Chapter 21: The Bulls Eye Game

Compare and contrast the Bulls Eye Game with any other method you have used, or have observed, for dealing with a challenging student.

Over the last 8 years of teaching, I have used a few different classroom behavior management plans for my students. I have used everything from sticker charts, colored cards, intense behavior plans, and classroom economics systems. WBT has shown to be the most effective in dealing with different kinds of intensive students. When it comes to getting the best out of a challenging student, you must have a large toolbox of strategies to motivate them.

In comparison to the Bulls Eye Game, I used a behavior intervention plan for my more intensive children. The behavior intervention plans used a format, which targeted student’s individual difficulties. Parents and children are asked to attend a meeting with me so we can go over the expectations of behaviors. Each week the student would choose the action they were working on and I would rate their behaviors in the AM and PM with a notated happy, medium, or sad face for their parents to see in their planner. The parents were asked to discuss this with the child each night and sign the planner. Each morning the child would discuss, with another adult in the building, how they planned to be successful and what that would look like. They would go over the notes from the teacher for the previous day and set new goals. This would go on all year. The student may be assigned a ‘job’ around the school, not in punishment, yet to help them feel like they were contributing to a larger part of the school.

The Bulls Eye Game is similar in many ways by targeting behaviors that the student needs to work. This helps the student build critical thinking about how and what behaviors help them attain that goal. Where the Bulls Eye Game differs is that the teacher and the student form a partnership where both practice the ‘right way’ and the ‘wrong way’ to act. The child may say a rule and the teacher will show both ways of acting. Then the student does the same. The student also has control of the behaviors they are going to practice. If they are struggling to meet the goals, they can change the plan to help them be successful. The involvement of the student in the classroom changes to an active, even positive, interaction. The student feels they are a part of a team.

The key to both interventions are to partner with the child and provide behavioral support so the student may be more productive in school and in life.