Behaviour Support

Students with special educational needs often require behaviour support. Behaviour, both negative and positive, usually serves a meaningful purpose for the student and is often a way for students to communicate. Challenging behaviours may be self-injurious, physically or verbally aggressive, destructive towards property or may be socially unacceptable in other ways.

Reasons for behaviour may include;

• to obtain or avoid a tangible item
• to obtain or avoid attention
• to obtain or avoid sensory stimulation

In order to understand why a behaviour is occurring, observational assessments often help teachers and parents to understand the cause, in order to work together to form a behaviour management plan to decrease challenging behaviours and increase desirable behaviours. Behaviour assessment tools include observations, ABC checklist and scatterplot assessment tools.

Once a behaviour is assessed, a behaviour support plan should be put into place to ensure consistency in all settings when dealing with a student's behaviour and to ensure the safety of all involved. Behaviour support plans may include a positive rewards chart, strategies to de-escalate student behaviour, a social story to prepare students for unfamiliar situations, or to encourage them to express their need and wants in socially acceptable ways.