Noticing and Noting: Teaching Students With EBD to Effectively Self-Monitor

Step 1: Determine appropriateness

Your first job is to determine if a self-monitoring intervention is a smart choice for the present circumstance. Menzies et al. (2009) developed four yes/no questions to answer in making this determination. The authors noted that providing four yes responses allows you to conclude that, yes, self-monitoring is a reasonable route to follow. The first question asks you if the student can perform the expected behavior that you will soon define clearly (Menzies et al., 2009). The question is asked so that you are targeting a performance deficit in the student or a “won’t do” issue rather than a “can’t do” (acquisition deficit) concern. If the student can do the expected behavior, then proceed. If the behavior cannot be completed by the student, then some degree of explicit teaching is warranted before you move forward.

The second question asks you to determine if the student can control the behavior (Menzies et al., 2009). The answer to this should be yes to proceed. If the answer is no, then successful intensive intervention that is informed through an assessment of behavioral function is warranted before self-monitoring of an expected controllable behavior is initiated. The third question asks if you can gauge the frequency of the problem behavior that you want changed (Menzies et al., 2009). Again, if the answer is yes, that the behavior occurs regularly, then proceed with consideration of self-monitoring. If the answer is no, then the next step is to choose an alternate behavioral intervention approach. The fourth question addresses whether or not the behavior (problem and replacement) can be readily observed and recorded (Menzies et al., 2009). If it can, then self-monitoring has merit as an intervention avenue to pursue. If it does not, then a better understanding of the concern is warranted and maybe a behavioral consultant or problem-solving team can help you move forward.

A final question was suggested by Reid and Lienemann (2006) and a common practice in cognitive strategy instruction and intervention. The question asks the student for his or her commitment to the process. After all, if the student is not willing to monitor himself or herself at the moment, then your next steps may lead to more frustration than what you are presently experiencing regarding the problem behavior. Reid and Lienemann (2006) suggested that you schedule a conference with the student and describe your concerns as well as what options lie ahead in terms of the potential benefits of self-monitoring and the drawbacks of doing nothing. Reid and Lienemann (2006) cautioned against promising too much and suggested that a contract be drawn up that establishes a desired reward provided upon the student meeting the intervention expectations. This is the contingent reinforcement element that Bruhn et al. (2015) described in their review of research. Commitment on the part of the student may even be enough to change the behavior in a positive direction. With four yes responses and a commitment, then the noticing and noting actions can take place. It is time to clearly define the problem and replacement behaviors.

Step 2: Operationally define the behaviors

As you have answered the previous set of questions, you already have in your mind a problem behavior of sorts, and maybe even an appropriate replacement behavior. Now it is time to clearly define both. With your student, come up with a written definition of the behavior of concern that is concrete, replicable through role-play, and identifiable and recordable to a stranger or outside observer. Menzies et al. (2009) suggested that you and your student discuss and role-play the suggested problem behavior so that there is both understanding of and agreement with the behavior as defined. The same or similar identification process follows for the replacement behavior.

In selecting the behavior that you will ultimately support your student in observing and recording, Reid and Lienemann (2006) recommended that in addition to the target behavior being specific and observable, it is appropriate and a personal match. In terms of appropriateness, Reid and Lienemann (2006) advised that you attend to both setting and task, making sure that there is a fit between the student intervention action and the location. For example, assure that the student is not embarrassed by self-monitoring during independent work time. Furthermore, clarify that the task or intervention does not detract from active engagement during lessons. Reid and Lienemann (2006) described personal match in terms of ensuring that the student is old enough and developmentally capable of understanding that the reason for the self-monitoring intervention is to improve performance of a particular behavior. Change may not take place, the authors suggest, if that cognitive connection is not made.

The behavior that you and your student choose as the replacement can either be academically or behaviorally focused. Menzies et al. (2009) suggested that there be a focus on academic productivity, which makes sense given the broad-based achievement delays that are characteristic of students with EBD (Lane et al., 2008; Reid, Gonzales, Nordness, Trout, & Epstein, 2004). Usable, easily measurable examples of specific, measurable, appropriate, and personally matched target replacement behaviors include the number of passage words read correctly or the time spent actively engaged in instruction. Nonmeasurable target behavior examples could be “poor problem solving” or “being good.”

Johnny was a third-grade student with EBD who began receiving special education services in the second grade. His general education teacher Ms. Rowley’s review of the multidisciplinary evaluation report indicated that regular verbal outbursts directed at adults and peers across settings and regular fights with peers were the behaviors of concern leading to the evaluation. It was difficult to ascertain what interventions had previously been tried prior to special education evaluation from a review of records. A lone individualized education program (IEP) annual behavioral goal indicated that Johnny would cooperate with peers in academic and nonacademic settings. Unfortunately, it was unclear from a reading of the document how cooperation was expected to be measured, and what baseline levels of performance and future goals were. The present levels of performance section of the IEP also indicated reading and math achievement delays for Johnny, both in terms of standardized achievement test results and curriculum-based measurement (CBM) benchmark scores. CBM norms placed Johnny at below the 10th percentile in oral reading fluency and at the 20th percentile in math concepts and applications.

Ms. Rowley felt fortunate that in the first 6 weeks of Johnny’s third-grade year, she had not observed any aggressive outbursts in the school setting, but she was concerned that Johnny’s frequent expressions of frustration with peers in the classroom and on the playground were isolating him from prosocial interactions. And, yes, there was the fall reading benchmark score suggesting that any reading intervention that had been attempted in second grade had not been effective in developing his reading skills in comparison to peers. His median oral reading fluency score of 40 words correct per minute in a third-grade passage was well below the low-risk performance of 70 words correct per minute. Ms. Rowley decided that she was going to partner with Johnny to improve his academic and behavioral performance and show him that he could succeed in school with concerted effort. With consent obtained from Johnny’s parents, Ms. Rowley scheduled a meeting with Johnny and his special education teacher, Ms. Haney.

Developing Johnny’s self-monitoring skills was an immediate thought of Ms. Rowley as she contemplated moving forward, for two reasons. One, she knew that it was a pathway to Johnny learning self-control, which would be good for Johnny and those around him inside and outside her classroom. It might even have a positive impact on the IEP goal of building cooperation skills. Two, she and her colleagues had received training on the subject from the school psychologist during the year-opening inservice. It had been presented as a potential teacher response to students not meeting schoolwide or classwide behavioral expectations. Ms. Rowley believed that a proactive approach to dealing with Johnny’s early classroom social struggles made sense and she decided that she would involve the school psychologist, Ms. Porter, in the process.

When the general education teacher and school psychologist eventually met, they used a checklist similar to that in Table 1 and created on a Google Sheets spreadsheet as their guide, realizing that the odds of success would increase if they implemented the intervention as intended versus moving forward piecemeal with what self-monitoring intervention elements both thought would be useful. Use of Google Sheets also ensured that the data could be viewed regularly by both colleagues.

Ms. Rowley and Ms. Porter identified active student engagement as their target behavior for two reasons. One, it had been described during the opening inservice, so both were familiar with it. Two, it seemed to both colleagues that the behavior would have the largest positive impact on Johnny’s behavior, allowing him, in the best of circumstances, to receive reinforcement across subjects, settings, and people. The Shapiro (2011) definition of active engaged time (AET) was utilized: “those times when the student is actively attending to the assigned work” (p. 42). Examples of AET included writing, reading aloud, raising a hand, and talking to the teacher or one or more peers about the assigned material. Nonexamples of AET included talking about nonacademic material, moving about the classroom without having been directed to, calling out nontask-oriented information, and any other off-task behavior (Shapiro, 2011).

Ms. Rowley went through the initial planning checklist items, answering the first four questions listed in Table 1 (e.g., can the student control the behavior?) and then soliciting Johnny’s commitment. It took a week or so of convincing Johnny that the intervention might be useful to him. She wanted him to understand the potential benefits of self-monitoring so she paid attention to academic successes and struggles in the classroom and let him know during one-on-one conversations that the successes that he was experiencing could be increased if he changed his behavior. At the same time, she made a concerted effort to identify students that she believed were self-monitoring their work performance and verbally praised those efforts in group settings in which Johnny was a participant. During her conversations with him, Ms. Rowley let Johnny know that he could be the one that was being praised during instructional activities if he agreed to be a part of the intervention. After receiving a few positive words on the potential for self-monitoring from his parents one night after school, Johnny agreed to develop his self-monitoring skills and told his teacher of his decision the next morning upon entering the classroom.

Step 3: Collect baseline data

A major part of the planning process is determining the present level of behavioral performance. Think of the contents of the IEP that describe your student’s special education program. One of the critical elements is the present level of academic achievement and functional performance from which annual goals can be written and progress evaluated. These baseline data serve the same purpose as establishing a starting point to which future goals can be directly connected.

If there is an academic focus to your target behavior (review Step 2 findings), and the number of passage words read correctly is your focus, then have the student read equivalent grade- or instructional-level passages on three successive days and count the number of words read correctly in the passage or in a time frame (e.g., 1 min). Choose the median number of the three and consider your baseline and then maintain the probes along with other equivalent passages so that progress monitoring can take place. If the goal is behavioral, such as active engagement, then determine what the observational time frame will be and develop a time-sampling approach, such as partial-interval recording. In that case, you or a named observer is going to block out a series of timed increments, such as 15-s blocks, and look up in the first 5 s of each block to ascertain if active engagement is or is not occurring. At the end of the time period, the number of active engaged blocks is divided by the number of active and nonactive blocks and then multiplied by 100 so that you have a measure of active engagement for which future comparisons can be made. It may make sense to collect these behavioral data on three consecutive days to help determine if there is stability in terms of the measurement of active engagement. If three data points are collected, then the middle score—like the academic approach—could be considered your baseline. It also makes sense to collect similar data on an appropriately achieving peer in the class so that data-based and context-considered comparisons can be made for evaluation purposes.

Baseline data collection for Johnny commenced shortly after he committed to the process. Ms. Rowley decided that she was going to start small with the process and asked the psychologist to observe active engagement behaviors for Johnny and a compliant peer for 3 days during reading instruction. Ms. Rowley also asked the special education teacher, Ms. Haney, to progress monitor weekly in reading, something that had not been occurring consistently at the time. A look at the left-most data points on Figure 2 indicated that active engagement was evident about 40% of the time before the intervention was developed and explained. Reading CBM data using grade-level oral reading fluency probes confirmed that Johnny’s performance was well below grade level and comparable to the September benchmarking scores.

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Figure 2.

Line graph displaying academic engaged time for a hypothetical student named Johnny.

Step 4: Design the intervention and monitoring form

Now that you and your student know what behavior you want to see flourish in your classroom—and what you want to see vanish—it is time for you to develop the self-monitoring plan that you will teach to your student. That will include how the student will notice and on what he or she will note the target behavior.

Plan development first involves determining when and where the student self-monitoring is going to take place. Deciding when you will self-monitor depends on the behavior you are choosing. That is, the keeping one’s hands, feet, and body to one’s self behavior in the lunch line gives you a clear delineation of when that will take place. Increases in correct academic responding, on the contrary, could be monitored for part or all of a day and in one, two, or all subjects. Deciding where to self-monitor is a choice that can differ depending on what your short- and long-term student proficiency goals are for your student. Sure, in the short-term, you want your student to be well-behaved with the data to prove it in your classroom for the next few weeks. But what about 5 weeks from now? Next semester? With your paraprofessional or a substitute teacher? Now is also the time for long-term maintenance and generalization planning. In the short-term, that is accomplished through development of the monitoring sheet. So match the behavior to the chosen when and where on paper or through technology. In the long-term, think when and where else the behavior can take place and contact relevant parties to share with them what your intentions are and short-term plan and monitoring sheet look like. We include a sample self-monitoring sheet in the application vignette (see Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

One day’s activity of daily monitoring of academic engaged time on a Google Sheet by the hypothetical student Johnny.

One last thing to consider in the design process is how complicated you want the intervention to be at its inception. That is, do you want the complete focus on student self-monitoring so that the above elements are addressed and that is all? Or do you want to add elements such as feedback and/or reinforcement to the mix? (Remember the results of the Bruhn et al., 2015, literature review that described all of the different elements included in self-monitoring interventions). Menzies et al. (2009) proposed that a self-monitoring intervention could be bolstered by adding goal setting and reinforcement contingency features to the intervention. In this example, you could examine your baseline data to determine a performance goal for which a student can strive to reach. That goal could be derived from improvement in the student’s own performance or it could come from the performance of peers, presumably what you think is appropriate behavioral performance in the classroom. Then Menzies et al. (2009) suggested that you could structure your intervention so that there is either access to preferred activities such as adult or peer praise or additional computer time for meeting the predetermined goal or breaks from nonpreferred activities such as writing time. By adding these features, you could be engaging in your own assessment of the purpose or function of the student’s behavior. This is behavior that has bothered you and led you to the point of developing an intervention and crafting your intervention so that the student gains either preferred or non-preferred activities through a more appropriate display of behavior.

Step 5: Teach the self-monitoring procedures

You might think implementation starts now but we maintain that it does not because you remain responsible for directing activities. The student is not yet independently self-monitoring because you are teaching him or her the intervention. It is still part of the planning process. You have already been in discussion with the student in developing the target behavior. See this teaching process as an extension of that.

Be explicit in your instruction using effective instruction principles (I do, We do, You do) that are recommended for use with all students, but particularly for students with disabilities (Hughes, Morris, Therrien, & Benson, 2017). That is, reiterate the rationale that was part of your thinking in initiating a self-monitoring program in the first place and part of your discussion with your student when the appropriate behavior was identified. Model the actions that you want the student to carry out using a think aloud process, which adds your dialogue about why you are taking the action steps as you are modeling them. Once your model is finished, then guide the student through a shared practice. In this shared practice, your student will complete the steps as you ask questions about what is next and why the two of you are doing what you are doing. When the student is answering all of your questions about the complete intervention correctly, move to independent practice to let him or her complete the entire process—or some form of it if it involves correct academic responding over a full day—by himself or herself.

The self-monitoring intervention consisted of a technologically assisted notice and note routine. That is, a MotivAider prompting device which can be programmed to pulse at regular or irregular intervals was purchased and set to pulse at 2-min intervals. For the 30 min of small-group reading instruction, whenever the pulse was activated, Johnny was to determine whether he was or was not actively responding to small-group instruction and record his response (YES or NO) on his Google Sheets self-monitoring form (see Figure 3). Johnny was shown the self-monitoring form and the intervention was explained to him by Ms. Rowley, who used a think aloud routine to encompass the “I do” portion of the explicit instruction training. The “We do” segment involved Ms. Rowley asking and Johnny answering questions about the process. Ms. Rowley also led Johnny through practice scenarios in which active engagement examples and nonexamples were presented. When Johnny said he felt comfortable knowing how to complete the intervention, Ms. Rowley allowed him to practice independently for brief portions of consecutive start-of-the-day homeroom settings so that an “I do-We do-You do” sequence was completed. After two independent sessions, the intervention process began for small-group reading instruction.

Step 6: Oversee self-monitoring implementation

With data confirming that the student can perform the task, your job becomes monitor and supporter of student action. You watch the student self-monitor from a distance and evaluate his or her mastery of the process and discipline in proceeding or lack of one or both. Use the monitoring form that you have trained your student to use to track progress (see example in Figure 3). This allows you to help determine the accuracy and honesty of the student’s intervention process. It also permits you to informally evaluate the utility of the developed intervention. In the best of circumstances, you learn that the intervention as developed is a good fit for the context in which it is being implemented. Alternatively, you may realize that some pieces can be fine-tuned following a period in which student data are collected.

Neither Menzies et al. (2009) nor Reid and Lienemann (2006) provided suggestions for how long the intervention is to take place, though Reid and Lienemann (2006) noted that if there is success, it will be noticed quickly. What may guide your process is the stability of the data. That is, is measured performance consistently at baseline level for the replacement (ineffective) or above baseline (potentially effective) for at least the number of data points that you collected during baseline? If there is instability in the series of data, then continued data collection is warranted along with problem solving to ascertain what may be contributing to the instability. If a goal has been established as an element of the intervention, then you might consider setting a number of consecutive times that meeting or exceeding the goal will be considered a reaching of the short-term objective. This goal determination process is much like that completed with the measurable annual behavioral goals that are included in an IEP.

Step 7: As the data allow, program for maintenance and generalization

If you have stable data that are above your baseline data or you have met the preestablished number of consecutive goals, then the data warrant a celebration of short-term success and a consideration of the long-term ambitions. For maintenance of the behavior, you can suggest that student self-monitoring continue and you check the data periodically to evaluate its ongoing effectiveness, and potentially offer reward contingent on continued student action or continued meeting an established success criterion. Think to yourself and consider sharing with your student that you want this successful behavioral activity—self-monitoring and more correct responding or keeping body parts to him or herself in the lunch line—to continue for the next month or quarter or year. For generalization, you want this successful behavior exhibited elsewhere for the benefit of the student, his or her teachers, and potentially others including the student’s parents or caregivers. In this part of the intervention process, then, others are brought in to support and to expand the intervention’s reach. This collective activity is all in the name of encouraging continued success and building this new behavioral practice into the student’s daily life.

Step 8: Determine effectiveness and next steps

As you have probably noticed, your evaluation of the intervention’s effectiveness has been ongoing for a while. But it is important to mention them explicitly as part of the overall intervention implementation process. Determining the effectiveness of the intervention involves completing the following elements: (a) understanding if the steps of the process are manageable and meeting the initial expectations; (b) determining whether the data collection—noting—process is workable in the context; (c) comparing the accuracy of the reported scores to what you observe; and (e) determining where else that intervention is warranted. An objective “read” of the data by you, your student, and others who you may involve will help you determine where you move from here. Making sure that those next steps have a direct connection to the annual measurable goals of the IEP for a student with EBD is a relevant action for you and/or the IEP team members to take. That way, we believe that your actions would demonstrate that you offered, as the 2017 Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District U.S. Supreme Court decision made clear, “an IEP reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of his circumstances” (p. 16).

It is also important for you and your student to determine if either or both of you liked the process and thought it was beneficial. Acceptability of treatment may make one or both of you more likely to engage in the behavior in the future when a relevant problem needing this type of solution presents itself. Perceptions of treatment acceptability may be influenced by the success by which the intervention was implemented as intended. Treatment integrity data can be collected by using information in Table 1 to determine the proportion of relevant steps implemented—those marked yes—versus the number of relevant steps needed to implement—those marked yes plus those marked no. There do not appear to be specific criteria to guide the overall evaluation of implementation effectiveness in the literature. In other words, there is no percent correctly implemented—for example, 80% of the steps correctly administered—that separates “success” from “failure.” What does seem to make sense, however, is that we collect these data with higher percentage of steps correctly administered being better. That is because in doing so we are able to help determine whether implementation success or failure was influenced by the effectiveness of the implementation of the intervention. If the intervention was successful, then it may not matter to us what the percent of intervention steps correctly implemented was. But if the intervention did not achieve the desired results, then we can ask—and help answer—the question of what went wrong by gauging the success of our intervention implementation. If the intervention failed and our implementation proportions were low, then maybe our next step is to do a better job of implementing the intervention as intended before moving on to another intervention. Such a “next steps” decision is best made when there are data collected to assist our decision making.

The school psychologist agreed to monitor the reading period 3 times over the first 10 days of the intervention period so that an effort could be made to confirm Ms. Rowley’s own thoughts about the accuracy and honesty of Johnny’s self-monitoring. Otherwise, it was Johnny’s reporting that sufficed for data recording. Data were entered into a graphing program daily (see Figure 2 for results and Figure 3 for one day’s example of data collected). Ms. Rowley checked in with Johnny daily to offer her support for his behavior change efforts as well as to gauge how Johnny felt he was doing. Ms. Porter’s observations came later in the intervention period and confirmed Johnny’s reporting of meeting an 80% goal that was built into the self-monitoring chart (see Figure 2).

Ms. Haney began twice weekly progress monitoring using the oral reading fluency CBM instrument. An end-of-year goal was set for the 35th percentile in grade level material and data-based individualization procedures were initiated with the help of the school psychologist to increase the intensity of specially designed reading instruction.

Ms. Rowley met with Johnny after 10 days of self-monitoring to give her own data-based reflections on the process and to elicit his perceptions of his performance and ability to maintain the behavior. Johnny was pleased with his progress and wanted others to know, so Ms. Rowley agreed to send a copy of the graph home with him so that she could refer to it when she called his mother. Ms. Rowley also arranged for “chance” celebratory meetings with Ms. Haney, Ms. Porter, the principal, and his second-grade teacher. She also promised Johnny that she would catch Johnny being good twice a day for the next week at times of her choosing, agreeing to award Johnny double schoolwide support system “bucks” for every time that occurred.

Ms. Rowley also let Johnny know that she wanted his improved engaged behavior to continue and asked him to think of a new classroom and teacher to which the self-monitoring plan would expand. She enlisted additional support from the school psychologist in ensuring that the expansion would take place as seamlessly as it could.