Tough Kid Electronic Home Notes: School-Home Collaboration for Improving Behavior

One of the most effective school-to-home collaboration strategies has been the home note. The Tough Kid Electronic Home Notes uses the Google platform to help teachers and behavioral interventionists design custom home notes. Instead of a student carrying home a paper note, the individualized electronic home note is emailed directly home using Gmail—with nothing to get “misplaced” or altered before arriving home.

The Tough Kid Electronic Home Notes includes a system for automatic data compilation as well as a highly motivating and customizable reinforcement component.

The Tough Kid Electronic Home Notes contains step-by-step directions for how to:

• Select and objectively define target behaviors.
• Design a motivational system tailored to the individual student.
• Set up the Electronic Home Note using Google Drive, Forms, and Sheets.
• Introduce the home note to families and students.
• Implement the program in a practical and user-friendly way.
• Monitor progress and assist students in tracking their own progress.
• Create electronic graphs to summarize and visualize student progress.

RESEARCH SNAPSHOT

Electronic Home Notes has been shown to effectively improve a student’s on-task behavior in the classroom with a bonus reduction of problematic behaviors (Knorr, 2015; Lopach, 2016).