Interventions and Instructional Support
This domain tests your ability to select, implement, and adjust academic and behavioral interventions with integrity and data.
Core rules
- Intensity rises through time, group size, focus, and program type; changing one variable is a documented intervention change.
- Explicit instruction: model (I do), guided practice (we do), independent practice (you do), with many opportunities to respond, immediate corrective feedback, and cumulative review.
- Academic packages: repeated reading, peer-assisted learning strategies, cover-copy-compare, mnemonics, graphic organizers, self-regulated strategy development for writing, and concrete–representational–abstract sequencing plus schema-based instruction for math.
- Behavior supports: behavior-specific praise at roughly four positives per correction, token economies, contracts, group contingencies (dependent, independent, interdependent), Check-In/Check-Out, self-monitoring, and antecedent adjustments.
- Consequence tactics tied to function: DRA, DRI, DRO, extinction, response cost. Negative reinforcement increases behavior by removing an aversive event; it is not punishment.
- Fidelity and social validity must be checked before concluding a student is a nonresponder; data-based individualization adapts the existing intervention rather than repeatedly swapping programs.
Worked example
A student shouts out during independent work, and ABC data show the behavior reliably follows a difficult item (escape). A token for silence targets the wrong function. Better: pre-teach the item type, shorten the task, provide a help card, and reinforce requesting a break - then monitor call-outs per 30 minutes.
Traps
- Labeling time-out or response cost as negative reinforcement.
- Abandoning an intervention before fidelity data exist.
- Choosing a strategy by popularity rather than hypothesized function.