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Behavior Contracts

12/3/2014

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I am the keeper of the behavior contracts at my school. Each morning my office fills with 7-15 friends who need some support with behavior. They come each day to give me their contract from the day before and get their new contract for the day. I love this because it allows me to check in with them, see how their day is starting, and build a personal connection. Over the years I have amassed quite a variety of different types of charts and contracts. 

How it works:
  • A teacher contacts me requesting a behavior contract for a student. Sometimes this is something they are requesting on their own but it may also come from our Student Support Team process or the administrators.
  • I ask the teacher which areas of behavior they would like to focus on. For younger students, I suggest two behaviors and for older students no more than four. Sometimes there is a long discussion about choosing attainable, observable behaviors. 
  • I also ask the teacher to give me the order of their day to include. For some students, they need the day broken into many parts and for others they might need only a few different times to focus on.
  • I meet with the student to go over the contract and to spell out the behavior expectations. For instance, if the teacher has chosen "be kind to others," we might list what being kind would look like.
  • In the first week, we are mostly focusing on getting used to keeping up with the contract and building buy-in for the process. With this in mind, I start at expecting about 50% of the points or checks on the contract and increase over time. Eventually, I would expect 80% of checks to earn a reward.
  • Students choose their reward from a rewards menu that I have posted. They can choose an "everyday" reward or a "save up reward." If the student chooses a save up reward, they have to earn their contract 4 days (non consecutively) to earn the reward. To keep up with everybody, I use little post-its with tallies. 
  • Students and teachers are responsible for remembering to come to me in the morning. I keep daily attendance on an attendance sheet. If I notice a student hasn't come in a few days, I will check with the teacher to see if they have been absent or are just forgetting and will make a plan if needed.
  • When a student consistently earns their contract every day, I check with the teacher to see if they need to continue. If they don't, we have a "graduation" and I give the student a certificate and show them off to the office staff. They love to say they have graduated and feel so proud of themselves.
  • At the end of a semester or before Student Support Team meetings, I create a progress monitoring graph using an excel file that shows the percentage of points or checks earned each day. Excel also creates a trendline in the graph that captures how the student is progressing overall. This is really helpful information for deciding if a contract is effective. Sometimes when we're in the trenches dealing with a difficult behavior, it's hard to see the improvement that is happening over time.


To help you get started on your behavior contract journey, I have created a Behavior Chart Bundle over on my Teachers Pay Teachers store! The bundle includes 15 different types of behavior charts and an excel file to use for progress monitoring. For all my lovely blog readers, you can have a copy of my rewards chart right here for FREE! 

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Behavior Chart for a 4th Grade Student
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Progress Monitoring Graph for a 3rd grader. Notice that the trendline is going up even though the points earned are variable.
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    Rebecca Atkins

    Welcome to my blog where I talk about all things school counselor and encourage others to Counselor Up!

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