What is the Rubber-Band Intervention?
The rubber-band intervention is used to help students recognize the amount of times they act disruptively in class. Many times students do not realize how often they are doing a specific behavior. To use this intervention a teacher places rubber-bands on his or her wrist and after every time the student does a unfavorable behavior, a rubber-band is removed from the starting hand and move to the other hand. This shows the specific student how frequent they are doing a behavior. This is also a discrete way to manage a particular students behavior, because other students in the classroom do not even need to know an intervention is taking place. Another part of completing this intervention is using a self-monitoring chart like the one shown below. With the the chart, the student, teacher, parents and other professionals can see the progress the student is making during the intervention.
These steps are adapted from Intervention Central. Here are the steps to use the Intervention:
Step 1: Put up to 6 rubber-bands around one wrist at the start of each half-hour, class, or hour. Each time that you must remind or prompt the student about his or her behavior, transfer a rubber-band from one wrist to the other.
Step 2: At the end of each per-determined time count up the number of rubber-bands remaining on the original wrist. If at least one rubber-band remains, your student earns a '+' rating for that time. If no rubber-bands remains, the student receives a "-" for that time.
Step 3: At the end of each time, approach the student to review his or her behavioral performance and (if earned) to have the student add a '+' to a simple monitoring chart.
Step 4: When the student has earned a sufficient number of '+' points, allow the student to redeem those points for a reward.
Step 5: As your student's classroom behaviors improve, gradually reduce the number of rubber-bands that you place on your wrist at the start of each monitoring period-until you have only 1-2. At that point, you can consider discontinuing this strategy or using it only intermittently.
These steps are adapted from Intervention Central. Here are the steps to use the Intervention:
Step 1: Put up to 6 rubber-bands around one wrist at the start of each half-hour, class, or hour. Each time that you must remind or prompt the student about his or her behavior, transfer a rubber-band from one wrist to the other.
Step 2: At the end of each per-determined time count up the number of rubber-bands remaining on the original wrist. If at least one rubber-band remains, your student earns a '+' rating for that time. If no rubber-bands remains, the student receives a "-" for that time.
Step 3: At the end of each time, approach the student to review his or her behavioral performance and (if earned) to have the student add a '+' to a simple monitoring chart.
Step 4: When the student has earned a sufficient number of '+' points, allow the student to redeem those points for a reward.
Step 5: As your student's classroom behaviors improve, gradually reduce the number of rubber-bands that you place on your wrist at the start of each monitoring period-until you have only 1-2. At that point, you can consider discontinuing this strategy or using it only intermittently.
Visual Representations
The image to the left represents a teacher using the rubber-band intervention. The teacher uses the same color of rubber bands for this student. As the student makes a poor choice, one rubber-band is removed from the starting hand and placed on the other hand. If a teacher wanted to try this with two students, he or she could use two different colors of rubber-bands.
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Student Profile
In my kindergarten classroom, I have a student who is often very disruptive, but he is unaware of how disruptive he is to other students in the class. He needs frequent reminders to stay on task and needs to be reminded of classroom expectations. The rubber-band intervention would help him understand the frequency of of his disruptions. At the end of each per-determined time, a quick check in with this student to see how many times rubber-bands had to be switched to the other hand will hopefully make him more aware of how many times he is disruptive. Once he knows the frequency of his behavior, he might be more likely to stop the behavior.
Content Area Examples
This intervention can be used in all content areas. However, if the student moves in between classrooms and teachers throughout the day, using this intervention might be difficult because the rubber-bands remain on one teacher's arm. To adapt this intervention, other teachers could just use tallies on a paper and give it to the student at the end of class time.