An instructional approach to supporting students’ behavioral change and social skill acquisition isn’t just about decreasing referrals and the rate of off-task behavior in the classroom. At all ages and developmental stages, teaching learners new or needed skills to navigate the educational environment can positively impact their academic achievement and lifetime social experiences. This week we focus on five practices to support teaching behaviors for learning and core life skills to benefit students in the classroom and beyond.
Build Academic Facilitative Behaviors
Behavior supports and interventions are academic supports and interventions. Studies, such as those conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Walker and Henderson, 2012) and researchers at Oregon State University (McClelland, et al., 2006), establish a strong link between social competence, self-regulatory skills, and future academic success particularly in the areas of math and literacy. In addition to social skills and competencies, explicitly teaching academic facilitative behaviors focused on organization, attending, note-taking, and engagement can support student success in navigating the classroom and life. This resource provides concrete, easy to follow ways to support middle and high school students in developing these essential skills and behavioral competencies to support their learning (Willis, 2023).
Intentionally Design and Deliver Instruction for Core Skills
This resource from Harvard University (Center on the Developing Child, 2024) highlights 5 ways to help students learn these facilitative skills, which strengthen their ability to succeed in all aspects of their school career and beyond:
- Practice with real-life situations
- Spot and plan for triggers
- Take another’s view of stressors
- Focus on personally motivating goals
- Build on positive memories and small successes
Vary Instructional Practices
While predictability in routines and procedures are necessary to create safety that allow students to move beyond preoccupation and worry in their classroom environment, this must be balanced with novelty and variety in order to maintain curiosity and encourage creativity. To increase engagement in content instruction and increase on-task behavior, students must experience variance and novelty in your delivery and the way they complete work. Increased engagement is proven to result in a decrease of errors, an increase in on-task behaviors and acquisition of knowledge. In addition to the ways we vary questions to keep it new and novel, we must vary academic responses to support learning styles and the needs of students at different points in their learning journey. Deliberately trying something new can keep your practices refreshed and energetic. This new and novel activity will invigorate your students and keep them excited about coming to school. For some examples, check out some of these ideas for adding novelty and engagement within your classroom.
Resources to Vary Instructional Practices
- 37 Effective Teaching Strategies & Techniques | Prodigy Education
- 12 Ways to Increase Opportunities to Respond
- 60-Second Strategy: Participation Cards
- 6 Smart Ways to Bring the Power of Music Into Your Classroom | Edutopia
- More Than a Dozen Ways to Build Movement Into Learning | Edutopia
- 20 Creative Ways To Check for Understanding – We Are Teachers
- Cups as student feedback.pdf
Plan for Productive Struggle
Giving your students a safe place to learn how to be resilient and problem-solve is critical in the students’ formative years. Navigating frustration and learning from one’s mistakes can prove to be life-altering if properly done. Cultivating a culture where developing learners understand they are safe enough to fail in order to learn is critical, knowing that failure is embraced and expected in order to see progress in the student’s skill-set. See this resource from ASCD.org for more information about the importance of productive struggle for learners: Productive Struggle Is a Learner’s Sweet Spot |ASCD (Blackburn, 2018). Check out this resource that focuses on elementary-aged students: Helping Young Kids Manage Productive Struggle | Edutopia (Boryga, 2024).
Modeling Mistakes and Metacognition
The role and position of a classroom or building-level educator as “learning partner” can help cultivate a culture of curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, resulting in schools that build on students’ resiliency. Resisting the impulse to present perfection and modeling the meta-cognition around making mistakes is instrumental in helping students embrace the value of errors as part of the learning process. Let them see you engage in the inquiry process by inviting them to join you in your quest to learn a new skill. Verbalize your thinking process (meta-cognition) as you go through the learning process; exclaim how not understanding something makes you feel; allow for collaboration and suggestions from experts or peers; reflect on that learning process and what it taught you or helped you realize, either about yourself or the content. Check out the following article that highlights the benefits of an environment built on the power of making mistakes: Tapping Into the Metacognition of Mistakes | Edutopia (Boryga, 2024).
References:
Blackburn, Barbara. “Productive Struggle Is a Learner’s Sweet Spot.” ASCD, ascu.org, 13 Dec. 2018, www.ascd.org/el/articles/productive-struggle-is-a-learners-sweet-spot.
Boryga, Andrew. “Helping Young Kids Manage Productive Struggle.” Edutopia.com, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 1 Feb. 2024. www.edutopia.org/article/helping-young-kids-manage-productive-struggle.
Boryga, Andrew. “Tapping Into the Metacognition of Mistakes.” Edutopia.com, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 5 April, 2024. www.edutopia.org/article/tapping-into-the-metacognition-of-mistakes.
“Building the Core Skills Youth Need for Life.” Developing Child.Harvard.Edu, Center on the Developing Child, developingchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/HCDC_BuildingAdolescentCoreLifeSkills.pdf. Accessed 17 May 2024.
McClelland, M.M., A.C. Acock, and F.J. Morrison. “The Impact of Kindergarten Learning-Related Skills on Academic Trajectories at the End of Elementary School.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21, 2006.
Walker, O.L. and H.A. Henderson. “Temperament and Social Problem Solving Competence in Preschool: Influences on Academic Skills in Early Elementary School.” Social Development, 21:4, 2012. Willis, Judy. “Building Older Students’ Organizational Skills.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 12 Jan. 2023, www.edutopia.org/article/building-secondary-students-organizational-skills/.
