Behavior Basics Curriculum

WHAT IS BEHAVIOR BASICS?

Behavior basics is a systematic program designed for schools that focusing on social emotional learning (SEL). Behavior Basics was designed to help teach students the basics of behavior and to teach students the skills necessary to become a successful student in all settings. It is a comprehensive year-long curriculum that includes 60 different behavior lessons. Each behavior is it’s own week-long lesson and can be taught in any order to meet the needs of the students. The Behavior Basics Overview is provided for free below to share with administrators and parents.

Social emotional learning (SEL) is how people learn to understand and manage emotions and empathy, establish and maintain positive relationships and learn to make smart decisions.  Social emotional learning in the classroom can help teach students the techniques needed to do these things on their own across all settings.

WHAT IS THE CURRICULUM?

The curriculum is designed for teachers to provide direct instruction on one specific behavior at a time. The Behavior Basics Curriculum consists of 60 different lessons focusing on 60 different common behaviors.

In Each Lesson of the Curriculum You Will Receive:

WANT TO SEE MORE?

There are 60 behavior lessons included. To see a detailed preview of each behavior lesson, click each unit below:

HOW DOES THE CURRICULUM WORK?

All 60 behaviors follow the same weekly format to create a consistent routine within your classroom. It is designed with a consistent format for weekly consistency so that students with special needs can become more independent at the different tasks at hand. The program is not designed to go in lesson order. Each behavior has been assigned a lesson number for teacher organization and easy location of the materials for each lesson. This also allows for flexibility on the teachers behalf to teach any behavior in any order they choose depending on class and student need. 

Each lesson in the curriculum can be broken down into daily tasks over the course of one week. This helps students generalize and master each behavior lesson over the course of one week. Each lesson has a lesson plan with a weekly overview for the teacher or staff to implement at a work center.

*While a weekly guide is provided, the materials can be used in any way that fits your students needs in a shorter or longer period of time!

Family Resources

It is important to communicate with families when working on big skills such as behavior. This helps students to generalize the skills in all settings. At the beginning of the week/lesson, send home information about this weeks skill. Two formats are provided for this with the Behavior Basics Curriculum. A half sheet parent newsletter and a newsletter/homework worksheet are included. Some teachers may decide to send home a copy of the social story as well.

Weekly Poster

Each behavior lesson comes with a weekly poster to post in your classroom to easily reference throughout the week. Some teachers may choose to post the weekly poster, social story and focus board all in one place for the entire year.

Each weekly poster includes the title of the behavior lesson and one real photo. Consider enlarging in poster size and laminating if your district copy center has this option.

Monday: Social Stories

Monday focuses on introducing the behavior lesson of the week.  I love to teach skills through the use of social stories.  They help visual leaners and students with limited reading ability.  If you have the technology to support projecting in front of the room, simply open up the file and project it on your smart board.  This allows for whole group instruction and students can follow along with their level version in front of them.  Students can keep this in their desk all week to review as needed.

Four levels of social stories are included:

• Level 1: Simple book with one picture per page
• Level 2: One page social story with picture supports
• Level 3: One page social story paired with one real image photo
• Level 4: (2 versions) One page social story with higher level text & one page social story with higher level text with one real image photo

Tuesday: Discussions & Coloring Pages

Follow up yesterday’s social stories with some fun and hands on activities. Each behavior lesson has 10 yes/no discussion questions to help facilitate student discussions. A staff discussion page, student participation sticks and student response worksheets are all included.  Teachers are able to add to these questions how they see fit for their kids needs or to elaborate to require more than a yes/no answer.  

Also included for Tuesday are student response sticks.  Teach students to simply raise the yes/no stick to answer the question.  There are two levels to these sticks to make for easy differentiation within your classroom:

Follow up your discussion with a fun coloring page.  This is just another way for students to see the behavior.  Coloring pages are a great way to disguise the behavior of the week.  While coloring students can discuss what they are coloring and why it relates to the behavior of the week.

Wednesday: Interactive Notebook

Interactive notebooks are a great tool that can be used in all classrooms. They are hands on, interactive and help generalize the skill at hand.  The behavior basics program includes an interactive notebook that was designed with students with special needs in mind.  Each behavior basic lesson includes one page to create.  Each behavior basic interactive notebook page comes in two versions and is all black/white for easy printing. If your school allows, print on colored paper for fun!  

• Level 1: Non writers
• Level 2: Writers

Each behavior basics interactive notebook activity comes with clear, visual instructions for students. Each page comes with a picture step by step for students to follow along.  You can print these out and store in a binder from year to year or project them on the smart board for easy use.

All the materials you need to set up interacts notebooks in your classroom are also included:

• Cover options (black & white and color)
• Unit tabs
• Table of Contents

Thursday: Review

With every new skill taught in a classroom, it is important to include an assessment component.  Since these are such SIMPLE behaviors broken into a week I wanted a simple way of assessing the new skill.  

There are 4 levels of assessments included with each behavior basic lesson:

• Level 1: Errorless non-writing
• Level 2: Matching
• Level 3: Q&A (2 levels: multiple choice or answer the question)
• Level 4: Journal reflection page

Friday: Focus Board & Weekly Recap

Each behavior basics lesson ends in a way for students to share the new skill they have learned with others.  Students so often are able to read and recite facts from a story, but struggle with applying it to the “real world.”  Simply set up a focus board in the beginning of the year like this:

Each week, have students complete the focus board slips. This helps build a loving and happy community within your classroom while building successful students. There are two levels of focus board slips for easy differentiation within your classroom.Each focus board slip comes in two versions:

• Level 1: Non- writers
• Level 2: Writers

Each behavior basics lesson also comes with a certificate of mastery for students to receive!

As you can see, there are MANY components to each behavior.  Every week follows the same format so once you get the hang of it as a teacher it will become second nature.  Teaching the basics of behaviors to students is such an important aspect of teaching.  We can’t assume our students know how to behave unless we teach them.  

Here are all of the behaviors included in the curriculum:

WANT TO SEE MORE?

There are 60 behavior lessons included. To see a detailed preview of each lesson, click each unit below:

Other Behavior Basics Programs: