Behavior contracts Continued

On January 26th, I was able to do my first real lesson with the behavior contracts, because I was able to simply remind the first three boys what they did yesterday, and I planned for enough time to talk to the additional four boys as well.

I was extremely excited about the results of this 2nd day of the contracts.

N and J continued to do well with them, with N not talking ONCE! in the whole lesson, and J only talking out one time.

T improved after a conversation about what the behavior contracts were for, and only talked out once in the lesson as well.

R, B, D, and G also did well with the contracts with the numbers of 0, 1, 0 and 0 respectively.

The class average improved as well, with only 20 total times talking out.



The 3rd day of behavior contracts (2/2) went well also, with one catch.

Each of the boys on the contract kept their numbers low again, and the class average was good as well at 27 (still under the 30 average of the previous week).

The chart below shows the comparative decrease of talking time over the days, with the first three being before the contract were introduced, and the last 2 or 3 (three for the boys who had an additional day with the contracts) being after.

The catch is with R. He didn't talk out at all, which is great for him, but unfortunately, he spent more time drawing happy faces than doing the phonics lesson with us. I appreciate his using self control to not shout out, and so based solely on my measuring their talking, he did well, but it is important to note that he still isn't where he needs to be behaviorally. I plan on talking to him about making sure that he is primarily doing the lesson, and adding his happy faces only between answering phonics questions, not instead of.

Another interesting result of these contracts is N's, my ADHD child, reaction to them. He LOVES them! He keeps asking if he can have one all day, and if I have a phonics lesson without them (which unfortunately happened on a day here and there when I didn't have time to pass them out yet) he asks why we didn't use one that day. It seems that giving him an outlet, as simply as drawing happy faces, is enough to help keep his actions under control.