Pendidikan Khas

I have a kid in my class who likes to seek attention from others. Whenever there is a new face, as in new teacher or observer in the classroom, he will tend not to listen to my instruction. He will refuse to move to the next task. Even with physical prompt, he is very adamant to move. Do you have any form of intervention suggestion for this behaviour? Please do let me know your opinion on how to make him improve this behaviour.

This is tricky and I’ve faced the similar situations before. Whenever a visitor or a parent hung out in my classroom, I felt that at least one of my students would get a little hard to manage. Maybe I was just being super sensitive that if my students did not follow my directions immediately, the visitor may think that I’m a bad teacher. Furthermore, I think kids know that in certain situations (e.g., visitors in the classroom, at the mall with their parents), they can manipulate the adults and get away with it.

What to do during situations like this? Here are three suggestions:

“Do not feed the lions” (Setting visitor rules)

If your student acts out to gain attention, the visitor’s attention is feeding your little lion cub! You could put in place some rules for visitors coming into your classroom.

With children with special needs, instructional time is very important. So if you do get many visitors, and they tend to interrupt instruction in the classroom, this can seriously reduce the amount of instructional time. Over time, this could affect your students’ academic performance.

So, you may want to inform the classroom visitors to not engage the students during instructional time. This means no funny faces, no chatting, no acknowledging the student’s attention-gaining behavior. Basically, the visitors should keep a neutral face and sit quietly in the corner of the classroom. If they want to engage the students, they can wait till recess time.

As part of my research assistantship, I’ve been in classrooms to observe students and collect data. Some teachers will inform me of their rules at the get go. As a general rule, I have to sit in one corner and not respond to student’s chatting or misbehavior. I have to be like I’m not there.

Noncontingent praise (Increasing positive attention)

If your student is misbehaving to gain attention, you could try noncontingent praise. This means that you put in place a schedule of praise for this student. That is, you say one positive statement to the student every few minutes. You can decide what time intervals work better.

For example, you say something positive (e.g., “Good job sitting down appropriately”, “I appreciate that you’re doing your work”) to your student at approximately every two minutes. But don’t praise him when he’s bouncing off the wall, but as soon as he settles down, quickly say, “I like that you’re sitting in your seat”.

If he does misbehave, try your best to not make it a big deal.

When he is not paying attention to you, you can also praise other students in your classroom for their appropriate behavior. For example, you say, “I really like how Ah-Mei is sitting quietly and doing her work. Great job, Ah-Mei!” Make it a big deal and make sure the target student hears the praise to the other student. And as soon as the target student responds to that and starts doing his work, quickly praise him too, “I see that Ken is also quietly doing his work. Great job, Ken!”

So what you’re doing here is that you’re giving him the attention when he’s being appropriate, and not when he’s being inappropriate. If he really likes the attention, he may increase his appropriate behavior for your attention.

If his behavior improves after some time, you can fade the praise a little. For example, instead of every 2 minutes, you can praise every 4 minutes, and so on.

Token reinforcement (Point sheets)

You could also try giving tokens/stickers to the student for appropriate behavior. You can have a sticker chart with, let’s say, 10 blanks. Inform the student that if he stays in his seat and is appropriate for 3 minutes, he will get a sticker on the chart.

You can set goals together with the student. For example, if the student gets 8 stickers before recess, he gets a reward. The reward does not have to be things, it could be spending time with his favorite teacher or listening to his favorite music during free time.

You can also have weekly goals and rewards, or even monthly goals and better rewards. Make sure that the rewards are things or activities that your student really likes. Remember to save the best reward, your student’s favorite, for good behavior on the day that visitors will be in your classroom.

It is important that you set achievable goals for the student. Start with lower achievable goals so that the student is successful in getting the rewards. As he starts getting the idea that good behavior will lead to a sticker/token, which leads to a reward, then you can raise the standard, and make it slightly harder to achieve the goal, and so on.

These two interventions, noncontingent praise and token reinforcement, you’ll have to put in place early, and hopefully by the next time you get a visitor, the intervention will be effective in keeping your student on-task.

My very first question and answer session! Thank you, Anu, for the question. If you do try these suggestions, let me know how it goes. You can also modify the interventions to fit your student and your classroom.