Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a framework built on the idea that teaching the behaviors we want to see at school is just as important as referring problem behaviors. In fact, for each correction they give, teachers try to notice five positive behaviors happening in their classroom. Beyond these acknowledgements, they remind students about expectations before they go into a situation that might have been problematic in the past. That’s a lot of moments to remember. How do you keep track of it all?
The Technical Assistance Center on PBIS, in partnership with PBISApps, is excited to announce Be+: A free, mobile application to remind and track all of the positive reinforcement and pre-corrections you give throughout the day. It’s is available to Android users right now in the Google Play store and the Apple App store.
Here’s how Be+ works.
When you’re focused on delivering your lesson plan, or working closely with small groups, it’s hard to remember to look for certain behaviors in your classroom. Be+ gives you a way to set up those reminders inside your mobile device. Each reminder you create operates on a timer and takes advantage of the notification system built into your device. The reminders you set are entirely up to you.
For example, set a reminder to go off about every 6 minutes to look for students who are on-task. Every six minutes, your device vibrates or otherwise notifies you to look for that behavior.
There are times of the day or certain class periods when you know you’re likely to see some problem behaviors. One way to avoid incidents is to remind students about expectations. These are called pre-corrections, and Be+ lets you schedule times that remind you to deliver them. Set up one-time alarms to go off today or create a recurring alarm to go off at the same time on the days you choose.
Some good times to set up with a pre-correction alarm would be when students line up for lunch, or the time right after a recess or break, or even just before PE.
Maybe you want to track the number of positive acknowledgements you give during the day, Be+ can do that, too. Once you know what you’d like to count, start the timer and get counting! At the end of the day, you’ll know exactly how many times you acknowledged students or gave them an opportunity to respond. What else might you want to count?
Be+ comes with graphs built across three timeframes:
The relationships you build with students make a big difference in the way your whole school feels. An important way to create a positive impact is to acknowledge when you see students doing the right thing. We created Be+ to give you an easy, accessible way to remind, count, and track all the times you offer positive acknowledgements to your students every day. The possibilities are endless with this app. We can’t wait to see how you take advantage of it in your school.
