John W. Maag
Background: Teachers often provide students with independent practice activities, such as completing worksheets or other written assignments, after receiving content-area instruction. Many students understand independent practice is part of a teacher’s daily routine. However, some students who display challenging behaviors or who are at-risk for developing an emotional or behavioral disorder (E/BD) often do so during independent academic work activities as a way to escape a task they perceive as unpleasant.
Method: Teachers often respond to continued misbehavior by removing these students from the classroom as a form of discipline. However, their removal only reinforces them engaging in additional misbehavior as a way to escape a task. Unfortunately, the approach of using exclusionary practices takes away from instructional and independent practice time these students would otherwise receive.
Result: Teachers often do not know how to simultaneously positively address increasing work completion while also decreasing inappropriate escape behaviors during these tasks without the use of exclusionary practices.
Purpose and Conclusion: The purpose of this article is to provide teachers with a fun, positive way to simultaneously increase students’ accurate work completion while decreasing inappropriate behaviors that otherwise would be performed to escape the task and result in exclusionary discipline practices.