Context/Situation Each day during first hour, my class spends about 25 minutes eating breakfast and doing recreation/leisure

activities. Additionally, we prepare snacks to sell in the hallways between first and second hour. Each day, my student, MH, will constantly look around the room or walk away from an activity. As well, MH tends to ask questions that are unrelated to the task she is preforming. She will start talking to a teacher or peer and become unfocused on whatever activity she is engaging in. This causes me to have to refocus MH and sometimes start instruction over. As well, this can act as a distraction to some students. During activities in first hour, I would like MH to increase her on-task behavior. I would like MH to focus on a single activity for the entire time we are engaging in it. This includes not only focusing on the task at hand, but also not looking around the room, talking to peers or other teachers, walking away, or talking about an unrelated topic. During first hour recreation/leisure and snack setup time, MH will orient toward and touch only materials that are relevant to the assigned task or activity. MH will also look at the teacher who is offering information or instruction on a topic or activity. Mastery of this skill will be displaying the described on-task behavior with no more than 1 visual or gestural prompt within any given activity period for 5 consecutive days. Non-examples of this behavior (off-task) include: -Walking while eating during breakfast -Going to the bathroom without asking -Asking questions unrelated to activity (with the exception of free conversation at breakfast) -Trying to throw breakfast away before finishing -Sitting with a peer during snack set-up -Not following assigned direction when going to get snack (walk away, go play a game) -Walk out into hallway -Grabbing items

Data Date: 9/20/12 Activity Get Breakfast Time 8:00-8:05 # of times off task 5 Notes Walking away from line, sitting down in cafeteria Walking while eating, getting up from table, going to bathroom without asking, looking around at other students, throwing away food early Sat with another peer group when she should have been getting drinks, walking away from snack table, walk out of classroom Asking unrelated questions about using an ipod, walking away from activity

Eating Breakfast

8:05-8:17

Snack Set-Up

8:17-8:30

Game

8:30-8:39

Total number of times off-task: 25

Date: 9/21/12 Activity Get Breakfast Notes Walking away from line, going back upstairs without breakfast Eating Breakfast 8:05-8:15 6 Not eating, getting up from table, going to bathroom without asking, looking around at other students, throwing away food early Snack Set-Up 8:15-8:23 3 Asking unrelated questions, not getting items she was told to get *MH went to work this day, so I was only able to assess until 8:23am Total number of times off-task: 13 Results As shown above, MH exhibits off-task behavior quite often during first hour. For the first day of baseline, MH was off-task 25 times in 40 minutes. As well, MH was off task 13 times in 23 minutes the next day. MH exhibits multiple types of offtask behavior. Most frequently, she asks questions that are unrelated to the activity, looks around the room for more than 3 seconds, or walks away from the activity. This is distracting to other students and it is difficult to get MH to refocus after she becomes off-task. As shown in baseline, there is much room for improvement in this area. While MH does enjoy participating in activities, she needs prompting to remind her to stay on task and refocus her attention to the assigned activities. Time 8:00-8:05 # of times off task 4

Intervention Plan To increase this behavior, I would like to use most-to-least prompting with MH. In my opinion, most-to-least prompting will encourage MH to stay focused on the task she is preforming, but will also allow her to become more independent at this. I hope that with fading of prompts come natural on-task behaviors that are no longer dependent on prompts (both verbal or visual). To begin, I would like to have an informal conversation with MH about on-task vs. off-task behaviors. I want to discuss the importance of paying attention and completing the work we are doing at school. This conversations purpose is to simply introduce the idea of what on-task behavior looks like to MH. I would also like to show MH pictures of students engaging in both on-task and off-task behavior to give her examples and nonexamples. This activity will set the stage for MHs understanding of appropriate behavior, and ensure she is aware of the expectations I have for her during first hour activities. After this activity, I will begin prompting with MH. First, I will provide a direct verbal prompt to MH when she engages in off-task behavior. I will say MH right now we are ________________ so I need you to do that. After mastery of this, I will fade the prompt to become a more indirect, verbal prompt. I will simply ask MH What should you be doing right now? to prompt her to engage in the activity. Next, I will fade to a gestural cue. This will be a small, laminated index card that has a picture of MH doing her work. I will hold this card in my pocket and hand it to MH when she is exhibiting off-task behavior. This will prompt her to refocus on the activity she is doing. Next, I will fade the prompt to simply a visual one by taping the index card to the desk when MH is doing an activity, but I will use no verbal or gestural prompting. I will fade each of these prompts after mastery of the prompt has been reached. Mastery will be engaging in off-task behavior no more than two times after prompt has been delivered in any given activity for three consecutive days. In addition to these prompts, I would like MH to use a self-monitoring technique to track her own on-task behavior after all prompts have been faded. Thus, after the visual reminder on her desk is removed, I will begin having MH selfmonitor her on-task behavior at the end of an activity. To do so, I will have a sheet of paper that says, Was I on-task for this whole activity? It will also have a yes/no box to check. I will have MH complete this paper at the end of each activity and track her own progress. This will help MH maintain her on-task behaviors even after prompts have been discontinued. While these strategies will help MH increase her on-task behavior, I will also use reinforcement to instill this skill. I will be sure to provide direct verbal praise to MH when she is engaging in on-task behavior for five consecutive minutes. I will say, I really like the way you are focusing on your work, MH, thanks! or I can tell youre working really hard and I like that. I might also provide MH with a high five to show her praise. Using positive reinforcement will encourage MH to engage in ontask behavior and complete her work.

In order to effectively collect data throughout the semester, I will keep a running record of MHs on and off task behavior three days a week. While I will provide the intervention each day, I will assess on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays during first period. These records will be similar to the baseline data taken, and will give me a good measure of MHs progress throughout the semester.

On-Task Behavior

Off-Task Behavior

Date: Activity

Data Charts Time Number of Times Off Task Notes

Total number of times off-task:

Reflection

Off-Task Behavior
18 Number of TimesOff-Task 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Assessment Occurrence

Results: Data taken during this program has shown an overall reduction in MHs offtask behavior. Prompts were faded when MH engaged in off-task behavior less than three times during any given activity. As shown by the graph below, off-task behavior increased in the days following a fade in prompt, but overall off-task behavior continued to decrease throughout the program. During the first week of program implementation (direct verbal prompt), MH was engaging in off-task behavior an average of 13 times in a 20-minute period. During the first week of an indirect prompt, MH engaged in off-task behavior an average of 4 times in a 20minute period. When the prompt was faded to a gestural (pointing) prompt, off-task behavior averaged at 8 times in a 20-minute period. When significant progress was not observed, I returned to an indirect verbal and observed an average of 4 times in a 20 minute period. Finally, I faded the prompt, once again, to a gestural prompt. This, again, increased the off-task behavior to an average of 7 times in a 20-minute period (for the first week). Overall, off-task behavior decreased from about 13 times in a 20 minute period to 4 times in a 20 minute period (with an indirect verbal prompt). Even though off-task behavior increased slightly when the prompt was faded to a gestural prompt, it was still an average of 6 times per 20-minute period lower than the start of the program.

Discussion: Overall, this program was successful. Through implementing various prompt levels, MHs off-task behavior decreased from a weekly average of 13 times per 20minute period to 4 times per 20-minute period. Yet, I did make a few changes to the program throughout implementation. First, I decided to change the third prompt level from providing MH with an on-task card to simply a pointing gesture. I did this after observing MHs response to other prompts. I decided this would be a proper prompt because she responds well to direct interactions with authority figures and it would draw less attention to her. Additionally, I reinstated the indirect verbal prompt after MH was not very responsive to the gestural (pointing) prompt. After she was successful with the indirect verbal prompt, I faded back to the gestural pointing prompt. Through these changes and other prompt levels, each time a prompt was faded to another prompt, off-task behavior increased slightly. Yet, it would once again decrease after 2-3 days of prompts. Over time, MH continued to show improvement in her on-task behavior and brought her overall off-task behavior down to about 4-5 times in any 20-minute period. There were aspects of the environment that did seem to impede some of MHs overall progress. In our classroom, there are 7 other students and 7 other adults. This is a distraction for MH and encourages her off-task behavior. As well, when putting her items in her locker and getting her breakfast, MH was surrounded by other students and is quiet distracted. These distractions most likely affected MHs progress because she would look around and talk to others often. Thus, in future implementation, it might be more effective to provide these prompts in a less-distracting environment and then develop generalization in more distracting environments. I believe this would allow MH to better develop on-task behavior that she could use in other environments. Overall, as shown by the results of this program, MH did increase her on-task behavior in various activities. Thus, this program proved successfully. Through further implementation in other environments, I believe that MH would continue to

develop her on-task behavior. Continuously fading prompts in other environments would be a successful intervention to continue MHs progress.