ABA Project Part 3

A.

1) The behavior that I focused on was task completion, and the dimension of behavior that I
focused on was frequency of times that Charlie completed work during Language Arts.
The characteristics of task completion were that Charlie wrote at least 1 complete
sentence when he was engaged in independent writing, and when he was engaged in
independent reading he pointed to each word as he read the book out loud and he made
an attempt to read all the words that he did not know.

2) Setting events:
Charlie had problems with reading and writing since Kindergarten. He was a first grader
who was reading at the level that a Kindergartener should reach at the end of that school
year.
The father does not live at home. Not much known about home life because the mother
was very difficult to reach and there was not been much parental involvement in terms of
filling out getting to know you sheets and attending parent conferences.
Though there was no diagnosis, the teacher suspected issues with attention and/or
memory and processing information.
Many times he did not get to eat much of a snack because he took a long time doing his
checkbook (students got paid fake money everyday and had to add up the number of
cents and dollars before they ate snack). Snack took place right before language arts.
The teacher got frustrated with him and was torn between redirecting him a lot and
ignoring him because she had several other needy students who needed her attention and
were more responsive to her help.
It was somewhat noisy during language arts, where there were at least 2 reading groups
going on and two students who sat at Charlies table had their own aides who worked
with them. Charlie often watched and listened to what the aides were saying to the
student with whom they worked and tried to talk to them and ask them for help.
Antecedents:
Charlie was more likely to complete work during math
Charlie was more likely to complete work that is not related to writing complete
sentences and reading

Consequences:
Avoids task which was difficult for him
Got attention from teacher when she voiced her frustration with him and made him stay
in during recess to complete the task
 3) There seemed to be many things at play concerning Charlies task completion behaviors.
It appeared that Charlie had issues with paying attention, where even when engaged in
activities that he enjoyed, such as math games, he was easily distracted. This might have
been exacerbated by the noise level and the presence of many adults in the room helping
children that sat near him during language arts time when he was reading or writing
independently. However, it was very clear that Charlie was less likely to complete work
in language arts, an area where he struggled. This suggested that not completing tasks
related to reading and writing was about avoiding tasks that were difficult for him.
Another component to this behavior was that he received attention from the teacher
during small reading groups when he was not reading the book for the lesson. He also
received attention from the teacher when he did not finish writing tasks and he had to stay
in during part of recess to complete it. In summary, I hypothesized that the main reasons
that Charlie engaged in these behaviors was to avoid difficult tasks and seek attention.
B.
1) Intervention:
Independent Writing
1) I explained the intervention to the student and to the tutor student, where the intervention
involved one student, Amy, working with Charlie during independent writing.
2) During independent writing time during daily 5, Charlie worked with one other student in
a quiet part of the room.
3) For independent writing, Amy assisted Charlie, but did not give him the words and did
not have Colton copy off of her. She was allowed to give him hints or tips to help him
write. Acceptable hints included:
a. What sounds do you hear?
b. Say the word out loud and stretch it to see what sounds you hear.
4) To start with, Charlie needed to write a complete sentence, where at the least he should
answer some of the who/where/when/what/why/how questions, have a period at the end
and have spaces between words. The point was to get him writing. Very short sentences
such as I love mom, were not considered completed tasks for writing because when he
wrote this was usually the length of his sentences and I wanted to push him to write more.
5) When he completed a sentence, he needed to show an adult and have them approve it and
it and it needed to be recorded on the Charlie Writing record sheet.
6) When he was approved for writing a complete sentence, he was allowed to play a
computer game of his choice for 5 minutes. At the beginning of the day, Charlie chose
the game that he wanted to play and a computer was set up before Daily 5 so that he
could start playing the game right away when he completed a sentence.
7) I wrote the data on the checklist and took a picture of the checklist after he finished all
the writing that he was going to do during the daily 5 period so I coulc keep track of how
many sentences (where each sentence is considered a completed task) he wrote.
8) After playing the game for five minutes, he was told to go back to writing and reminded
that if he completed another sentence he could have another 5 minutes on the computer.
Independent Reading Intervention
1) During independent reading time (when Charlie picked read to self) during daily 5, he
read to another student.
2) Charlie needed to read 1 whole book (that was at his level) to his partner and needed to
meet all the requirements on the reading checklist. Those requirements were:
a. Read the whole book
b. Point to each word as he said it
c. Try to say all of the words that he didnt know
3) Amy was given the checklist to complete after Charlie read a book to her. When he got
stuck on a word, Amy helped him by:
a. Pointing to the beginning and ending letters of the word
b. Pointing out pictures as a hint to help Charlie figure out a word
4) When he completed reading a book to the tutor, he gave the completed checklist to an
adult for approval.
5) When he was approved for reading a whole book to Amy, he got to play a computer game
of his choice for 5 minutes. At the beginning of the day, Charlie chose the game that he
wanted to play and a computer was set up before Daily 5 so that he could start playing the
game right away when he completed a book.
6) After playing the game for five minutes, I told him to go back to reading. If he was able
to complete another book during the daily 5 round, he got another 5 minutes to play the
computer game.

I researched different interventions for reading and writing related to attention and I used these
articles to develop an intervention for Charlie:
Flores, M., & Duran, D. (2013). Effects of Peer Tutoring on Reading Self-Concept. International
Journal Of Educational Psychology, 2(3), 297-324.
Lane, K. L., Royer, D. J., Messenger, M. L., Common, E. A., Ennis, R. P., & Swogger, E. D.
(2015). Empowering Teachers with Low-Intensity Strategies to Support Academic
Engagement: Implementation and Effects of Instructional Choice for Elementary
Students in Inclusive Settings. Education & Treatment Of Children, 38(4), 573-504.
I developed an intervention that would include peer tutoring, which I thought would help Charlie
in terms of having someone to aid him in areas of difficulty to him and in terms of providing him
with opportunities for appropriate attention. I also incorporated choice into the intervention
where Charlie had choices about what computer game he could play when he earned his
computer time.

C.
i.
ii. The results of the intervention, based on the data that I collected in the graph above, appear to
be somewhat ambiguous. There is an overlap between the baseline data and the data that I
collected after I started implementing the intervention, which does not lend itself to the idea that
the intervention substantially improved Charlies task completion behavior. There also isnt a
clear ascending trend in the data, as Charlies task completion appears to increase, then decrease
a little, and then go up again and then it stays steady. On the other hand, one could argue that
there is improvement in Charlies behavior because he had such a low baseline for task
completion, where after the intervention was implemented there were no instances of him not
completing a task at all. There also were no instances of Charlie completing two tasks during the
collection of baseline data, yet there were four instances of Charlie doing so after the
implementation of the intervention. This might suggest some degree of effectiveness of the
intervention. However, overall I would say that it is unclear if the intervention was effective or
not.
D.
1. Critical Evaluation of Project:
In terms of the functional behavioral assessment, I initially started by looking at Charlies

behaviors of looking around the room and engaging in off-task behaviors. This presented a

difficulty in terms of developing an intervention that would focus on decreasing these off-task

behaviors. As I was focusing on the frequency of off-task behavior and the duration of off-task

behavior, it would be difficult to implement an intervention that would provide periodic

reinforcement for not engaging in the off-task behavior (where his off-task behavior was quite

frequent). I realized that it would be better for me to focus on changing behavior in a positive
direction, so I changed the behavior of interest from looking at off-task behavior to looking at

task completion behavior. Focusing on the positive is also important in terms of being able to

reinforce the student, where it would be more meaningful to reinforce the student for completing

a task and working hard by telling them that they did a good job, as opposed to using such

reinforcement by praising the student for not looking around the room to avoid work. This

lesson, of focusing on the positive, is something that I will be sure to use in the future when I am

developing interventions for students.

I felt like a did a very good job of providing background information about the student to

the extent that it was possible, given that it was very difficult to get in touch with the parents to

ask about Charlies behaviors at home. I was able to find a reinforcement that was very

motivating for Charlie, as he often asked me when I came in to the classroom if I had the

checklist and if he would be able to earn computer time. An area where I could have improved

on the intervention was training the student tutor how to provide aid to Charlie, where my

instructions to the tutor were very brief and it ended up that she did not always work with him

when he was writing or reading independently. This very likely could have affected the

effectiveness of the intervention.

2. Notes to the teacher

I would recommend to the teacher that she continue to implement the intervention and

collect more data, as the effectiveness of the intervention was not clear and there was a

possibility that it was effective. Given that Charlie was completing tasks more often after

implementing the intervention and given that his baseline of task completion was so low, it might

be better to continue the intervention as opposed to doing nothing. If the intervention does

appear to be effective, upon analyzing more data, I would recommend changing the parameters
of reinforcement after a period of four weeks so that Charlie would be required to write two

whole sentences or read two whole books before earning five minutes of computer time. If this

change continues to be effective reinforcement for Charlie, I would recommend continuing this

for six weeks before phasing the intervention to simply sending home the completed checklist

with praise and having Charlie graph his progress so he can gain confidence in his abilities in

reading and writing.