If you are familiar with the tiered levels of support of Multitierd Systems of Support in the school setting you are probably familiar with tier 2 behavior interventions and supports....or more likely the lack of tier 2 behavior interventions and supports.
Tier 2 behavior interventions and supports can be challenging to implement as we do not really have strong norms to determine what warrants a tier 2 or tier 3 level of behavioral support. With academics we have a lot of this data. We have norms on top of norms with reading scores and math scores that let us know which students need some additional supports in various areas, however we do not have that for behavioral supports.
These supports can be vital to overall student success as some of our students need additional layers of support to develop various behavioral and social emotional learning skills. Having strong tier 2 interventions that schools and teachers can pull from is very helpful when teams are determining which interventions might be most beneficial to a student's overall success.
In this episode Shannon from @basicallybehavior and I chat about a training we attended through thinkkids.org. They have an evidenced-based framework for a tier 2 level plan that we think would be great to implement when we are looking to add additional layers of support for a student.
We chat all about how the framework works and how we think it could be used in the school setting. We also talk some different tier 1 level supports and of course tier 3 levels supports. If you are thinking of building a more robust tiered system within your school or classroom this episode is for you.
The thinkkids.org program focuses on building skills. We all know this is the best way to lead to durable behavior change and they provide a pretty structured approach to building these skills! Additionally, the framework provides you with language and great documents to use through the process so you are not reinventing the wheel. They have an assessment of lagging skills they use that is a great place to start when you are trying to determine which skills to focus on when implementing tier 2 supports. Shannon brought up a great idea about using the lagging skills assessment as a screener for tier 2 level groups in the school setting.
The evidence behind this program is strong and they address behavior from a culturally responsive and trauma informed lens which is something all behavioral interventions and assessments should take into account. They have so many free resources and trainings you should definitely check them out and sign up for a training if you are interested.
Developing strong tier 2 behavior interventions and support can really help maximize the success of our students. Social emotional and behavioral skills are so important and having a robust tiered approach to teaching these skills can be a game changer in the school setting.
Resources discussed in this episode
Free Intervention Implementation Checklist
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Thinkkids.org