Intervention Plans

Have you ever hastily thrown together an intervention for a student without thinking through the whole process of what it would look like?  How did that intervention work out for you?  I've done this a few times, and had a few different outcomes.  I'll admit it actually worked a few times, but I ran into some problems other times.  One time I was using a time and energy intensive intervention, and it was really working.  The problem was, I didn't really have a plan for when it would stop.  I ended up keeping up with the intervention for the rest of the year, when it probably would have been more beneficial for me and the student to phase it out.  Another time I began a behavior chart, explaining to the student how he would earn his incentives of breaks and iPad time, but never really thought out how, where, or with whom he would take the breaks, resulting in me scrambling to figure out how to give him the rewards once he had already earned them.
It is tempting to want to get started on interventions that you know are desperately needed as soon as you think of them.  However, it is important to really think them through, and create a written Behavioral Intervention Plan.  What does that look like?  Howard Knoff recommends that you include these things in your written plan: specific goals, a description of the interventions, including their methods, timelines and the resources needed to implement them, evaluation strategies, and criteria indicating a successful resolution.  Take the extra time to get these things written down in the beginning, and it will save you a lot of time and stress down the road!

Knoff, H. M. (2011) Integrating the school prevention, review, and intervention team (SPRINT) and response-to-instruction/intervention (RtI²) process: A model implementation guidebook for schools and districts. Little Rock, AR: Project ACHIEVE Incorporated.