Teaching Students w/ASD 3.1: Positive Behaviour Supports and RTI

What is Response to Intervention?

Although the Vancouver School Board does have a systematic method for RTI, I learned that it looks different in practice at each school. At my school, the classroom teacher is responsible for working with the family to try to meet the needs of the student in class through differentiation and changing and implementing strategies and may consult with the resource teacher for strategies to use to help meet the child’s needs. Some of the strategies include:

• Adapt curriculum (difficulty, amount)

• Adapt materials (literacy, numeracy) 

• Adapt teaching strategies (groups, pairing) 

• Provide extra time

• Provide preferential seating

• Adjust classroom layout/environment

• Use of movement breaks

• Use visuals to support program/outlines

• Use positive reinforcement

• Implement Positive Behaviour Supports (PBIS)

                                                          (VSB, n.d.)

If these implementations are not enough, the teacher collects information from the family, observations, and student’s work and submits a PRIS form to bring the child to the school-based team (SBT) with the approval of the parent. Once in Tier 2, the SBT meets with the teacher and a case manager is assigned. The SBT works with the teacher to collect information more rigorously used to collaboratively come up with new strategies to implement. If after about a month these strategies have not yielded results, the student is brought up again, more data is collected, and new strategies are implemented. If a month later no strategies have not been helpful, the administrator, teacher, and SBT can ask for help from the District Learning Services staff and move on to Tier 3. In Tier 3  the district learning services staff work with teachers to come up with strategies and help teachers implement them. The SBT also enlist the help of specialists to help assess the student such to collect more information that will be used to build a case for a possible ministry designation. The whole process could take months to a year.

How do Positive Behaviour Supports (PBIS) come in to play?

Positive behaviour supports go hand-in-hand with Response to Intervention and may be implemented by the classroom teacher and sometimes with the support of the resource teacher depending on the case. Positive behaviour supports are strategies that encourage positive behaviour over the behaviour a student is presenting. 

PBISWorld has many PBIS for just about every behaviour imaginable and divides them up into different tiers to align with RTI. These supports can be useful for students with and without exceptionalities since behaviour isn't a phenomenon that occurs with only children with exceptionalities.

References:

Vancouver School Board. (2018). Levels of Intervention [PDF]. Vancouver School board.

Vancouver school Board (n.d.). Pre-referral intervention form. Vancouver School Board.