It’s back to school season and back to school time means classroom setup. While we often think so much about the physical setup of the classroom – let’s get a little deeper. Yes, it is very important where those bookshelves are placed and exactly where desks are located but it’s just as important what is in those bookshelves and desks. Data systems are likely to be located in those bookshelves and it’s best to get those rolling as quickly as possible. View this task as part of your back to school process. Come mid-fall when things are crazy busy it will be even harder to get data systems going.
How to Set Up Your Data Systems:
- Write out your students IEP goals. Use a form such as this one from my Must-Have Forms and Templates.
- Create a curriculum map for each student or group of similar students. This will plan out when you will be working on each goal. This greatly relieves my stress on trying to “jam it all in” at one time. You can spend the time focusing on a few goals at a time. Check out some examples here: language arts curriculum maps and math curriculum maps.
- Decide where each goal is going to be worked on. This where we use those paraprofessionals and when that center based instructional setup comes into play! Select a goal or two to go to each of your paraprofessionals at their stations and select a goal or two for your direct instruction station. Choose the goals that are most complicated for your center and the ones that student has some experience on or are more simple to implement to go at your paraprofessionals’ stations.
- Write out the instructional guide for each goal. Exactly what do you want the adult to say, what should the student do, how are responses graded as correct and incorrect, what is the mastery criteria, and what are the sets of targets you are working on. Do this even for your station! If you want to save yourself some time and trouble – check out my Discrete Trial Goal Sheets and Data Forms. These resources have the complete programs written out along with corresponding data sheets and all editable!
- Train your aides on how to take data! Check out yesterday’s post on training paraprofessionals!
- Select the most important behavioral issues to take data on. That means the most disruptive or extreme behaviors. Don’t overwhelm yourself. You cannot take data on every behavior issue. Select a few goals only! Grab some data sheets from one of my two data sheet packs:
- Store behavior data in a central location in the classroom. Assign staff certain times and/or students to take data on. It’s a team effort!
- Most important step: start taking some data! See what works and what doesn’t. You’ll only take data if it’s easy so do some trial and error and figure out what easiest for you and your aides. Happy dataing!
Latest posts by Sasha Long, M.A., BCBA (see all)
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2 Responses
AMAZING, LIKE ALWAYS. I NEED LOT SOF HELP IN DATA TAKING. DO YOU HAVE VIDEOS IN HOW TO — USE YOUR DATA SHEETS? I HAVE A PACKAGE CALLED EDITABLE DATA.
Check out this section that has all of my posts about data here: https://theautismhelper.com/behavior/data/. There are tons of posts with a few videos included. But a lot of the posts have great thorough descriptions that will be helpful!