Utilizing Travel Cards to Increase Productive Student Behavior,Teacher Collaboration,and Parent-School Communication

Abstract

Students with mental retardation have increased access to the general education curriculum (McLeskey, Henry, & Hodges, 1998). Challenges exist that create barriers to successful and meaningful access. Students with mental retardation often exhibit unproductive behaviors such as problems of memory, attention, self-regulation, academic achievement, sociobehavioral, motivation, and generalization (Beirne-Smith, Ittenbach, & Patton, 1998; Hallahan & Kauffman, 2000). Identifying and altering unproductive behavior is further complicated when a student is assigned to multiple teachers and classrooms. This paper describes how the expanded concept of the Travel Card, a behavior management strategy described by Jones and Jones (1995), increased the productive behavior of students, facilitated teacher collaboration, and improved parent-school communication. The Travel Card, based on earning points for social, token, and activity reinforcers, enabled students with mental retardation to have meaningful and successful access to the general education curriculum. Students' Travel Cards became documents for teacher collaboration, and parent-school communication through portfolio assessment. A complete description of the strategy components is given along with an example of the Travel Card.