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Learning to revise one's writing is a critical part of learning how to write. However, critical feedback and demands to make revisions can make writing aversive for some students, particularly students with poor writing skills. Allowing students to escape further writing tasks contingent on making revisions to written drafts (differential negative reinforcement of appropriate behavior, DNRA) may increase revisions in students' writing samples. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of adding DNRA to an instructional package on the writing revisions of six high school students. The results indicate that adding DNRA to the instructional package increased attempted revisions, correct revisions, and unique revisions relative to a baseline condition that included only the instructional package. The results are discussed in terms of how reinforcement contingencies appear to interact with antecedent instructional strategies to affect students' progress in revising their written compositions.

Within a Response to Intervention (RtI) framework, Tier 1 instruction requires the selection of research-based core curricula. However, many educators and administrators are not aware of high-quality core writing curricula. The authors assembled a rubric to assist schools in evaluating core writing curricula for Grades 3-5. Rubric components included: alignment with the Common Core State Standards for Written Language and the Institute of Educational Sciences' current recommendations for teaching elementary school writing; an evaluation of the curricula's scope and sequence, feedback procedures, and assessment procedures; an examination of available teacher resources; and research evidence. Four standalone writing programs were reviewed using the rubric. Curricular materials were examined for their adherence to each criterion and were rated as "strong," "adequate," or "weak." This review indicated that many writing program have the potential for use in Tier 1. However, these programs have not been evaluated empirically. Directions for future research with elementary school-level writing curricula are discussed.

Behavior-analytic academic intervention research has gained popularity among school psychologists because it offers a unique combination of robust principles of behavior and a degree of clarity and precision about functional relationships that is unparalleled in other learning paradigms. This article reviews the literature for a type of antecedent manipulation that is well established in the field of applied behavior analysis, but which has been sorely neglected in the area of academic interventions: motivating operations (MOs). The existing literature suggests two strategies in particular that can be easily combined with existing interventions-choice and indiscriminable contingencies. These strategies can increase the relative strength of reinforcing consequences for correct responses to academic tasks. This article reviews the empirical support for the variety of ways in which each strategy can be implemented and ties their effects to the functional properties of MOs. To date, attempts to bring together in a single publication the most effective strategies falling under the conceptual umbrella of MOs and articulate their implications for academic interventions are lacking. The current article explains the potential role of MOs (and the associated intervention strategies) in academic interventions and provides guidance for their use as components that can be added to academic interventions. The application of MO manipulations is illustrated in a comparison of the effects of indiscriminable contingencies with high-preference consequences on the rate of math computation fluency for two elementary school children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a Response to Intervention (RtI) framework, Tier 1 instruction requires the selection of research-based core curricula. However, many educators and administrators are not aware of high-quality core writing curricula. The authors assembled a rubric to assist schools in evaluating core writing curricula for Grades 3- 5. Rubric components included: alignment with the Common Core State Standards for Written Language and the Institute of Educational Sciences' current recommendations for teaching elementary school writing; an evaluation of the curricula's scope and sequence, feedback procedures, and assessment procedures; an examination of available teacher resources; and research evidence. Four standalone writing programs were reviewed using the rubric. Curricular materials were examined for their adherence to each criterion and were rated as strong, adequate, or weak. This review indicated that many writing program have the potential for use in Tier 1. However, these programs have not been evaluated empirically. Directions for future research with elementary school-level writing curricula are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]