The student is distracted or off-task because classroom instruction and learning activities are not sufficiently reinforcing to hold his or her attention. Learn teacher behaviors to help fix this motivation problem.

The student requires praise, access to rewards, or other reinforcers in the short term as a temporary ‘pay-off’ to encourage her or him to apply greater effort. Learn teacher behaviors to help fix this student motivation problem.

The student has a low sense of self-efficacy in a subject area, activity, or academic task and that lack of confidence reduces the student’s motivation to apply his or her best effort. NOTE: Self-efficacy is the student’s view of his or her own abilities specific to a particular academic area (e.g., mathematics) and should not be confused with self-esteem, which represents the student’s global view of his or her self-worth. Learn teacher behavior to help fix this student motivation problem.

The student appears indifferent or even hostile toward the instructor and thus may lack motivation to follow teacher requests or to produce work. Learn teacher behaviors to help with this student motivation problem.

This response-cost strategy is appropriate for younger students who are verbally defiant and non-compliant with the teacher. (See the related Hints for Using... column for tips on how to tailor this intervention idea for older students.)

Some students thrive on peer attention-and will do whatever they have to in order to get it. These students may even attempt intentionally to irritate their classmates in an attempt to be noticed. When students bother others to get attention, though, they often find themselves socially isolated and without friends. In addition, teachers may discover that they must surrender valuable instructional time to mediate conflicts that were triggered by students seeking negative peer attention.
Positive Peer Reporting is a clever classwide intervention strategy that was designed to address the socially rejected child who disrupts the class by seeking negative attention. Classmates earn points toward rewards for praising the problem student. The intervention appears to work because it gives the rejected student an incentive to act appropriately for positive attention and also encourages other students to note the target student's good behaviors rather than simply focusing on negative actions. Another useful side effect of positive peer reporting is that it gives all children in the classroom a chance to praise others-a useful skill for them to master! The Positive Peer Reporting strategy presented here is adapted from Ervin, Miller, & Friman (1996).

Students can be motivated to improve classroom behaviors if they have both a clear roadmap of the teacher's behavioral expectations and incentives to work toward those behavioral goals. This modified version of Check-In/Check-Out (CI/CO) is a simple behavioral intervention package designed for use during a single 30- to 90-minute classroom period (Dart, Cook, Collins, Gresham & Chenier, 2012). The teacher checks in with the student to set behavioral goals at the start of the period, then checks out with the student at the close of the period to rate that student's conduct and award points or other incentives earned for attaining behavioral goal(s).

The Color Wheel is one solution that enforces uniform group expectations for conduct while also responding flexibly to the differing behavioral demands of diverse learning activities. This classwide intervention divides all activities into 3 categories and links each category to a color: green for free time/ low-structure activities; yellow for large- or small-group instruction/independent work; and red for brief transitions between activities. The student learns a short list of behavioral rules for each category and, when given a color cue, can switch quickly from one set of rules to another.

This Module outlines the differences between the IQ-achievement discrepancy model and the Response-to-Intervention (RTI) approach. It also offers a brief overview of each tier in the RTI model and explains its benefits (est. completion time: 1 hour).

This Module explores in detail the assessment procedures integral to RTI. It also outlines how to use progress monitoring data to determine whether a student is meeting the established performance criteria or whether more intensive intervention is needed (est. completion time: 2 hours).

This Module illustrates different research-based reading strategies that may be used with the response-to-intervention model to improve reading skills (est. completion time: 1.5 hours).

This Module synthesizes the information in RTI (Parts 1, 2, and 3) to provide teachers and other school personnel with a more comprehensive illustration of how to successfully implement RTI (est. completion time: 3 hours).

This Module describes which students will receive Tier 3 intervention (i.e., special education services), components of Tier 3 reading interventions, and students' response to this individualized intervention. This Module also explores parent involvement and issues related to English language learners (est. completion time: 2 hours).

Intervention Central provides teachers, schools and districts with free resources to help struggling learners and implement Response to Intervention and attain the Common Core State Standards.

Families are critical partners in effective implementation of RTI. As states and school districts work to implement an RTI process that provides early help to struggling students, parents need to understand the essential components of RTI and the roles they can play in supporting their child’s success.

As RTI becomes more widespread, it is critical that all professional education programs integrate the knowledge and skill sets into the curriculum and clinical experiences. This page highlights a number of the informational resources that are available on this site for use in professional preparation programs.

Revitalizing Urban Main Streets focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers three broad areas:

an overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
the physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives; and
the policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization.

The course has dual goals: to explore the integration of economic and physical development interventions in ways that reinforce commercial district revitalization efforts, and to apply this knowledge through the development of a formal neighborhood commercial revitalization plan for a client business district.

Teachers often find it difficult to monitor the frequency of problem student behaviors. In this clever behavior-management strategy, the teacher uses keeps track of student behaviors using rubber-bands placed around the wrist.

Hyperactive students tend to have a very high energy level, act impulsively and can be behaviorally distracting. They may fidget, play with objects, tap pencils so loudly against their desk that kids from across the room look over at them, or blurt out answers to teacher questions before the instructor is even finished asking them. When working with students who are hyperactive or impulsive, teachers should keep in mind that these students are very often completely unaware that others view their behavior as distracting or annoying. Teachers working with such children can greatly increase their own effectiveness by clearly communicating behavioral expectations to students, by encouraging and rewarding students who behave appropriately, and by being consistent and fair when responding to problem student behaviors. Here are teacher ideas for managing impulsive or hyperactive students who display problem motor or verbal behaviors:

tudents who have chronic difficulties paying attention in class face the risk of poor grades and even school failure. Inattention may be a symptom of an underlying condition such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. However, teachers should not overlook other possible explanations for student off-task behavior. It may be, for example, that a student who does not seem to be paying attention is actually mismatched to instruction (the work is too hard or too easy) or preoccupied by anxious thoughts. Or the student may be off-task because the teacher's lesson was poorly planned or presented in a disorganized manner. It is also important to remember that even children with ADHD are influenced by factors in their classroom setting and that these students' level of attention is at least partly determined by the learning environment. Teachers who focus on making their instruction orderly, predictable, and highly motivating find that they can generally hold the attention of most of their students most of the time.