Strategies for Emotions, Social Skills and Behavior

These strategies provide suggestions for instructional design for students with TBI. Teach middle- and high-school students strategies (and how to use them), rather than offering assistance.

• Give clear and simple directions as needed.
• With middle- and high-school students, discuss and practice age-appropriate behaviors in real life situations.
• Minimize verbalizations and logical explanations.
• Maximize hands-on demonstration.
• Educate other students about brain injuries.
• Give informational feedback about social behaviors (reasons that they were appropriate or inappropriate; for example, encourage student to follow Grice’s conversation rules: be polite, concise, relevant, and truthful).
• Acknowledge changes in the student and promote acceptance of these changes.
• Provide positive feedback to rebuild the student’s self-esteem.
• Provide modifications to maintain involvement in sports and other preferred activities (e.g., make a former soccer player into a student coach or statistician; involve the student in practice and games).
• Reduce the number of options when choices must be made.
• Teach the student to rehearse silently before verbally replying.
• Teach the student to look for cues from listeners.
• Speak with the student alone when inappropriate behavior occurs and discuss the situation calmly.
• Discuss alternative behaviors with the student.
• Redirect the student’s attention to the topic at hand.
• Keep environment and schedule the same, with as little change as possible.
• Avoid verbal confrontation when the student is upset.

Adapted from:

Szkeres, S.F., & Meserve, N.F. (1997). Appendix 18–2: Modifying materials, instruction, and the learning environment to meet individual needs. In  M. Ylvisaker (Ed.), Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation (pp. 411–414). Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Colorado Department of Education. (2001). Brain injury: A Manual for Educators.

Brain Injury Association of Virginia. (2005). Tips for inclusion of youth with TBI in regular classrooms (pp. C34)

Kentucky Department of Education. Technical Assistance Manual on Brain Injury.