Removing or withholding preferred activities

Removing or withholding preferred activities (sometimes called “response cost”) is a logical consequence that can sometimes be administered quickly and efficiently. For example, students who fight or engage in name calling during a soccer game at recess might receive the following consequences.

• The supervising teacher denies these students access to soccer during the next recess.
• During that recess, a staff member works with the students to identify and practise what good sportsmanship looks and sounds like.
• Other school staff are informed of this event so that follow-through will be reinforced consistently.

Making restitution

Negative behaviour, particularly treating others unkindly, may provide an opportunity to teach students how to repair damage they have done to someone else. Teachers and students can work together to create a list of ways to make up for mistakes that hurt others (sometimes called a “caring menu”).

This approach offers students choices and teaches them how to say “I’m sorry” in an individualistic rather than a prescriptive way. Students may be able to connect saying “sorry” with an action and a change in their behaviour.

One elementary school created this caring menu.

• Write a note.
• Draw a picture.
• Help with a project or chore.
• Share a book.
• Play a game.
• Make a card.

The school displayed these examples on a poster. Then, when students violated the school rule of “Be kind to others,” they chose one of the options on the menu and followed through on it.

Communicating with parents

Communication with parents can be both a positive reinforcement and a negative consequence.

Following are some suggestions about contacting parents.

• Develop a systematic, school-wide system for contacting parents in the event of problem behaviour. Strive for consistent parent contact for rule infractions so the process is perceived to be fair.
• Provide an objective description of the behaviour, not a judgement about the student.
• Suggest that parents discuss the behaviour with their child and communicate an expectation of more positive choices in the future.
• Avoid implying that the parents should punish the child at home, or make him or her behave.
• Communicate the idea that school staff and parents can work as partners to help the student reduce negative behaviour and succeed in school.

After-class problem-solving session

After-school and lunch hour detentions are challenging to manage, and they may have a number of unintended results. However, in some cases individual students will benefit from staying after school or during the lunch hour for a collaborative and solution-focused problem-solving session.

A problem-solving session involves these steps.⁹

1. Focus on the solution.
2. Agree on the goal.
3. Agree on the conditions that contribute to the problem or cause it to continue.
4. Agree on a single task, skill or behaviour that the student can work on.

Office referrals

An effective office referral system is a critical component of a school-wide discipline system. Although schools need to record all discipline issues, office referrals should be reserved for only the most serious and visible incidents. They should be the exception rather than the rule.

Office referrals as a data-gathering system

The main purpose of an office referral system is to provide critical and contextual data for decision making, motivation and evaluation. School-wide, classroom and individual student data on office referrals can be used to support teaching and learning.

Staff can review where, when and how often problem behaviour occurs on a daily, monthly or annual basis. They can then use this information to make their interventions more specific. Armed with information about which students are displaying how many problem behaviours, staff can take action before the problems intensify.

Schools are increasingly adopting practices that decrease the effort and technical complexity involved in data management. Many schools are using software programs that facilitate data input, summaries and displays.

Many schools have adopted guidelines such as the following to help make office-referral data meaningful and user-friendly.

• Regularly ask a limited number of key evaluation questions.
• Collect only data that is linked to these questions.
• Review office-referral data before selecting new interventions or modifying current interventions.
• Communicate regularly with staff on this topic.

A system of collecting and reviewing school-wide, classroom and/or individual student data on office referrals helps to make interventions:

• more contextually relevant
• more aligned with problem behaviours of concern
• more likely to improve students’ behaviour and teachers’ effectiveness.

Sending students to the office

An effective office-referral process is based on agreed-upon criteria for sending students to the office. The school administrator then monitors all referrals, identifies patterns and looks for ways to support teachers who have a high number of referrals―which may indicate that the teacher is struggling with classroom management.

To maintain a positive atmosphere in the office, establish a system for quickly and effectively dealing with students who are referred and communicating the consequences to the referring teacher. Have a plan for dealing with referred students when the school administrator is out of the building.

Since office referrals are reserved for serious issues, make the consequences appropriately serious. At the least, the consequences should involve contacting the parents.

See Tool 6: Student Referral Form in Appendix A for a template for recording and communicating information about office referrals.