Description:
Targeted relationship building provides intentional opportunities for students to develop meaningful, supportive connections with trusted adults at school. These practices are designed for students who may need more frequent or individualized connection than universal Tier 1 relationship-building practices provide. Supports may include daily check-ins, mentoring, positive feedback, student voice and choice, and strengths-based communication with families.
Importance:
Positive relationships with caring adults can be particularly important for students who have not responded adequately to universal supports. Targeted relationship-building provides additional opportunities for students to experience connection, encouragement, and success with a trusted adult. These supports can strengthen engagement, belonging, and willingness to seek help while providing adults with opportunities to notice and respond to emerging concerns.
Critical Features:
- Intentional adult connection: A specific adult is identified to provide consistent support.
- Predictable interactions: Check-ins, mentoring, or other contacts occur regularly.
- Strength-based approach: Interactions emphasize student strengths, interests, progress, and successes.
- Student voice and choice: Students have opportunities to identify preferred adults, activities, and ways of connecting.
- Positive feedback: Adults intentionally notice and acknowledge appropriate behavior and effort.
- Data-informed monitoring: Teams monitor participation, relationship goals, and relevant student outcomes.
- Coordination with other supports: Relationship-building complements—not replaces—other Tier 2 interventions.
Implementation Tips:
- Identify students who may benefit from additional adult connection using multiple data sources.
- Match students with adults who have the capacity to develop authentic relationships.
- Establish a predictable schedule for check-ins or mentoring.
- Ask students about their interests, strengths, and preferred ways of connecting.
- Focus interactions on connection rather than using every check-in to discuss problems.
- Build positive contact into naturally occurring parts of the school day.
- Monitor whether the intervention is improving engagement, attendance, behavior, or other identified outcomes.
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Description:
Explicit social-emotional and behavioral skills instruction provides targeted teaching and practice for students who need additional support developing skills necessary for successful participation in school. Instruction is matched to identified student needs and includes modeling, guided practice, rehearsal, feedback, and opportunities to apply skills across settings.
Importance:
Some students require more explicit instruction, practice, feedback, and reinforcement than can be provided through universal instruction alone. Teaching specific replacement behaviors and social-emotional skills helps students understand what to do instead of simply being told what not to do.
Critical Features:
- Clearly identified target skill or behavior
- Explicit explanation and instruction
- Modeling and examples/non-examples
- Guided practice and rehearsal
- Immediate, specific feedback
- Repeated opportunities for practice
- Reinforcement of successful skill use
- Opportunities to generalize skills across people and settings
- Progress monitoring to evaluate response
Implementation Tips:
- Identify the specific skill or behavior the student needs to develop.
- Break complex skills into teachable steps.
- Explain and model the skill.
- Provide examples and non-examples.
- Use role-play, behavioral rehearsal, and guided practice.
- Provide immediate feedback and opportunities to try again.
- Practice skills in authentic school situations.
- Reinforce successful use of the skill.
- Coordinate instruction with other adults supporting the student.
- Use data to determine whether to continue, intensify, or fade the intervention.
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Description:
Increased opportunities to respond (OTR) provide students with more frequent opportunities to actively participate, practice skills, demonstrate understanding, and receive feedback. At Tier 2, opportunities to respond may be intentionally increased or intensified for students who demonstrate low engagement, difficulty maintaining attention, or a need for additional guided practice.
Importance:
Students learn more effectively when they are actively engaged rather than passively waiting for opportunities to participate. Increasing opportunities to respond can improve engagement, provide teachers with more information about student understanding, and create additional opportunities for corrective and positive feedback.
Critical Features:
- Frequent opportunities for active participation
- Multiple ways for students to respond
- Accessible entry points that support student success
- Adequate wait time
- Immediate feedback
- Active teacher monitoring
- Increased intensity or frequency based on student need
- Data-based monitoring of student engagement
Implementation Tips:
- Identify lessons or routines where the student demonstrates low engagement.
- Increase response opportunities through whiteboards, response cards, gestures, polls, partner responses, discussion, or technology.
- Provide think time before requiring a response.
- Allow students to rehearse responses with a partner before sharing publicly.
- Use prompts and scaffolds to increase successful participation.
- Provide immediate feedback following responses.
- Monitor the student's rate of participation and engagement.
- Gradually reduce additional prompts as the student becomes more independent.
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Description:
Self-regulation and self-monitoring supports provide students with targeted strategies for recognizing and managing emotions, attention, behavior, and responses to challenging situations. Students are explicitly taught to monitor specific behaviors or skills and use strategies that increase their independence and successful participation in school.
Importance:
Some students need additional support developing the ability to recognize their own behavior, regulate emotions, maintain attention, and make adjustments when challenges occur. Explicitly teaching self-regulation and self-monitoring skills can increase independence and reduce reliance on adult prompts.
Critical Features:
- Clearly defined target behavior or skill
- Student-friendly criteria for success
- Simple self-monitoring tool or strategy
- Explicit instruction and modeling
- Opportunities for guided practice
- Adult feedback and reinforcement
- Regular opportunities for student reflection
- Gradual fading of adult prompts and supports
Implementation Tips:
- Identify one or two observable behaviors for the student to monitor.
- Teach the student what the behavior looks and sounds like.
- Develop a simple checklist, rating scale, goal sheet, or other monitoring tool.
- Practice using the tool with adult support.
- Pair self-monitoring with feedback and reinforcement.
- Build opportunities to use the strategy during authentic routines.
- Encourage students to reflect on their own progress.
- Gradually fade adult prompts as independence increases.
- Monitor data to determine whether the strategy is improving student outcomes.
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Description:
Increased feedback and reinforcement provide students with more frequent, specific, and timely information about their behavior and performance. At Tier 2, feedback and reinforcement are intentionally intensified or individualized to help students experience success and increase the likelihood that desired academic, social, and behavioral skills will be repeated.
Importance:
Some students require more frequent and immediate feedback than is typically provided through universal classroom practices. Specific feedback helps students understand exactly what they are doing successfully, while reinforcement increases the likelihood that desired behaviors and skills will occur again.
Critical Features:
- Specific rather than general feedback
- Immediate or timely feedback
- Increased frequency based on student need
- Positive-to-corrective feedback balance
- Reinforcement connected to clearly defined behaviors or skills
- Reinforcers matched to student interests and preferences
- Consistent implementation across adults and settings
- Data-based adjustment and fading
Implementation Tips:
- Identify the specific academic, social, or behavioral skills to increase.
- Establish a baseline when appropriate.
- Increase the frequency of behavior-specific praise.
- Clearly describe what the student did well.
- Use a variety of reinforcement options.
- Include student preferences when selecting reinforcers.
- Pair activity or tangible reinforcement with positive adult attention and feedback.
- Monitor student response and adjust the intensity of reinforcement.
- Gradually fade additional reinforcement as the student demonstrates sustained success.
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Description:
Executive functioning supports provide targeted scaffolds and instruction to help students manage skills such as planning, organizing, initiating tasks, sustaining attention, remembering information, monitoring progress, and completing multistep activities. Supports are matched to specific student needs and are designed to gradually increase independence.
Importance:
Students may understand what they are expected to do but struggle with the executive functioning skills needed to organize, initiate, monitor, or complete tasks. Targeted supports can make these demands more explicit, reduce frustration and avoidance, and help students develop greater independence.
Critical Features:
- Identification of a specific executive functioning need
- External supports and organizational tools
- Explicit instruction in strategies
- Task analysis and breaking complex tasks into steps
- Modeling and guided practice
- Visual or organizational supports
- Opportunities to practice across settings
- Gradual release toward student independence
Implementation Tips:
- Identify the specific executive functioning skill affecting performance.
- Break complex assignments or routines into manageable steps.
- Use checklists, visual organizers, schedules, or task cards.
- Provide prompts for task initiation and completion.
- Help students prioritize and sequence tasks.
- Teach students to use self-checking strategies.
- Use timers, visual cues, or other organizational supports when appropriate.
- Teach students to select strategies that match the task.
- Coordinate supports across adults and settings.
- Gradually fade external supports as students develop independence.
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Description:
Cognitive flexibility supports help students develop the ability to adjust their thinking, behavior, attention, or strategies when expectations, routines, or circumstances change. Targeted instruction provides students with structured opportunities to practice responding to changes, considering alternatives, and using flexible problem-solving strategies.
Importance:
Some students experience difficulty adjusting when plans change, accepting alternatives, shifting between activities, or considering another way to approach a problem. Targeted instruction and practice can help students build flexibility and respond more successfully to unexpected or changing situations.
Critical Features:
- Clearly identified flexibility skill or need
- Explicit teaching of flexible thinking strategies
- Modeling and think-alouds
- Predictable opportunities to practice
- Gradual exposure to changes in routines or expectations
- Multiple possible solutions or responses
- Reinforcement of flexible behavior
- Opportunities to generalize skills across settings
Implementation Tips:
- Identify the situations in which the student has difficulty being flexible.
- Teach strategies such as “Plan A/Plan B” or “What else could we try?”
- Begin with small, predictable changes.
- Model calm and flexible responses to changes.
- Help students identify multiple solutions to common problems.
- Use role-play and behavioral rehearsal.
- Provide advance notice of some changes while also creating structured opportunities to practice responding to unexpected changes.
- Reinforce attempts to use flexible thinking, not just perfect responses.
- Practice skills across adults, settings, and situations.
- Coordinate strategies with the student's broader support plan.
Websites for Additional Information: