Overview
A teacher of a special education classroom in an elementary school asks you to help her set up an effective timeout procedure to use with her class. She has students who often talk without permission, leave their seats without permission, inappropriately touch the other students (e.g., pinching, hitting, etc.), and engage in minor property destruction such as breaking or ripping materials or kicking desks. She would like to use a timeout procedure to reduce the frequency of these behaviors.
Review the section on Timeout from Positive Reinforcment on pages 352-360 in Cooper et al. (2020) and write out your recommendations for the teacher.
Be sure to include the following in your recommendations:
- How to set up the timeout situation
- Will it be exclusionary or non-exclusionary (and why do you recommend this)?
- Where will the student be and who/what else will be there?
- How will the student transition to the timeout situation?
- How long should she make the timeout last and why?
- How should she set up the “release criteria” from timeout and why?
- What should the teacher’s behavior be during the timeout procedure?
- What other aspects of the procedure or situation may increase or decrease its effectiveness?
- What should happen at the end of the timeout and after it is over?
- What kind of documentation or evaluation of the procedure should be performed?