Behavior Management

Para eLink: Where Minnesota's Paraprofessionals Learn Online

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Specialized Competency

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Area Introduction

This specialized area of the Para eLink is focused on behavior management. Behavior management is an important part of any educational environment for children and youth. Successful behavior management often leads to student success, even with students who have particularly challenging behaviors. But how can you and other educators be successful at behavior management? This eLink Area will begin to answer that question for you.

This area includes five units:

Introduction to Behavior
Finding an Effective Strategy: Using Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA)
Using Strategies Effectively: Positive Behavior Support
Proactive Classroom Management
Other Behavior Management Topics for Paraprofessionals

Each unit is an important part of the bigger behavior management picture. What is behavior? When the behavior is inappropriate for a situation, how can people find a strategy that teaches and reinforces an appropriate one? After a strategy is identified, how can the strategy be effectively used? Sometimes strategies for challenging behaviors are related to procedures and processes within the whole class, as a positive, unified, and focused classroom can be a powerful lesson in behavior. Lastly, we cover some behavior management topics of which paraprofessionals should be aware.

When you have completed this behavior Area you will, we hope, have a perspective and set of skills that will enable you to respond more effectively to student behavior and work more effectively with colleagues around behavioral issues. It is a complex topic, and as such our units build on each other. For this reason, it is best to start with the first unit and work through each unit in consecutive order. As you do so, you will notice that topics resurface throughout the curriculum. These topics, however, will be used in different ways or for different purposes – further deepening your understanding of them.

(Clicking the hyperlinked competency code, e.g., BM-K1, will take you to the associated training unit.)

Behavior Management (Knowledge-Based)
BM-K1 Understanding of personality, social, emotional and developmental behavior, and that behavior is patterned and addresses a function.
BM-K2 Understanding of behavioral/emotional challenges in a learning environment and their interaction with other disabilities, and the value of perceiving the behavior as separate from the individual.
BM-K3 Understanding of the need for utilizing formal and informal assessment strategies in obtaining information necessary for educational and behavioral programming for individual students.
BM-K4 Understanding of the rationale, components, operation and evaluation of the program models in which they are working.
Behavior Management (Skill-Based)
BM-S1 Ability to document change in learner behavior in both academic and social areas.
BM-S2 Ability to observe and record pupil behavior utilizing different social rating systems.
BM-S3 Demonstrate the use of different methods to intervene proactively to change and maintain behavior.
BM-S4 Ability to implement remedial techniques in academic skill areas with learners.
BM-S5 Ability to use materials designed for skill development in the social areas.
BM-S6 Ability to collaborate effectively with team members and families.
BM-S7 Ability to build trusting relationships with students while remaining professional and objective.
BM-S8 Ability to recognize early warning signs of social and/or emotional difficulties.

Review

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rtf

Your facilitator may ask you to turn in a written copy of the area review, in which case you can use either the pdf or rtf file. If your facilitator wants you to submit an electronic file, download the rtf file and open it in a Word Processor.

document.write(document.title)

Specialized Competency

Area Introduction

Review

Area Evaluation