Running head: BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS ON 5TH GRADE STUDENTS IN TRADITIONAL 1

AND DEPARTMENTALIZED CLASSROOM SETTINGS

Behavior Analysis on 5th Grade Students in

Traditional and Departmentalized Classroom Settings

Markaela Bryan, Katherine Hallford, and Samantha Steel

University of Las Vegas, Nevada

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS ON 5TH GRADE STUDENTS IN TRADITIONAL AND 2
DEPARTMENTALIZED CLASSROOM SETTINGS
Problem

There has been much dialogue amongst educators regarding the benefits of

departmentalized elementary school classrooms versus the traditional classroom setting.

Markaela, having experienced teaching in both settings has been apart of similar discussions

within her school. Kat has spent her career teaching in a departmentalized setting. Kat and

Markaela are both fifth grade teachers in southern Nevada. Kat specializes in English Language

Arts and Social Studies. Markaela is in a traditional general education setting this school year

where she teaches all subjects. Upon discussion, Kat and Markaela discovered that they

experienced some similar behavioral issues. Students talk out of turn, get out of their seats, are

off task, etc. Prior to the start of the study, Sam went into both Kat and Markaela’s classrooms

and observed student behaviors to find which behaviors overlapped the most between both

classrooms. The behaviors Sam found to be most common (talking out of turn, getting out of seat,

off task during transitions, going in other peoples spaces) were the behaviors used in the study.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine if students have less behavioral issues when a

classroom is traditional or when one is departmentalized.

Design

The design of this study is a quasi-experimental case study, as the focus was on Kat and

Markaela’s 5th grade classes. Sam was an observer in both classrooms in order to help determine

what specific behaviors should be documented. Each teacher in the study kept tally marks when

students exhibited one or more of the behaviors chosen as a potential problem.

Participants
BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS ON 5TH GRADE STUDENTS IN TRADITIONAL AND 3
DEPARTMENTALIZED CLASSROOM SETTINGS
There were two classrooms that participated in this study. Both classes are located in

southern Nevada, at schools with similar demographics.

Class One is comprised of twenty-nine fifth grade students, with fifteen male students and

fourteen female students. The students in the classroom have a higher percentage of English

Language Learners at 24%. It is located at a school with a free and reduced meal rate of 97%.

Class Two is comprised of thirty-one fifth grade students, with 16 male students and 15

female students. This classroom only contains one student that is labeled as an English Language

Learner. Similar to Class One, Class Two has a free and reduced meal percentage at 100%.

Methodology

Part One: Where Did the Participants Come From?

The classrooms involved in the study were selected from two schools in the southern Nevada

region. One class from each school was selected due to being the classrooms of record for

Markaela and Kat. Class One is a departmentalized classroom, with the students receiving

instruction in English Language Arts and Social studies with Kat and Math and Social Studies

instruction with her co-teacher. Class Two is a traditional classroom, where students stay with

one teacher for the duration of core instruction. Markaela is the teacher of record for Class Two.

Part Two: What Was Done to the Participants?

Prior to the start of the study, Sam attended both classes as an outside observer, determining

which behaviors seemed to be the most prevalent among both groups. For the duration of the

study, both Markaela and Kat held class as regularly scheduled to avoid interrupting student’s

usual routines. All teachers involved in the study monitored behavior and kept a record via a tally

sheet for a two week period, spanning from November 27th, 2017 to December 8th, 2017. In
BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS ON 5TH GRADE STUDENTS IN TRADITIONAL AND 4
DEPARTMENTALIZED CLASSROOM SETTINGS
order to maintain accurate records, Kat’s co-teacher continued the tally to account for the duration

of Class One’s school day.

Part Three: Data Analysis

After the data collection period was over, we looked at the data and found several trends. First,

Class One had a total of 262 tallies over the course of ten days, while Class Two had 101 tallies

over the course of the study, showing that behavior issues in Class One were far more prevalant

than in class two. With Class One, the most frequently occuring incident was students leaving

their seats, which accounted for 34.7% of the total behavior issues in the classroom. The least

problematic behavior issue was students invading the space of others, which only accounted for

11.8% of the behavior issues. With Class Two, the highest occurrence of problematic behavior

was students talking out of turn, which accounted for 34.6% of the classroom behavior issues.

Class Two’s least occurring behavior was also students invading other’s spaces, which accounted

for 8.9% of the behavior issues.

Results

Reflection

Potential Future Studies

Appendices

Departmentalized classroom- Tallies are marked x/x to show both Kat (English and Social

Studies) and her co- teacher (Math and Science)

Talking out Getting out Off Task During Going in other Daily

of turn of seat Transitions peoples spaces Totals

Day 1 6/4 6/5 5/2 3/0 31

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS ON 5TH GRADE STUDENTS IN TRADITIONAL AND 5
DEPARTMENTALIZED CLASSROOM SETTINGS
Day 2 7/5 7/6 4/2 3/4 38

Day 3 3/5 4/6 6/2 2/1 29

Day 4 2/1 3/7 2/5 4/3 27

Day 5 5/7 8/7 6/4 2/0 39

Day 6 0/3 2/3 6/4 0/0 18

Day 7 1/3 1/4 2/5 0/3 19

Day 8 3/2 6/5 2/1 0/2 21

Day 9 4/6 3/2 4/3 0/1 23

Day 10 2/1 4/2 1/4 2/1 17

Behavior 70 91 70 31 26

Total

Traditional classroom

Talking out Getting out Off task during Going in other Daily

of turn of seat transitions peoples spaces Totals

Day 1 3 2 3 1 9

Day 2 5 1 6 0 12

Day 3 4 1 4 0 9

Day 4 4 3 3 1 11

Day 5 6 3 4 1 14

Day 6 3 1 2 1 7

Day 7 3 2 3 2 10
BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS ON 5TH GRADE STUDENTS IN TRADITIONAL AND 6
DEPARTMENTALIZED CLASSROOM SETTINGS
Day 8 3 2 4 1 10

Day 9 3 3 3 1 10

Day 10 4 2 2 1 9

Behavior 38 20 34 9 101

Total