Checking In, Hopefully Not Checking Out

After blogging about a universal Tier I PBIS support our school has, our Tiger Ticket program, I wanted to share another initiative new this year in our building. Check-in, Check-out is an evidenced-based Tier II intervention program promoted by the gods at the OSEP Center on Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports. Tier II are secondary prevention measures designed for 10-15% of the school population, or those who do not respond to the universal measures enacted for the whole school at Tier I. Behavioral Tier II typically looks like small group interventions and mentoring in my district.

Check-in, Check-out (hereafter referred to as CICO, because I'm too lazy to type it out every time) is a simple, individualized mentoring program. A mentor is given a case load of approximately 10 students to meet with individually during the first 15 minutes of the school day. Students were chosen for CICO by examining data from last year. If a student had 10+ office discipline referrals during the 2010-2011 school year, or if they have a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP), they were put into CICO. From this data, we started the year with 55 students on CICO. Yeah... we've got some behavior problems.

Every day in the morning the mentor "checks in" in the classroom during breakfast and gives CICO students a daily report card. There are three goals they are working on in our building: be safe, be kind, and be responsible. The student then goes through their day and teachers rate their behavior on a 0-2 point scale in every subject area. During the 15 minutes before dismissal, the mentor returns to "check out" and see how the student did for the day. They record the number of points they earned on their daily report card, make sure they're ready to go home, and praise them for (hopefully) great behavior. Here are our daily report cards:

This is the card for our PreK-5th graders.

This is the card for our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.

Due to a staff shortage and my principal's preference, I took on a CICO caseload. I have seven 6th grade boys, all in self-contained classrooms, two of whom were part of my social skills/anger management group last year. I also have one 8th grade girl who is new to our school this year who has already proven to be an interestingly behaved young lady. I shall have my hands full.

I'm really looking forward to getting into the data. Every two weeks, CICO mentors will be turning in a data sheet with all the point totals from the daily report cards, which will be entered into an online behavioral database. From there, we'll be able to analyze the data at 6-week intervals to make decisions about what the students need. Are they meeting their goal of 80% of their points? Should we prepare to phase them off CICO? Are they holding steady just below their goal? Should we continue CICO or add more mentoring to the program (Check and Connect)? Are they not meeting their goal? Do we need to look into more individualized services at the Tier III level, like individual counseling or a BIP?

Check back in, hopefully I'll have some interesting info for you to check out! (oh word play, I am so witty)

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