Helpers and Behavior: Free QR Helper Cards

Christine Reeve

Christine Reeve, PhD, BCBA-D, has spent more than 30 years in and around special education classrooms — as a teacher, a consultant, and a behavior analyst. She directed autism and ABA graduate programs at Nova Southeastern University for 14 years and has written books on classroom setup, data collection, and independent work systems. She founded Autism Classroom Resources and the Special Educator Academy.

Recently I’ve had several cases in which students engage in challenging behaviors to gain attention and would benefit from the opportunity to be a helper in the classroom. For some, scheduling times for them to be a helper, or giving them helper roles on the fly, can be helpful in keeping them engaged and out of trouble while getting them positive attention for positive behavior. This of course helps to reinforce those positive behaviors. For some of the students it is difficult to find motivators for appropriate behaviors. Their teachers indicate that nothing is reinforcing for them and sometimes even praise backfires and produces negative behavior. Often these are just the students who need opportunities to shine and gain attention for appropriate acts, like helping others. And sometimes you can use the helper role as something the student can earn. Whether they earn it or are given it proactively, helper roles are a great way to foster good behavior and help gain attention in a good way. Another way to keep reinforcers fresh for students is to use surprise in who gets it and in what they get. This can be done in a number of ways from random number generators, to putting students’ names in a hat each time they are caught being good and drawing one out at random and so on. Another way I thought of adds the appeal of technology by using QR codes.

Eight Surprise Helper! cards with QR codes and illustrations of diverse children, arranged in two columns on a purple background. autismclassroomnews.com is written at the bottom.

Click here to download the cards from my TPT store.

So, if you have students who would benefit from having a helper role in the classroom, I’ve made this freebie. These are cards that can be drawn or assigned and the student scans the code with an iPod or iPad or other smart device with a QR Reader and finds out what their helper job will be. You can use them as a reinforcer or to assign random helper roles. You can give them out to students or have them pick a card, any card 🙂 . You will need a smart phone or tablet with a QR reader. You can get a QR reader for free in your app store. I used the QR Reader for iPhone and the QR Reader for iPad but there are lots of free apps to choose from. Then you or the students just scan the code with the reader and it will tell them what their role is. In this set there are:

Get the teacher’s mail

Sharpen the pencils

Homework helper

Pass Out Papers

Be the scout for specials

Class Photographer—take pictures of the class for the teacher

Read a story to the class

Water the plants

If you want to make your own to supplement or replace these, it’s easy and free to generate a code at a number of websites like this one. Have you used QR Codes in activities? I’d love to hear about how it worked!