Are you looking for strategies to help students to respond appropriately to redirection? If so, keep reading.

1. Praise those students in the classroom who respond properly to redirection in academic and social situations.

2. Make sure that communications with the learner regarding redirection are appropriate to the learner’s capacity and ability to respond (e.g., match the form in which redirection is delivered to the learner’s most likely successful response, such as “Would you please go to your seat” rather than “You need to go to your seat immediately.”).

3. Create classroom rules: • Complete every assignment. • Complete assignments quietly. • Remain in your seat. • Finish tasks. • Meet task expectations. Examine rules often. Praise students for following the rules.

4. Let logical consequences happen when the learner fails to respond properly to redirection in academic and social situations (e.g., make highly reinforcing learning activities contingent upon responding properly to redirection in academic and social situations).

5. Do not criticize when correcting the learner; be honest yet compassionate. Never cause the learner to feel bad about themselves.

6. Support the learner in responding properly to redirection in academic situations (e.g., help the learner correct one or two things to get them started).

7. Provide instructions concisely.

8. Focus expectations for learner response to redirection in academic situations on capacity and ability level (e.g., one learner may be expected to return to their seat immediately upon redirection while another learner may be given three minutes to respond appropriately).

9. Make sure that a learning experience does not overstimulate and result in the learner’s failure to respond properly to redirection in academic situations.

10. Be firm, fair, and consistent with expectations when redirecting the learner in academic situations (e.g., require the learner to immediately correct errors after work has been reviewed, require the learner to return to their seat within three minutes, etc.).

11. Select a peer to model responding properly to redirection in academic and social situations for the learner.

12. Provide redirection to the learner as privately as possible.

13. Praise the learner for responding properly to redirection within a given duration of time based on the number of times the learner can be successful. As the learner shows success, slowly increase the number of times required for reinforcement.

14. Ascertain the reason for errors made by the learner.

15. Create subsequent tasks based on errors the learner makes rather than requiring an instant correction of work done incorrectly.

16. Assess the appropriateness of the taskto ascertain if (a) the task is too easy, (b) the task is too complicated, and (c) the duration of time scheduled to finish the task is sufficient.

17. Do not let redirection become an appropriate part of every academic situation in which the learner participates.

18. Assess the requirements made on the learner in academic situations to make sure that all expectations are within the learner’s capacity and ability level.

19. Make sure that attention is not inadvertently given to the learner for failing to respond properly to redirection in academic and social situations (i.e., remove attention from the learner if the attention is reinforcing their unacceptable behavior).

20. Refrain from those circumstances where the learner shows difficulty in responding properly to redirection in academic situations (e.g., highly competitive situations, situations in which the learner is embarrassed by their errors, etc.).

21. Consider using a classroom management app. Click here to view a list of apps that we recommend.

22. Consider using an adaptive behavior management app. Click here to view a list of apps that we recommend.

23. Consider using Alexa to help the student learn to behave appropriately. Click here to read an article that we wrote on the subject.

24. Click here to learn about six bonus strategies for challenging problem behaviors and mastering classroom management.