textbook response!

I have one student in my class who, let's say, needs the most guidance behaviorally. She is quite a character and loves negative attention (likes everyone's eyes on her when she's getting reprimanded).

I have tried many tactics with her. I have used various forms of positive reinforcement, such as "I like how Jose is sitting criss-cross with his eyes on me. That tells me he's listening." and waiting for her to respond... that usually doesn't work. The times that I can catch her doing something right, I do the same thing for her, "Wow look at how she is sitting with her feet on the floor and using her finger to read her book. I really see her thinking about her story." 5 minutes later, she has slumped down to the ground and has started tapping the floor with her book. For this in the beginning, I praised the people around her, hoping she would straighten up and correct her behavior so she could be praised too. But this very rarely worked. So I decided to try a different approach. Call her out and demand that she sit properly and read. She would sigh deeply and make an "ugh" sound and sit correctly and look at her book. Then 2 minutes later, she would be bothering the group next to her.

I thought about all the things that could be causing her to act like this. She's frustrated. She feels like she can't read. But this doesn't only happen during reading, this happens in writing, math, morning meeting, science, and social studies! Throughout the whole day! I guess she could feel like she's not smart and she doesn't want to even try. I conference with her regularly and I see that she is capable and she reads just fine. She's a little bit below grade level, but she's where a clump of the class is. She's able to write just fine. I feel that she's just lazy. She doesn't like to do work.

So the things I've tried: praise students around her, catch her doing something right and praising her, telling her directly very firmly to sit down (or whatever she should be doing), asking the class for the rules and generally asking if this behavior (whatever she's doing but not directly saying her name) is acceptable, calling her parents, taking away her recess, and taking away her gym. I also give her choices: "If you continue this behavior, you will lose recess. If you decide to do your work, you can keep your recess." I started a weekly behavior plan with her and I give her a sticker for every period she follows the rules. The first week, worked like a charm. The 2nd and 3rd weeks she has not met the sticker goal for the week. I would use the stickers as leverage. Sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I give her a big prize at the end of the week: playing with our class hamster during Choice Time. But she hasn't reached the sticker goal (which is half of the possible stickers she could get). I've also tried to connect with her on a personal level. I started a weekly lunch with a student just for her. She was my first student. We had a great time and we got to know each other on a personal level. That definitely helped. She laughs more with me now and is an actual kid with happiness. Before, she was always bothered. But she STILL has bad days that she's flinging herself on the rug, hitting the people next to her and being the last one to transition to the next activity.

Yesterday she had a bad morning from the beginning. She did not want to stop her Do Now activity to move on to Morning Meeting. She did not respond to my general calls to the class to come to the rug. Today I decided to leave her. I had the class continue the morning meeting without her. I didn't even look over at her at her desk. The rest of the students were beautiful and did what they were supposed to do.

My troublesome friend at the desk decided to start "hmph"ing and "ugh"ing as she started slumping down in her chair and slid to the floor. The kids started turning around with confused faces and pointing her out to me quietly. I quickly said to them in a low voice, "We don't pay attention to students who misbehave. We ignore them." The kids accepted that answer and turned and continued the morning meeting (calendar, alphabet, sight words, weather, etc). The troublesome student started sliding under all the tables. What in the.... ???? I wanted to go over there, get in her face, and tell her (more like YELL at her), "What you are doing right now is unacceptable. Sliding all over the floor is NOT how a first grader acts. You will stand up, walk to your rug spot and say the alphabet with the class. You will also lose recess today for sliding all over the floor and not listening to me the first time I told you to put away your Do Now." But the thing is, I've done this before and she does what I tell her to do when I get mean like that, but then she's back to misbehaving 10 minutes later. So this time, I continued to ignore her. She was misbehaving for a total of 10-15 minutes and after that, seeing she got no response from neither me nor the class, she quietly came to her rug spot, picked up her alphabet chart and started chanting the alphabet with the class.

I didn't say anything to praise her just yet. After the alphabet, we read the morning message and I have blanks for the students to fill in. My troublesome's students' reward for coming to the rug was me calling on her to write the word in the blank. It told her congratulations for making the right decision and coming to the rug. I will let you participate and write the word on the board because you made the right decision. I just never explicitly told her that.

It was like a textbook response. The ignoring worked so perfectly. She came to the rug quietly and immediately joined in with the class. It was awesome. All troublesome kids have their own way to be dealt with. It took me a while to find my student's but now that I have, I hope that it continues to work as beautifully as it did the first time.