An opportunity to respond (OTR) is an instructional strategy that involves a request for a student response. By increasing the opportunities to respond, students may be more on task, participatory and engaged during academic time. These strategies can also give the teacher additional opportunity to assess student learning, check understanding, and provide feedback.
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Organization training is designed to teach students systems and strategies for managing their time, materials, and assignments effectively. The teacher and student collaboratively design an organization checklist with goals relevant to the student's needs, and this checklist is reviewed regularly (e.g., at least twice per week) over several months until the skills are mastered. When goals are not met, students are asked to address the deficiency immediately, as this provides the opportunity to practice and further develop the specific organization skill. Reinforcement plans can be used to promote the use of the skills, but are not a necessary component of the intervention for many students.
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Peer tutoring is a teaching strategy that uses students as tutors. Students can be paired by ability levels, skills mastered, or age, such that as least some students in the group are higher on this dimension than others and can serve as tutors. In class wide peer tutoring, the entire class is divided into pairs or small groups. The groups are then given assignments, tasks or activities in which they take turns reviewing and/or applying concepts on which the teacher has previously instructed.
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Praise is when the teacher gives attention to a student’s positive performance or behavior by labeling or acknowledging what the student did well and indicating approval or liking.
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A pre-correction is when the teacher reminds a student or a group of students about rules or expectations prior to the activity. Pre-corrections are helpful to students because they increase the predictability of the situation and provide clear guidelines for what behaviors are expected during the activity. Pre-corrections are intended to reduce the impact of student inattention, impulsivity, and oppositional behavior on performance by proactively offering cues for successful performance.
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Self-monitoring is designed to improve on-task behavior and increase classroom work completion by teaching students to recognize when they are off-task. Such interventions typically involve the student learning a monitoring system, having some sort of prompt to assess their behavior at given intervals, and reinforcing themselves for on task behavior.
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Social skills training interventions are designed to teach students one or more prosocial skills for effective interpersonal interactions. Teachers describe the skill of interest, demonstrate the skill for students, give students the opportunity to practice the skills when calm, and give positive and constructive feedback about skill application. Teachers also prompt or encourage students to apply the skills when appropriate. Teachers praise students for their efforts toward applying the skills.
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Student choice in the classroom allows the student to select a task or assignment from an offered set. Because the student is being given flexibility and ownership of the work being completed, the choice in itself should be reinforcing for the student. As such, providing such choices can increase academic engagement and decrease disruptive behaviors. Providing choices also communicates that the teacher trusts and respects the student's desires and gives students opportunities to practice making autonomous decisions.
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A time out from positive reinforcement (or time out) is an intervention designed to reduce disruptive student behavior by temporarily removing the student from classroom activities and eliminating positive reinforcement. While in time out, the student can practice self-regulation and be rewarded by rejoining the class once a certain amount of time has passed and appropriate behavior has been demonstrated. Common time out durations are 5 to 10 minutes or the equivalent of 1 minute per age of the student.
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