Increasing Academic Engagement through Focused Antecedent Modification

This article reviews the functional behavior assessment steps followed to develop interventions designed to decrease challenging behavior in the classroom. The implementation of antecedent based interventions generated from data gathered through interviews and observations addressed off-task, call outs and other challenging classroom behaviors. The interventions helped the student learn appropriate replacement behavior that resulted in a decrease in challenging behavior. A discussion and description of the step by step process of developing and implementing an effective antecedent based intervention to address disruptive behavior triggered by the demand of academic tasks is presented.