Functional Behavior Assessment

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In order for a teacher to determine the function of a behavior they must collect data. It is very important to collect and review data before implementing specific interventions to address challenging behaviors. There are many common behaviors that teachers may see in children and target for modification or replacement. By conducting a functional behavior assessment and creating a behavior support plan you have much higher success chances to modify of replace challenging behaviors of students. By focusing on a child’s immediate environment, you can better understand where a behavior is coming from. You can understand why it is happening at a certain time and place and also the purpose that it serves for the child. All the causes of challenging …show more content…

Before conducting a formal functional assessment of a child you should first make an informal observation. An informal observation will help you determine exactly how frequently a challenging behavior takes place—how many times a day, how many times a week—and whether it appears at specific times (Kaiser & Raminsky, 2012). A teacher would record their observations on a chart with the days of the week and the specific times, and how long, the behaviors occur. If a teacher observes that a behavior is truly challenging the next step one must FUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR ASSESMENT 3 take is a functional assessment of the child, which will be the basis of a positive behavior support plan. In order to make a functional assessment and positive behavior support to work everyone who has contact and time with a child plays a part. This team of people includes—teachers, family, principals, psychologists and even the bus driver. When you get as much information as possible you are more likely to understand the connections and see patterns and come up with an effective plan that everyone can implement (Gable et al., …show more content…

Interviews are also a good idea. Conducting formal interviews with family is very important; they can add important background information and insights. It is also very important to interview former teachers and most of the entire child themself. Three common challenging behaviors that a teacher may see are talking out of turn, classroom work avoidance, and aggression such as hitting and/or kicking. In my opinion talking out of turn and showing aggression are behaviors that usually serve the function to get attention, either from teacher or from other students. FUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR ASSESMENT 4 The student that talks out of turn—if the teacher keeps acknowledging him, he will continue to talk out of turn because acknowledgement is what he wants. A way to lessen the behavior would be to ignore the child and move on to a child that is raising his/her hand like they are supposed to and allow them the turn to speak. It may seem wrong to ignore the child, but the child will continue the challenging behavior if he keeps getting what he wants every time he exhibits talking out of turn and being

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