 During the past year, Anne Fitzgerald's school staff focused on three universal design for learning strategies to address challenging behaviors in the classroom. Working on these three strategies gave the staff a collective understanding of how to respond to unwanted behaviors. Planed Ignoring is a skill that children can learn that allows them to remain on task in response to any disruption in or outside of the classroom. When students are able to focus their attention away from disruption, it allows the classroom teacher the opportunity to respond to the situation with his or her full attention and allows the students to continue learning. In the event the disruption involves another student in the classroom or school, it also allows for the child who is encountering the difficulty to have his or her dignity preserved by having time and space to work through the problem. Positive reinforcement is anything that follows a behavior and increases the chances the behavior will happen again in the future. The key to successfully implementing systems that increase desired behaviors include choosing a specific behavior that will be rewarded, teaching the students exactly what the desired behavior looks like through modeling, practicing the desired behavior, immediately providing positive reinforcement after the behavior occurs. The student needs to be motivated by the reward. My goal is to use rewards for a short period of time so that behavior that they're acting in in order to get a reward will soon come automatic so you don't need the reward after a while. Appropriate consequences means matching a consequence to a behavior that is appropriate for a given student. These consequences will be different depending on the needs of the student. For example, an appropriate consequence for a student who is engaging in disruptive behavior to access attention is to use planned ignoring. It is important before giving a consequence to give a clear instruction and a warning about what the consequence will be to the student so that they have the opportunity to correct their behavior. I think some children, and I see this all the time, they just need an outlet. A lot of times they do want to do the work but they either don't know how and are too shy or have anxiety and just don't ask. So part of my job is kind of looking at them as an individual and this is what our EBS really stresses is does the consequence, is it logical for this particular child? It is important to realize that the negative consequences can be emotionally damaging to a child so they should be applied carefully and appropriately. When working with students who exhibit challenging behavior, it is essential to teach students the skills necessary to self-regulate and appropriately manage themselves.