PBIS Newsletter
Winter 2024
2023-2024 Intent to Apply for Building Recognition
Applicants must complete the required Intent to Apply Form, linked here by Feb. 12, 2024.
Applicants that submit an Intent to Apply Form will be provided a link to submit the 2023-2024 PBIS Recognition Award Application and related materials. The link will be provided by SST consultants to schools by Feb. 20, 2024.
Department and SST consultants will inform schools applying for a Recognition Award if a letter of findings is required related to special education services. If needed, the letter of findings must be submitted by May 1, 2024.
Schools must submit their application materials by May 1, 2024.
PBIS and Attendance
2x10 Strategy
For Students with Moderate Chronic Absences
PBIS and Families
Teach, Remind, and Reward Expected Behaviors with Positive Feedback
Just like schools that use PBIS, doing so at home is much more powerful with a plan to teach, remind, and reward behaviors using positive feedback. Emphasizing respect, responsibility, and a sense of community is important for maintaining a smooth home-school connection. For example, consider having conversations with your child that match conversations they might have at school on respecting other individuals. If your child’s comment reflects a lack of understanding or bias, calmly discuss factual information (e.g., “Anyone can get sick.” “We are a community that takes care of each other.”). The following table shows how families and caregivers might teach, remind, and reward respectful, responsible, and safe behaviors.
Teaching examples:
Describe what kind language does (and does not) sound like in your home. Demonstrate kind language and ask children to practice kind language with you.
Describe what “doing your best” means in your home. Examples might include focusing on your work, reading/listening to all instructions before beginning, asking for help when needed, and sticking with it until done. Discuss what this looks like (and does not look like) across the types of learning activities.
Describe and demonstrate how to wash hands (using various posters available from CDC). To ensure your children wash their hands for 20-30 seconds, have them pick a portion of a favorite song to sing.
Rewards:
When your child is kind, provide specific praise. For example, “Thank you for being kind when your sibling was having a hard time.”
When you see your child doing their best, provide specific praise. “It’s great to see you doing your best! I think you’ll be proud of your work!”
When you see your child washing their hands, provide specific praise—for example, “Awesome handwashing! Thanks for keeping our family safe.”
In addition to teaching, rewarding, and reminding, you may need to correct behavior. When a child makes an error, provide a quick correction or redirection. For example, if you observe your child showing disrespect to others:
1. Quickly correct or signal the error, (“That was not respectful”)
2. Re-state the expected behavior, (“We speak kindly to each other to show respect”)
3. Provide an opportunity for positive interaction, (“Let’s try that again. How would you show respect?”)
4. Provide the child positive feedback, (“That was a kind thing to say.”) Redirections can be even quicker (“Remember, you need to wash your hands before coming to the table. Please go wash your hands.”).
The goal is for a correction or redirection to be calm, brief, and provide an opportunity for the child to practice the desired behavior. In addition, it’s important to maintain a 5-to-1 ratio and use more reminders than corrections.
• Maintain a 5-to-1 ratio. It's easy to get into a habit of correcting, but the goal is to maintain a ratio of 5 positive interactions or praise statements for every 1 negative interaction or corrective statement.
• Remind instead of correct. Instead of correcting behavior after it happens, we can remind children what we would like to see before a behavior is expected. For example, we can put a sign in the bathroom near the sink to “Wash your hands.” Children can even help create these signs and brainstorm what signs might be needed.
• To decrease undesired behavior, you can also teach alternatives. To decrease an undesired behavior, like touching one’s face, you can teach your child to do something else. For example, children can be given a fidget that they can play with that keeps their hands away from their face or taught to use a tissue to touch their face.
PBIS and Whole Child Supports
Branching Minds January Blog: PBIS: More than Points and Parties
If you have never explored the resources available through Branching Minds, this is a great place to start!!
PBIS and Early Childhood
Behavior Incident Report System
The Behavior Incident Report System (BIRS) helps early care and education programs track and understand behavior issues. It lets programs collect data on concerning behavior incidents, which teachers review monthly. This data helps identify patterns and factors contributing to behavior incidents, like child, teacher, activity, behavior type, motivation, and responses. BIRS also helps analyze trends over time and spot any fairness issues related to race, ethnicity, IEP status, gender, and language learners.
There are some useful resources on the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations to utilize to improve your data collection system. Here is a Behavior Incident Reporting System Checklist that you may find helpful to determine your program readiness It is important that your leadership team work with all staff to ensure that the method for collecting data documents what is needed and is not too cumbersome.
Look! Think! Act! Using Data for Program Improvement modules describe the process that can assist leaders with analyzing program data to make organizational decisions. This can be found on DASY The Center For IDEA Early Childhood Systems website.