How to Teach Any Classroom Behavior in 4 Steps
Classroom behaviors Are Taught Like Any Other Skill.
You wouldn’t wait until a student is confused and frustrated to teach them long division. You’d break it down, model it, practice it, and check for understanding when they’re calm and ready to learn. Teaching classroom behaviors is the same. That means you’ll need structure, timing, practice, and reinforcement.
This post walks you through the when, what, and how of explicitly teaching behavior skills and how to deal with replacement behaviors.
While this is something that is strongly associated with Functional Behavioral Assessments (FBAs) and Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs), this system works for teaching any appropriate classroom behavior!
You can use it to teach your whole class how to line up or turn in papers, how to work with a partner, or how to regulate their bodies when they’re overly excited.
So if you’re teaching functional behaviors, like asking for help or asking a peer to share a toy, or if you’re focused on self-regulation and coping skills, you’re in the right place!
When to Teach: Teach Behavior When the Student Is Regulated
The first step is to remember that you can’t teach a new behavior to a dysregulated brain.
When a student is yelling, throwing, or eloping, they’re in survival mode, not learning mode. This is when the brain is wired for fight, flight, or freeze. Communication, reasoning, and memory are all impaired. Think of trying to teach a student to read when they’re crying. It’s just frustrating all around.
So, the first step is to set aside time to teach replacement behaviors during calm moments, when:
- The student is relaxed and available for instruction
- You can take time to model and explain
- You’re not rushing to prevent a crisis
My suggestion is to teach behavior every day at the start of class for just a few minutes. This way, it isn’t a response, but a proactive way to improve student behavior.
It prevents the reactive method of trying to teach a new behavior when a student is already engaging in a challenging behavior.
Using just a few minutes to teach a routine for how to ask for help or a calm down strategy sends the message that we are all working on these skills, rather than singling out a specific student. It also gives you a chance to have peers model how it looks and give one another feedback, which makes your instruction more powerful.
Plus, you can always teach one-on-one or in a small group as well if students are struggling. In fact, if you pre-teach the student who is struggling, you can actually use them as the example during the whole group lesson, which gives them a chance to shine!
What to Teach: Break the Behavior into Teachable Steps (AKA, Task Analysis)
Just like tying shoes or solving word problems, classroom behaviors often require multiple steps. Don’t assume the student knows how to do the new behavior unless you’ve taught it explicitly.
Task analysis is the process of breaking a skill into small, concrete steps that the student can learn one at a time.
Example: Teaching the behavior “Ask for a break”
| Step | What the student does |
| 1 | Notice frustration or overwhelm in your body |
| 2 | Grab a break card from your desk |
| 3 | Hold it up |
| 4 | Wait for your teacher’s acknowledgment |
| 5 | Quietly move to the break area and use a strategy |
Even the seemingly simplest of behaviors can be broken down into teachable steps with a task analysis. And the same replacement behavior might look different in your classroom from a teacher down the hall, depending on how you like to run things.
It might feel like extra work, but taking a minute to think about what exactly you want the behavior to look like helps so much when it comes time to teach and monitor the skill. You’re able to teach the students a list of steps, then check as they follow each one.
If the student is missing any step, back up and teach it again. Tip: Use visuals like step charts or cue cards to help students learn the sequence.
How to Teach: Tell, Model, Practice & Feedback, Reinforce & Reteach
Sounds like a lot of steps, but it only takes a few minutes! I promise!
Here’s the basic format for your behavior lesson plan:
Step 1: Name the classroom behavior and the steps to complete it.
Run through each step you want students to take when they’re going to use the behavior.
It helps to have a visual of the step, either in writing or pictures. You can also tell them when they can use this behavior.
Step 2: Model exactly what you want the behavior to look like.
Show the students each step by modeling and thinking aloud about the steps as you go.
You should also give some non-examples.
For example, if you’re teaching a student how to ask a friend to share a toy, you might show the non-example of grabbing the toy out of their hands while you’re asking. Have students identify what was wrong with your non-examples and talk about why each non-example isn’t helpful.
Step 3: Give time for practice and feedback
Have students run through the behavior themselves, in teams, or as a class.
This is your chance to give very specific feedback about how the students are using the behavior.
Examples:
- “I love how Alex is using a calm voice when he is asking for help. That makes it easier to understand what he needs help with.”
- “Kara is walking across the room as she moves to the break area. Someone tell me why that’s a smart move.”
- “Antonio, thank you for showing us how to use that breathing strategy in the most helpful way by taking those breaths so slowly. Slow breaths help us feel calmer.”
This kind of specific, actionable feedback helps students hone in on what you’re looking for and how to do the behavior in the best way.
Step 4: Reinforce and Reteach
If you want something to be repeated, you have to reinforce it!
Think about how you will be reinforcing students using the behavior, especially in the beginning.
If you’re teaching just one student, you might have a behavior contract worked out, use self-monitoring to have them reinforce themselves, or you can check in with them throughout class to offer praise and feedback.
If you’re teaching a group or the whole class, you can have a daily check to see if the behavior is being used appropriately, and the whole class earns a reinforcement for meeting expectations.
A fun game-based way to reinforce is to play Secret Student! How to play:
- Just before the class uses the behavior, you announce that you’re watching the Secret Student to see if they do it perfectly.
- In your head, pick a student to follow, but keep it a secret who it is.
- If that student does the behavior well, announce that the student did it AMAZINGLY. Give specific examples of what they did that made it worth announcing. You can even have them take a bow or earn some other reward.
- If the performance was lackluster, don’t announce who the student was! Just say the secret student didn’t meet expectations this time, so you can play again next time.
When the student(s) aren’t meeting your expectations for the behavior, there are two things to consider:
- It may be time to reteach. Go over the steps again and make sure that they’re clear and reteach students the same way you did before, but use more models, examples, and feedback.
You’ll probably want to do this after breaks or during more exciting times to prevent slippage.
Consider your reinforcement. If students have been retaught and can perform well in practice, but aren’t using the behavior, you probably need to incentivise it more at first.
For individual students, especially, consider the function. Make sure that you’re choosing a function-based reinforcement, so the replacement behavior actually works better for them than the challenging behavior.
Next Steps: Generalize the Behavior and Fade Support and Reinforcement
Once your students have learned the classroom behavior in one setting, you can start to fade your support and reinforcement! Not all at once, but slowly reduce the reinforcement and praise for the behavior. Remember to come back to it periodically, or else you may have to reteach!
The other thing you can do is to help them generalize the skill by practicing it in new settings. That’s how you move from a trained skill to an automatic one.
For example, if they can use self-regulation skills at their seats, prompt them to practice in the cafeteria where it’s busy and loud.
Practice across:
- Different times of day (morning, after lunch, end of day)
- Different settings (classroom, hallway, cafeteria, specials)
- With different people (homeroom teacher, para, specialist)
You can support this process by moving visual supports to new settings, prompting the strategy when it’s needed, and having other adults reinforce the skills.
Don’t Just Tell Students What to Do: Teach Them What to Do
If you don’t teach students explicitly what you want them to do in your classroom, they’re going to make up their own routines and use the behavior that’s easiest for them!
So, take the few minutes a day to teach them what you expect and save yourself the headache later!
Start when they’re calm. Build the steps. Practice in different places. Reinforce like it matters, because it does.
