This document provides tips for teachers on helping students with emotional/behavioral disorders. It suggests creating an inviting learning environment and focusing on academic success to boost motivation. Teachers should avoid power struggles and punishments, and instead defuse conflicts, ignore minor behaviors, and restructure lessons when needed. The document also recommends student groupings, time management, and formative assessment to keep students engaged. Structured work and self-monitoring can help students concentrate, organize ideas, and retain information from lessons.

1. Emotional/Behavioural
Disorders in Schools
Tips for Teachers

2. Learning is impaired, because of...
Withdrawn behaviour
Antisocial behaviour
Poor social skills
Poor interpersonal
relationships
Poor impulse control High absence rate
Impaired executive Lack of motivation/lack of
control success
Poor motivation Anxiety

3. What teachers can do...
Create an inviting
learning environment

4. _____________Pitfalls
Avoid
...sole emphasis on
behaviour management at the cost
of academic instruction
...asserting your authority
Avoid ...mass punishment
...preaching ...teaching above or below
...angry remarks students’ ability level
...negativity ...lacking instructional
...sarcastic remarks lesson goals
...overreacting

5. Instead, when an issue arises...
Keep your emotions in check (sometimes, both the student and the teacher need
some ‘time out’ before dealing with an issue)
Avoid confrontations and defuse conflict
Ignore attention-seeking behaviours (but never aggressive ones)
Boost a student’s interest (or change activity or rate of delivery) when you
notice signs of restlessness (before off-task behavior occurs)
Ease tension through humor
Help with a difficult task before a student begins to act out
Restructure your lesson plan (if an activity is not successful, change it quickly)
Consider seating arrangements

6. Other things teachers can do...
Since academic success contributes to a healthy
self-esteem...
...focusing on academic success contributes
to academic motivation and greater
availability to learning

7. Other things teachers can do...
Student groupings
Time management
Signals and other non-verbal cues
Program for and support academic success
Engage students beyond rote learning tasks
Assess across a unit both formatively and
summatively, emphasizing formative assessment

8. Grouping for Instruction
…involves the use of small group instruction,
one-on-one support, cooperative group
activities, individualized instruction, and peer
tutoring
• Grouping adaptations reduce occurrences of behavioral
problems (Penno, Frank, & Wacker, 2000)

9. Peer Tutoring and Cooperative Learning
Provide learning-focused opportunities for appropriate
social interaction

10. Peer Tutoring and Cooperative Learning
Teach self-management, promote student engagement, provide immediate
feedback, provide opportunities to correct mistakes

11. Students with mental, emotional, and behavioural
disorders are not fully available to learning
Program adaptations help students:
Concentrate
Organize information
Identify and select relevant information
Remember information
What is the overall/big idea that the student
needs to take from the lesson?

12. Program adaptations for learners with
behavioural and emotional difficulties
Secondary students’ common set of learner characteristics
that negatively affect their academic success are
motivational issues, anxiety, and lack of impulse control.
This translates into poor persistence and concentration
as well as difficulty to engage in independent work.
Learning outcomes depend on the extent to which
instruction is functional and recognized by students as
relevant (Bos & Vaughn, 1994)
Higher levels of engagement mean lower levels of
inappropriate behaviour
Inappropriate student behavior decreases when students
are presented with a sequence of shortened assignments
versus one long assignment

13. Structured worksheets/graphic organizers, self-
monitoring devices, advance organizers.
• Graphic organizer/structured worksheets help
students remember and recall information
(e.g., steps to a strategy).
• Self-monitoring to help students monitor their
problem solving behavior
• Advance organizers help students
identify, organize, understand, and retain information

14. References
• Allsopp, D. H. (1997). Using classwide peer tutoring to teach beginning algebra
problem-solving skills in heterogeneous classrooms. Remedial and Special
Education, 18, 367-379
• Bos, C. S., & Vaughn, S. (1994). Strategies for teaching students with learning and
behavioral problems (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
• Daigle, B. (n.d.). Students with emotional/behavioural disorders. Retrieved from:
http://www.slideshare.net/brentdaigle/students-with-emotional-behavior-
disorders-presentation
• Dweck, C.S., & Elliott, E.S. (1983). Achievement motivation. In P. Mussen and E.M.
Hetherington (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology. New York: Wiley.
• Lenz, B. K., Bulgren, J. A., & Hudson, P. (1990). Content enhancement: A model for
promoting the acquisition of content by individuals with learning disabilities. In T.
E. Scruggs & B. L. Y. Wong (Eds.), Intervention research in learning disabilities (pp.
122-165). NY: Springer-Verlag.)
• Penno, D. A., Frank, A. R., & Wacker, D. P. (2000). Instructional accommodations for
adolescent students with severe emotional or behavioral disorders. Behavior
Disorders, 25, 325-343.
• N.a. (n.d.). http://www.teachervision.fen.com/