Reference no: EM133319045

Case Study: It's the beginning of the school year in late September. You are a special education teacher in a large urban school. A new student, Jeff, a 9th grader, has been assigned to you - that is, you hold his special education file. You request the file from his previous school. The electronic file is made available to you. You note that he has a Learning Disability. In a week or so, another sp. ed. teacher asks if you have the file and says that he is having some trouble in Algebra I. In late September, Mr. Redemption, one of the assistant principals says Jeff has been caught behind the building cutting class. He sees from the computer record this isn't the first time he's cut, that he has been cutting Algebra I many times and English I some. There are other sporadic absences. Mr. Redemption wants to suspend Jeff or at least give him some time in ISS. You think it's time to check for a behavior plan in his IEP. There is none, but you decide to create one. You'll start with a FBA, but before you convene an IEP meeting, you need to gather some information.

Question 1: What seems to be the target behavior at this point?

Who else do you want to talk to? What do you want to know?

Mr. Redemption is going to send Jeff to ISS for 3 days, but wants to have the behavior plan in place by then.

You decide to talk to the Algebra I teacher, Mr. Cherry. He says the beginning of the year has been a bit rough, since there are more 9th graders than the district staffed for. It was after Labor Day at the end of the first 20 days before an adequate number of Algebra I teachers were at the school. So he did the best he could and got started on Day One. His second period class had 55 students and the room only had 50 desks and he only had 40 textbooks. He "borrowed" 5 more desks from the library and conducted most of his lessons on the board and overhead till class sizes were reduced. Jeff is a 9th grader in his 2nd Period. He started out in August making an effort to do some of the work, but he got off task easily. With 55 students, it can be difficult to get all of them on task. Mr. Cherry had given him several warnings. He asked the special education teacher who is assigned to co-teach with him that period if Jeff was received special education services. She said maybe, but she didn't think she held his file and would check with the sp. ed. chairperson. It was another couple of weeks before a list of sp.ed. students was made available to all teachers, since students were still registering and many had moved in from other areas of the city. Mr. Cherry found out from his co-teacher that Jeff was in fact in special education. During the first 20 days of school Jeff was absent several days, but it was a relief given the number of students in class. After new teachers were brought in, the class size was reduced to 27. Jeff is still having difficulty. Sometimes he sits and gets nothing done; sometimes he tries. By now, Jeff is absent as much as 3 classes out of 5. Mr. Cherry has turned his name in on the chronically absent list.

Question 2: What is the hypothesis for Jeff?

You call Jeff's mom to ask her about Jeff's cutting class. She says she knows about it because the Assistant Principal and his math teacher have already talked to her. She says he was really excited about coming to Burr High School, but now he says he doesn't like that school and wants to go somewhere else. He says math is boring, and he doesn't want to be in that man's class. She says that Jeff has always had trouble with math, but he thought it would be different in high school.

You as the special education teacher talk to Ms. Rauscher his English teacher. She says that yes, Jeff is having some trouble and has been absent some, but she thinks he can get by if he keeps coming to class. She has had students working in groups some and that seems to make it easier for him to keep up.

Question 3: Identify the antecedents, environment or anything else you might think is contributing to Jeff's problems.
Question 4: When asked about the hypothesis, identify the hypothesized function of the target behavior.
Question 5: For the target behavior give an operational definition.