Student Contributor: M. Hoppis
This tool gives students a set of three questions that assesses their behavior and focuses on what they can change to improve their behavior. The questions include: “What specifically were you doing in class?”, “Are the choices you are making helping or hurting your success in this class?”, and “What could you agree to do differently today or tomorrow? Please be specific”. This allows the student to understand how their choices effect the students around them and gives them an opportunity to improve their behavior.
This tool should be used when a student is showing signs of misbehavior. It allows the teacher to guide the student in goal setting and action planning for the rest of the day or the next day. This activity focuses on the idea that the student is choosing to engage in the misbehavior and that he/she also holds the responsibility to change their behavior. It does not allow any room for excuses, which is often the students first reaction after being caught misbehaving. The student and teacher also sign their name on the question sheet making this tool become more of a contract for the student. In my own experience, I did not have a written contract like this form, but instead did have verbal contracts where the teacher would ask me similar questions. I found the verbal contract to be effective because it allowed me to analyze my behavior and examine how I would be able to change it. A written form of this contract appears that it would be more effective than the verbal form because you have something concrete to reference if the child is struggling with the same types of misbehavior.
This tool is considered as a corrective phase tool. This tool allows you to correct misbehavior when preventative and supportive strategies don’t go as well as planned. RAP’s allow the student to identify the misbehavior and also gives them a chance to correct their future behavior which is why it falls under the corrective phase. RAP’s fit best into student directed and collaborative theories of influence. It is not completely student directed since this correctional phase idea is not a natural consequence, but instead is more of a logical consequence. This tool allows the teacher and student to work together to identify the problem and reflect on how the student may change his or her behavior in the future.
More Information –
Tool Source: Vitto (2003) “Creating and Implementing effective Consequences.
