Hi Andrea,
I hope you don't mind but I wanted to ask you personally how you use WBT with your defiant and angry students in your classroom. We start school on Monday and I want to be as prepared as possible for these kinds of situations. I appreciate any insight you could give me or anyone else out there! Thanks!!

If you use wbt most of your challenging students should be covered...I think an example would help....what type of child and what kind of situation

Hi there!
This depends on the child of course! But I will tell you this: I start out the year using the scoreboard as a whole class motivator. This will usually get a majority of the class on "your side". Then, once the rules and routines are down--I target specific students and their behaviors by using the card practice system. That will get almost all of your students "in the system". After that, you can go to several strategies to help, depending on your problem. IF the defiance is coming from a small group of students who have "teamed together" in a defiant manner (not going along with the system), use the independents group. If you are having attitude and rudeness from one or two students (talking back, rolling eyes, etc--when you are asking the students to do something) use the "guff counter". If it is a student that you are having major issues with--go to the "Bullseye game"--which will help the student to learn to self-monitor their own behavior. If it is a student that you and the student are having a power struggle over a specific issue--use the "Agreement bridge" to build a relationship with that student.
In kinder, thankfully, I can usually nip the defiance. I usually don't have to do an independents group and I have never had to use the "guff counter". However, I have used the "bullseye game" with a really difficult child and the blessing was that it gave him great success.

In third grade, I did have more defiant students and I used all the "challenging students" strategies at all different times throughout the year. (with the exception of the agreement bridge--which wasn't around back then, but I would have loved to have had because it is awesome and I can think of students it would have worked well with!!!)


The biggest thing is this: work it like a funnel. Get most of the students going, and then "funnel it down" to work on the students who are not working with you. Most will bend under the pressure of the students who have bought in. For the others that it seems that nothing works---that is when you pull the other strategies mentioned out of your back pocket!

Keep us updated on your year. These suggestions are generic because you have yet to start your year so it is hard to be specific to your problem students. Once you get your year started and you get the "weirdos" (sorry I am sure that is not politically correct) who don't seem to work in the system and have the oddball behaviors--we can chat and come up with ideas!

Good luck:)

Thanks so much for your words of wisdom! I appreciate it! I had a great first day using WBT with all three groups of my third graders! Hopefully it will continue!! I definitely will keep you posted and appreciate soooo much you responding to my post! Thanks a million! Stephanie

Stephanie-
I am so glad to hear it has gone so well! Keep it up and do keep us posted!
Ten-finger woo to you!!!