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Setting Up Your Classroom to Prevent Challenging Behaviors

by Tara McLaughlin and Crystal Bishop
January/February 2015
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Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/setting-up-your-classroom-to-prevent-challenging-behaviors/5022142/

Children engage in behaviors adults find challenging for a variety of reasons. Challenging behaviors might include ­hitting, kicking, crying, shouting, or running away. In young children, these behaviors are not always a cause for serious concern and might be considered age-appropriate. As ­children mature and gain social-emotional competence, challenging behaviors often decrease.
As an early childhood teacher, there are many things you can do to prevent challenging behaviors and teach children skills to promote their social-emotional development. Current models to promote social-emotional competence and prevent challenging behavior emphasize core teaching strategies that focus on prevention, promotion, and, in the case of the persistent challenging behavior, intensive ­intervention (Brown, Odom, & Conroy, 2001; Fox, Dunlap, Hemmeter, Joseph, & Strain, 2003; Hemmeter, Fox, & Snyder, 2013; Webster-Stratton, 1999, 2011).

In this brief article we discuss some key strategies to ­promote children’s active engagement and to prevent ­challenging behavior. These strategies include:

• setting up the classroom for success.
• planning dynamic activities.
• showing children how to play.

Let’s meet Miss Garcia

Miss Garcia has two part-time assistants and a group of 18 high-energy four-year-olds in her classroom. She feels like she is dealing with small problems and conflicts between children all day. Before activities begin she tries to ...

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