Amanda Rowland Managing the Learning Environment Describe the context/situation: I am in a classroom for students with Autism at Urbana

Middle School. Every morning the 6 students are in the room from about 8:20 to 8:45 getting ready for the day by putting their things away, eating breakfast, and relaxing. At 8:45 two students leave to go to class. One sits at a table with a paraprofessional, and the other three including student J sit at a circle table by the white board. They sit quietly and listen to announcements. After announcements one student leaves to work with my cooperating and I am left to do writing instruction with student J and one other student at this circle table in one section of the room. I greet the students and tell them the date. I then give them mini lessons and instructions for the day. These instructions are also written on the board. Then they are left to begin writing. Student J has many incredible ideas, but requires multiple prompts to begin and continue writing. She is easily distracted and I believe she has learned that she can get away with doing less work by taking a long time to get started. It is understandable that due to her disability she will be distracted easily and wont be focused on her work the whole time, but she is capable of getting started more quickly, and thus writing more. Operational Definition: I would like to increase the instances that student J begins writing her first word, during her morning writing class, within 3 minutes of being instructed to begin writing and begins writing second word within one minute of finishing writing the first word. The goal is to decrease the time it takes for student J to begin and continue writing. Begin is defined as having her pencil on the paper and is starting to make a mark to write the first letter. Baseline Data: Below is the results of my baseline data for this behavior for student J. The first column shows the date the data was collected. The second column shows how long it took student J to begin writing her first word after she was instructed by me or my cooperating teacher to begin writing. The third column shows the time if took for student J to begin writing her second word after she finished writing her first word. The last two columns show whether or not the student was able to meet the goal of beginning writing within 3 minutes of being told to start, and whether or not she began writing her second word within one minute of finishing writing her first word. Date Time before Time between 1st Begin within 3 Continue within 1 Writing Began and second word minutes? minute? 8/27 20 mins 8 mins no no 8/28 40 mins 15 mins no no 8/29 30 mins 12 mins no no

8/30

30 mins

12 mins

no

no

Proposed intervention: -desired outcomes or expectations: As a result of this intervention I want to the student to begin writing within three minutes of being told by me to start writing. I also want her to begin writing her second word within one minute of finishing her first word. Her academic goal is to be able to write three sentences independently. This goal will be hard to accomplish if it takes her the whole period before she begins writing. If she can start writing at the beginning of the period we will have more time to work on achieving this academic goal. In order to communicate this to the student we will sit down and talk about what is going to happen. I will explain that we want her to get started writing right away so that she has more time to improve this very important skill. I will tell her that that I am going to start a timer when she needs to begin writing. The timer will sit next to her for her to reference. I will tell her that she needs to start writing within 3 minutes in order to earn a sticker for her sticker sheet for that day. If she begins writing and continues writing within three minutes she will get to place a sticker on her sticker sheet for that day. If she gets a sticker for everyday of the week she can have 10 minutes of free time on the IPAD on Friday after writing class. -Antecedent strategies: Before I tell student J that it is time to begin writing I will remind her of her goal to begin and continue writing within 3 minutes of my instruction to begin. I will also place her sticker sheet next to her as a reminder and motivation to begin working. -consequence strategies: The student will get to put a sticker on her sticker sheet each day for displaying the desired behavior. If she gets a sticker for everyday of the week she earns 10 minutes of free choice time on the IPAD on Friday. data collection: Since I am only working with two students I can easily monitor the students time to initiate the desired behavior. As I mentioned before I will start a timer for both my student and myself to reference. I will then record the information on the data sheet below. We write everyday so I will collect data everyday for this student.

Date

Time before Writing Began

MLE Student J Writing Initiation Time between 1st Begin within 3 Begin within 1 and second word minutes? minute?

Sticker?

9/3 9/4 9/5 9/6 9/9 9/10 9/11 9/12 9/13 9/16 9/17 9/18 9/19 9/20 9/23 9/24 9/25 9/26 9/27 9/30 10/1

Date

Time before Writing Began

Time between 1st and second word

Begin within 3 Begin within 1 minutes? minute?

Sticker?

10/2 10/3 10/4 10/7 10/8 10/9 10/10 10/11 10/15 10/16 10/17 10/18 10/21 10/22 10/23 10/24 10/25 10/28 10/29 10/30 10/31 11/1 11/4 11/5

Date

Time before Writing Began

Time between 1st and second word

Begin within 3 Begin within 1 minutes? minute?

Sticker?

11/6 11/7 11/8 11/11 11/12 11/13 11/14 11/15 11/18 11/19 11/20 11/21 11/22 11/25 11/26 11/27 12/2 12/3 12/4 12/5 12/6