Wilde Lake's Activity Day is a HUGE Success!

Today, Wilde Lake Middle School hosted our second quarter activity day. Students had the opportunity to attend a dance, play computer games, watch a movie, compete in a variety of board games and/or read quietly if they consistently demonstrated the Wilde Lake Way of being Responsible, Respectful, Ready and Safe during the second quarter of this school year. I am thrilled to announce that 95% of our entire student body qualified to take part in this special event. We tracked student behavior by monitoring office referrals and suspensions. This is the highest percentage of students attending an activity day in the past several years.

Way to go Wilde Lakers!!!

PBIS Continues to Pay-Off!

A dance? Basketball? Computer games? Movie watching? What is going on here? A few weeks ago, we held our first quarter social where 99% of our student body was eligible to participate in a assortment of activities based on their consistent demonstration of positive behavior and exhibiting the ELMS Expectations of being safe, respectful, responsible and prepared during the first quarter of this year.

For the 3rd year in a row, ELMS has been using Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) to create a school climate that provides clear behavioral expectations and consequences for students, which are enforced consistently by all staff. When students meet the expectations established, our staff reinforces their positive behavior by providing a variety of rewards and incentives to celebrate their success.

In addition to earning the “right” to attend quarterly socials, students have the opportunity to receive STAR cards for demonstrating the ELMS Expectations in class, in the hallways and even on the bus. STAR cards can be redeemed for all types of “cool” middle school prizes including food during each social.

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For those students who fail to meet our behavioral expectations on a consistent basis and receive office referrals, they have time taken away from quarterly socials. For each office referral a student receives during the quarter, there is a half-hour taken away from their participation in the two-hour social. At ELMS, this is a huge consequence. Students who receive office referrals are encouraged to earn back their lost time by doing “community service” for the school.

Our data tells us our approach is working! This past quarter, we had a 10% reduction in office referrals when compared to the same time period last year. And since we began the use of PBIS, ELMS has realized a 60% reduction in office referrals. In addition, our suspensions have been reduced by nearly 85%

Our positive, yet firm approach with students has proven to be very successful. In fact, our school was recognized as a Maryland State PBIS Exemplar School in 2008.

What types of rewards and incentives does your school use to reinforce positive behaviors?

ELMS Achieves PBIS Exemplar Status

This summer, the ELMS PBIS committee received an Exemplar Award on behalf of our students, staff and parents for doing an outstanding job implementing a schoolwide, systems approach to teaching and rewarding positive student behaviors with documented results.

What is PBIS?

As stated on the Maryland PBIS website (http://www.pbismaryland.org/), PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) is a process for creating safer and more effective schools. PBIS is a systems approach to enhancing the capacity of schools to educate all children by developing research-based, school wide, and classroom discipline systems. The process focuses on improving a school’s ability to teach and support positive behavior for all students.

At ELMS, our team is made up of a large cross-section of the staff in our building. Members of the team include the Assistant Principal, the Alternative Education Coordinator (who also serves as the PBIS Coach in the building), the School Psychologist, the Math Instructional Support Teacher, and a representative from each grade level team as well as a representative from the related arts team. We are a strong team because of our vision and dedication to the implementation of the PBIS ideologies in our building.

ELMS uses the following schoolwide expectations for student behavior:

Prepared
Responsible
Respectful
Safe

Our staff’s goal is to have at least six positive interactions with each student for every negative interaction. One way we try to achieve this goal is by using STAR cards.

When students display the ELMS expected behaviors, they can earn STAR Cards from any staff member including teachers, bus drivers, secretaries, para-professionals, substitute teachers and administrators. Star Cards can be used to earn incentives in each classroom, to purchase items at our school store and during our quarterly socials. In addition, a copy of each completed STAR card is placed in a bin for a chance to win prizes during our monthly drawings.

Since 2001, we have reduced office referrals from nearly 1000 to 257 in 2007/2008.

What have you found works at your school?