
Content + Process.
Content is the evidence based practices that increase engagement
Process is Implementation Science- the system that supports your program reaching fidelity with these practices.
Old way= one person attends a training and everyone hopes it will make a change
New way= systematic implementation through training, coaching, data collection and use and implementation team leadership leads to fidelity
Teaches social skills, friendship skills, & emotional competencies, supports such as visuals for schedules, routines, activities & behavior expectations, teaching children to be problem solvers, effective transitions, engaging in positive conversation, promoting engagement, giving clear directions, teaming, individualized interventions for children who have challenging behaviors, supporting families in Pyramid Model practices.
ECTA/PW Leadership Team

11. Critical Elements of Implementation: Benchmarks Of Quality
Formally completed at least two times per year, but referred to on an ongoing basis.
Guides Implementation Team and assesses progress towards Full Implementation to fidelity.
Used to guide Implementation Team’s Action Plan.
Used to provide feedback to site.
Leadership Team The leadership team meets monthly and guides the implementation of the program-wide approach. The team is comprised of a program administrator, representation from the teaching staff, an individual who can provide coaching and support to teachers, and the individual who serves as a behavior specialist (some individuals might fill more than one of these roles). The team ensures that a system is developed to provide individualized behavior supports to children with challenges, professional development and support to teachers, a plan for family participation, and uses data to make decisions as they guide implementation.
Staff Buy-In All staff become involved in the model (e.g., cook, teaching assistant, and teachers) and must agree that they are willing to participate. The leadership team monitors and supports staff buy-in on an ongoing basis.
Family Involvement A variety of mechanisms are used to establish partnerships with families in the adopting the model by sharing information, providing families with information and support in guiding children’s development of social and emotional skills, and collaboratively teaming to support individual children. 
Program-Wide Expectations The adoption of program-wide expectations provides a shared focus and shared language for describing behavior expectations to children, staff, and families. Program-wide expectations are posted in the program and classrooms and are provided to families.  Staff acknowledge engagement in the expectations by providing developmentally appropriate feedback and reinforcement to children.

12. What Data Will be Collected & Used?
Ages & Stages Questionnaire/Social Emotional (ASQ-SE)
Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool (TPOT)/ AND The Pyramid Infant Toddler Observation Scale (TPITOS)/0-3
Monthly Program Tracking Action Form (MPTA)
Behavior Incident Report (BIR’s)
Benchmarks of Quality (BOQ)
Optional Performance Review Measure
ASQ:SE
A screening tool designed to help identify children who may need additional targeted testing or ongoing monitoring.
TPOT/TPITOS
Assess the implementation of Pyramid Model practices in classrooms .
MPTA
Provides a frequency count of actions taken by the program in response to child behavioral concerns.
BIR’s
Identify children with challenging behavior
Determine variables that impact the behavior, frequency of behavior, and factors relating to the behavior.
BOQ
Measures the extent to which critical elements of program-wide implementation are in place within the program.
Optional Performance Review Measuure To be created soon and completed 3-4x/year

13. Implementation Team Membership
Administrator from ECSE & Inclusion Partner Behavior Specialist Data Manager Internal Coach (1-2) Teacher Representative (1-2) Professional Development Facilitator (PDF)
Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.
(Alan Keith)

14. What is Coaching in Pyramid Model Implementation?
An ongoing, outcome focused approach to improving intervention practices by providing opportunities to observe practices, implement with support and eventually implement independently. Coaching refers more specifically to on-site and in-vivo guidance provided by a consulting professional in order to help a practitioner (parent, teacher, child care professional) learn to implement an intervention procedure with fidelity.

16. What are the Expected Benefits?
Staff view themselves as having the skills to better support children in classrooms.
Staff look to each other as sources of additional information and support.
Staff can demonstrate the fundamental elements in their classrooms.
A culture of support is created throughout the program.
Staff become intentional and purposeful in interactions with children in order to build on their strengths.

17. What are the Expected Benefits?
Staff turn over is reduced; staff satisfaction is increased.
Staff ask for fewer suggestions from mental health professionals.
The number of children receiving individual counseling from psychologists decreased.
The number of children identified as having challenging behavior and referred for mental health services decreased.
Program spends less time and resources on intervention level and more on prevention level of the Pyramid.

18. For More Information…….
Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention for Young Children (TACSEI)
Pyramid Model Overview
Center on Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL)
11 minute Overview of the Pyramid Model on YouTube:
28 minute video on importance of Social Emotional Development:

19. What are the Next Steps? Review Give & Get with PDF
Complete Hexagon Tool with PDF
Complete Application
This initiative is made possible with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding CFDA # Special Education –Preschool Grants and CFDA # Special Education –Grants for Infants & Families.