Special Education Strategy Notebook
Self Monitoring
A. What is self monitoring? Self monitoring is a strategy that is often used in classrooms with children who have trouble staying on task and focusing. It is a method that involves a student taking responsibility of themselves academically and behaviorally and recording when they find themselves not on task. In essence, a sheet of paper is given to a child and a noise is made at certain intervals during the class day. This noise could be something that only the specific child hears (such as in an ear piece) or it could be something that is heard by the entire class. Either way, the student who is participating in self monitoring simply puts a tally mark in a column for “on task” or “off task” on their sheet of paper every time the noise sounds off and at the end of the day both student and teacher can see how many times the student found him or herself off task. This helps put into perspective for the student how much he or she pays attention in a regular day and typically causes them to try harder to remain on task even more the following day. It is important that a teacher lets the student know exactly what is meant by “on task” and “off task” so that the student understands 100% what is expected of him or her, and it is also important that the sound itself not be distracting from the lesson. Eventually, a student can be weaned off the external cues of the sound, and will begin self monitoring without it, which is ideal.
B. How do we know that self monitoring works?
Put simply, we know that self monitoring works because it has been studied over and over by numerous researchers and has been proven effective at least the majority of those times. These studies confirm that this strategy helps manage students who are off task in the classroom due to various disruptive, learning related and social behaviors. Children of many ages were tested, ranging from ages as young as 4 to kids who are in high school, and the findings were consistent. In
A. What is self monitoring? Self monitoring is a strategy that is often used in classrooms with children who have trouble staying on task and focusing. It is a method that involves a student taking responsibility of themselves academically and behaviorally and recording when they find themselves not on task. In essence, a sheet of paper is given to a child and a noise is made at certain intervals during the class day. This noise could be something that only the specific child hears (such as in an ear piece) or it could be something that is heard by the entire class. Either way, the student who is participating in self monitoring simply puts a tally mark in a column for “on task” or “off task” on their sheet of paper every time the noise sounds off and at the end of the day both student and teacher can see how many times the student found him or herself off task. This helps put into perspective for the student how much he or she pays attention in a regular day and typically causes them to try harder to remain on task even more the following day. It is important that a teacher lets the student know exactly what is meant by “on task” and “off task” so that the student understands 100% what is expected of him or her, and it is also important that the sound itself not be distracting from the lesson. Eventually, a student can be weaned off the external cues of the sound, and will begin self monitoring without it, which is ideal.
B. How do we know that self monitoring works?
Put simply, we know that self monitoring works because it has been studied over and over by numerous researchers and has been proven effective at least the majority of those times. These studies confirm that this strategy helps manage students who are off task in the classroom due to various disruptive, learning related and social behaviors. Children of many ages were tested, ranging from ages as young as 4 to kids who are in high school, and the findings were consistent. In
Bibliography: Harding-Stricker, T. (2008). Graphic organizers to support active reading strategy instruction. Retrieved from http://www.bigthought.org/Portals/BT/2011TM_SummerCurriculum/1st/ excellent-book-of-graphic-organizers.pdf Hall, T., & Strangman, N. (2002). Graphic organizers. Wakefield, MA: National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum. Retrieved March 2, 2012. From http:// aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/graphic_organizers