1. Description of Pupil: The student that I chose to do this project on is an 8th grader at Richards Middle School in Lawrenceville, GA.

His name is Maynor and he just turned 15 years old on April 3, 2010. Maynor is from El Salvador and even though he is not in an ESOL class, I think he struggles with the reading comprehension and understanding English when it comes to Language Arts. His chronological age is 15 years 0 months and 21 days. Maynor is on an IEP for a Specific Learning Disability in Reading. Some of the accommodations that he receives are teacher approximation, having tests read to him, and tests such as the CRCT being read to him. 2. Operational definition of Target Behavior: The class that I observed Maynor in was CGI, which focuses on reading aspect of CRCT and Language Arts class, which for his IEP, is his weakness. He has a specific learning disability in. For Maynor, the problem that I was seeing the classroom was him being off task and delay of starting his work or task that he was being asked to do. The A-B-C data for the behavior is: A-During transitions, no directions or guidance B- talks C- doesnt know what to do for next assignment because he missed the directions A-Maynor doesnt hear the directions B- he looks around and turns and talks to a classmate C- he falls behind in the work that is assigned A-Maynor falls behind in the work and misses the assignment B- continues to talk to classmate even while teacher is talking C- teacher says something to the two A-Teachers says something to the two B- sits there and looks around and does not know what to do C- Maynor misses out on the assignment or cannot complete the assignment The operation definition of the target behavior is: When Maynor has a new task or work assigned to him, he is off task by talking to his neighbors, and delays from two to six minutes to start work. To collect the data, I used latency and I timed how long it took him to start working from the time directions were given to when he started working. 3. Rationale for Change: The rational for change for this project was that if the intervention helped, it could improve the amount of work that Maynor completed. Also, if Maynor completed more work, or asked for me help his grades might improve and he might be able to comprehend the information better. Thirdly, he would become more independent with his work, which with him moving on to high school, is very important. Even though, his IEP will still be with him, he has a dream to go to college or join the Air Force and with these two dreams, independence is a huge accomplishment. Lastly, he would not be disturbing his classmate and him and his classmate would not be missing out on completing assignments.

4. Summary of Data Collection: The type of data collection that was used for this was latency. Latency was the time it takes for someone to start a behavior or action after verbal directions were given. For the behavior, Maynor was missing verbal directions because he was talking and then he would miss subsequent directions, and so latency was a good way to record the information. 5. Determines Alternative Behavior: The new behavior target for Maynor was: When Maynor is given directions, if he doesnt understand the directions or work, he will ask me to repeat directions or for help and being working within 2 minutes every time directions are given daily. 6. Positive Behavior Support Plan: Before talking about the positive behavior support plan, the function of the behavior is that Maynor misses directions, therefore he does not know what to do and he turns and talks to his friend. I think some of this could be that he is trying to escape from doing the work since he struggles with reading. By focusing on this behavior, this will hopefully improve Maynors grade and how he succeeds in class. From the ABC data, it shows that him missing directions gives him and escape from doing the work. The way I approached this with a positive behavior support plan was by telling Maynor that every time directions were given and was told to start working, he would start working within two minutes. If he didnt understand what he was supposed to be doing, he would ask and start working within the two minutes, he would receive a point. Once he got to ten points, it meant that I would buy him pen or pencil from the Dollar Tree. With the positive behavior support plan, I would I have the sheet out with my stuff so no other student would see it and would let him know at the end of everyday how many points he had. After he received 10 points, I told him that we would still keep track, but there would not be a reward. 7. Implementation Results: Here is the data from the observation. The baseline was March 24th thru April 10th (one week was due to Spring Break.) The implementation was April 11th thru April 19th and the post implementation was April 20th thru April 22nd. All data is recorded in minutes. 3/24: To start target- 5 Copy character- 3 Start reading- 2 3/28: Absent 3/29: CGI- book and WS- 8 Start target- 6 Take notes- 2 Reading-3 3/30: CGI notes- 2 Target- 7 Group- 3 3/31: Target-3 Notes-2 Group-5 4/1: Took a quiz 4/10: CGI- 3 Start work- 5

4/11: CGI- 1 target- 2 4/12: CGI- 3 target-1 4/13: CGI- 1 target- 4 4/14: CGI- 3 target- 5 4/15: CGI notes- 2 CGI WS- 2 Target-2 start writing- 5 4/18: CGI- 2 target-2 discussion- 4 4/19: CGI- 1 target- 2 discussion-4 4/20: CGI- 1 target-2 discussion-4 4/21: CGI-2 target- 2 discussion-2 4/22: CGI-1 lesson- 2 The implementation results show that the positive behavior support plan worked and if there was more time, I think the results could show more. Even though the improvement was not drastic since this is the first time trying something with him, there is a trend line that slowly goes down and it shows that his behavior improved some even after implementation. 8. Graph Attached in EXCEL file

9. Reaction After watching Maynor through this process, there were some things that I realized, that I did not see beforehand. Also, looking at the data showed me that there was some improvement, but I think it needed a little longer and it probably could have gone farther. First, some of the items I noticed throughout the process was that when there were directions given within other directions, Maynor did not catch them and therefore missed out on what he was supposed to do. Secondly, since this is Language Arts, he struggled with reading some of the material, especially grammar, and the teacher sets them on a time limit and if it takes a little longer to complete the work, she threatens to not give them a grade. Which Maynor is on an IEP and he needs help with understanding material, and so when he is on the time limit, he fails to complete some of the assignment. Part of it is not hearing directions, but the other part is that he doesnt understand the the material. When looking at the data, I realized that there was a slight improvement in his work behavior. The graph has a trend line, and the trend line is moving slightly down. Also, the data might show that some of the assignments, had a high amount of time, but they were all five minutes and under. Unlike before, this could take 5-10 minutes for him to start an assignment after direction.

For future decisions, I think that Maynor needs to keep having the one-on-one help of teacher, which he gets being in a collaborative classroom. Also, Maynor needs the assistance in the Language Arts classroom. I think some of the strategies we learned about reading and helping students read, would really benefit him. Also, Maynor benefited from having a time limit on getting to start to work after hearing directions, and he had started to remember to start his work within a certain time limit. The last decision that I would make would be that he have more direction during transitions. Some of the highest time limits were during his transitions. If he had more direction during transitions, he would probably be more focused. **Lastly, one more important thing that I have seen come from this is that they had to do an ELA test in preparation for the CRCT and the general education teacher broke it up into 6-7 questions over 8 days, since it was 50 questions. Maynor started struggling at first when we did this and in the end, his test grade ended up being a 77, which is higher than some of the other test grades he has had in Language arts. And this information was found out on Thursday, 4/22/11**