Fundamental Skill Sheet

Virtual Instruction: Precorrection

What Is It?
Precorrection involves determining when challenging behaviors tend to occur and then making changes
to the classroom environment or providing supports for students both to prevent those behaviors from
happening and to facilitate appropriate behavior.

What Do We Know About This Skill/Practice?

Many years of research and practical application have proven the effectiveness of precorrection. More
specifically, research indicates:

• Precorrection is an approach that teachers can use both to increase positive behavior and
decrease problem behavior.
• Precorrection has been shown to be effective for general and special education students of all
ages, pre-K through 12th grade.
• Teachers can use precorrection to prevent common challenging behaviors that occur both in the
classroom (e.g., during group work, during transitions) and outside the classroom (e.g., in the
hallway, on the playground).
Procedures
Following are five easy-to-implement steps for using this practice in a virtual learning environment.

1. Identify the context and potential problems: To prevent

a problem behavior, you must first anticipate the nature Example Context Adjustments
of that behavior and identify the context in which it is Changing classroom structure:
likely to occur (e.g., activity, setting, time). • Adjust schedules or routines
2. Establish behavioral expectations: As part of creating • Include expectations on your
a safe and respectful virtual classroom environment, virtual background
you should establish and explicitly teach behavioral • Post a virtual timer
expectations—that is, the behaviors you want your Using strategies:
students to display.
• Active supervision
3. Adjust the context: To facilitate student success, make • High-p requests
changes to the context that supports appropriate • Choice-making
behavior, based on your students’ needs. See the box
to the right for a few examples.
4. Provide practice opportunities: Practice makes perfect (maybe not immediately, but it’s a step in
the right direction). To set students up for success, you should review the expected behaviors. This
may take the form of discussion, question and answer, or role playing.
5. Offer immediate and specific reinforcement: When students engage in an expected behavior, be
sure to provide a positive reinforcer to increase the likelihood that they will continue to do so.

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Virtual Instruction: Precorrection

Tips for Implementation

In addition to the five steps listed above, the following three steps can help facilitate the success of this
practice.*
6. Develop a prompting plan: Beyond teaching, practicing, and reinforcing appropriate
behaviors, you will need to regularly remind some students of the expected behavior.
Reminders can be in the form of gestures (e.g., finger on lips to signal quiet time), verbal
prompts (e.g., verbal reminder), environmental prompts (e.g., expectations poster), and
manual prompts (e.g., visiting breakout rooms).
7. Develop a monitoring plan: Although precorrection has been shown to be effective, you
need to determine whether your precorrection procedures are effective in preventing
or decreasing problem behaviors and increasing expected behaviors. This can be
accomplished by, for example, collecting data on the occurrence of inappropriate
behavior or how often students earn reinforcement.
8. Gather feedback: Students can be a valuable source of information. Consider asking
them what types of supports they need to be successful or what types of reinforcement are
motivating.
* The Comprehensive, Integrated Three-Tiered Model of Prevention (Ci3T) combines these three
actions with the steps listed above. Learn more about their eight-step process.

Things To Keep in Mind

• Precorrection can be offered to an individual student, to a group of students, or to an entire class.
• Behavior expectations can be defined as broad goals for behavior (e.g.,”Be responsible”).
Because behavior expectations are often abstract for young students, the teacher should create
rules to help clarify their meaning as they are applied within specific activities and contexts (e.g.,
“Log in on time.”)
• When possible, expectations and rules should align with school-wide expectations to maintain
consistency across environments.
• In some cases, a discussion of appropriate behavior is all that is necessary for the practice
opportunity. However, for certain behaviors or students, modeling and role-playing may be
necessary.
• Reinforcement can range from a thumbs-up to an end-of-quarter celebration (if enough points are
earned by a given period). It doesn’t have to be complex or expensive as long as the students find
it rewarding. In fact, many students respond positively to behavior-specific praise, which is quick
and simple to administer.
Example of behavior-specific praise: “Lars, thank you for putting your phone on the charger.” /
“Simone and Gentry, thank you for muting yourselves during instruction.”
In addition to reinforcing the appropriate behavior of the identified students, behavior-specific
praise can serve as a reminder to other students who overhear the praise and encourage them to

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Virtual Instruction: Precorrection
adhere to the behavior expectations. To learn more about how to use behavior-specific praise, view
the IRIS Fundamental Skill Sheets below:
◦ Behavior-Specific Praise
◦ Virtual Instruction: Behavior-Specific Praise
When developing a monitoring plan, it is beneficial to create a hierarchy of prompts, starting with
the least direct and intrusive to the most (e.g., a class reminder, class-wide corrective feedback,
corrective feedback to only those students engaged in the inappropriate behavior). Hopefully, a
class reminder is all that is needed. If not, a plan is in place to address the behaviors.

Implementation Examples
The table below illustrates how the teacher provided precorrection when students were not meeting the
established behavioral expectations as defined by the rules developed for virtual instruction.

Context and Problem Behavioral Adjustment to Practice Reinforcement

Behavior Expectation/Rule Context
Context: Virtual Place phones Phone rule is The teacher leads The teacher
instruction away from posted on the a discussion provides
Problem Behavior: learning teacher’s virtual about potential behavior-specific
The students use their area during background. problems if praise to those
phones during class time. instruction. students are students who are
using their adhering to the
phones during expectation.
instruction.
Context: Virtual math Students will Teacher uses a The teacher leads “Wow, look how
instruction respond to word cloud tool a discussion many different
Problem Behavior: teacher prompts. or online poll that about how responses we
Students are not actively displays student important it is have in our word
participating—they responses. for everyone to cloud! Thank you
do not respond when participate. for responding.”
the teacher asks for
input (e.g., thumbs-up,
response in chat box).

Context: Virtual Students The teacher Immediately If the small group

instruction, breakout will work on employs active preceding a is working on
rooms assignments supervision, breakout session, the assignment,
Problem Behavior: during breakout randomly the teacher the teacher gives
Students are laughing sessions. hopping into chooses a student them a virtual
and talking about each breakout to describe thumbs-up.
topics other than the room. the expected
assignment. behavior.

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Virtual Instruction: Precorrection

High School Video Example

In the video below, Ms. Shawnes wishes to use precorrection to prevent Noah from using his phone
during instruction. Note the procedures Ms. Shawnes uses to deliver precorrection in the example and
where her delivery falls short in the non-example.

Foundational Research & References

Austin, K. S., Lane, K. S., Pérez-Clark, P., Allen, G. E., Oakes, W. P., Lane, K. L., & Menzies, H. M.
(2020, August). Precorrection: A step-by-step guide for virtual learning. Ci3T Strategic Leadership
Team. Retrieved from www.ci3t.org
Colvin, G, Sugai, G., & Patching, B. (1993). Precorrection: An instructional approach for managing
predictable problem behaviors. Intervention in School and Clinic, 28(3), 143–150.
Ennis, R. P., Royer, D. J., Lane, K. L., & Griffith, C. E. (2017). A systematic review of precorrection in
PK-12 settings. Education and Treatment of Children, 40(4), 465–496.
Ennis, R. P., Schwab, J. R., & Jolivette, K. (2012). Using precorrection as a secondary-tier
intervention for reducing problem behaviors in instructional and noninstructional settings. Beyond
Behavior, 22(1), 40–47.
Ennis, R. P., Lane, K. L., Menzies, H. M., & Owens, P. P. (2018). Precorrection: An effective,
efficient, low-intensity strategy to support student success. Beyond Behavior, 27(3), 146–152.
Lane, K. L., Menzies, H. M., Ennis, R. P., & Oakes, W. P. (2015). Supporting behavior for school
success: A step-by-step guide to key strategies. New York: Guilford.
About the Author
This resource was developed in collaboration with the Comprehensive, Integrated Three-Tiered Model
of Prevention (Ci3T) Strategic Leadership Team. More information on precorrection can be found on the
Ci3T Website: https://www.ci3t.org/covid

The contents of this resource were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, #H325E170001.
However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should
not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project Officer, Sarah Allen.

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