Self-Regulatory Skills to Enhance Academic Success

Students with disabilities in Pre-Kindergarten exhibit disruptive behaviors during whole group lessons and potentially lose opportunities to learn academic content and social interactions due to a lack in self-regulatory skills. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of teaching self-regulatory skills on disruptive behavior and academic learning. Statement of the Problem All six students in my Pre-Kindergarten class for students with disabilities have developmental delays and social emotional behavioral issues. As a result, they are missing valuable speech therapy time, learning opportunities, becoming distracted by disruptive behaviors, and possibly learning maladaptive skills. They lack social, self-regulatory and communication skills and have difficulty attending during whole group instruction. The goal for improvement is to teach students self-regulatory skills to participate successfully in whole group story time. In order to help students during this difficult time, the teacher will teach self-regulatory skills three times a day, on every school day. Bailey’s (2011) five step selfregulation model will be the method used as it incorporates many of the evidence-based components found in recent research articles reviewed. Bailey (2011) described a five step selfregulation process which not only addresses teaching self-regulatory skills to students, but also teaches adults how to use the process themselves prior to teaching it to children. The five steps are: I am, I calm, I feel, I choose, I solve. The strategy utilizes mindfulness strategies for both adults and children to use in learning how to calm themselves. It uses context and practice to teach these skills and helps foster independence and internalization of skills. Self-regulation fosters strong relationships between children, their peers, and their teachers (Williford, Whittaker, Vitiello, & Downer, 2013). Disruptive behaviors will be analyzed using anecdotal records, time-sampled observations, interviews, and teacher research journal. Purpose and Research Question The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of teaching self-regulatory skills on disruptive behavior and academic learning using Bailey’s five-steps to self-regulation (2011). The following research question will be investigated: How effective is teaching self-regulatory skills to Pre-K ESE students in helping students to participate in story time as a whole group with total extinction or significant reduction of disruptive behaviors?