START Project

PTRR is grounded in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports and builds from the original Prevent Teach Reinforce model developed by Glen Dunlap, Rose Iovannone, Lise Fox, and colleagues. START adapted the framework to emphasize a proactive, universal approach to classroom behavior support, while also allowing teams to individualize supports for students who need more targeted intervention.

Prevent Teach Reinforce Respond (PTRR) organizes behavior support around four areas: preventing barriers to successful engagement, teaching skills, reinforcing skills and behaviors that support success, and responding in ways that maintain safety, support regulation, and promote participation and engagement.

The PTRR table helps teams think proactively and develop a coordinated approach across these four areas. Rather than focusing primarily on what to do after behavior occurs, PTRR encourages teams to consider the environment, what students need to learn, how those skills will be strengthened, and how adults will respond when students need additional support.

PTRR can be used at both the classroom level and the individual student level. The four areas remain the same, but the focus and level of individualization change.

Start with the classroom. 
Consider the practices, routines, and adult responses that affect all students. A classroom PTRR plan can help a team identify a small set of strategies that staff will use consistently throughout the day. For example, a classroom plan might include establishing and referring to expectations, using classroom schedules and choices, explicitly teaching expectations and self management, providing behavior specific feedback, and developing consistent ways to redirect students.

Classroom level planning is especially important when concerns are occurring across multiple students, routines, or activities. Strengthening classroom practices may reduce the need to develop separate supports for every student and provides a stronger foundation for students who need additional individualized support.

Individualize when needed. 
Some students will need supports that go beyond the classroom plan. For an individual student, use the PTRR table to identify strategies based on the student's strengths, needs, communication, regulation, learning characteristics, and the situations in which support is needed. Strategies should be specific enough that the adults working with the student understand what to do and can implement the plan consistently.

The student plan should build from effective classroom practices rather than replace them. For example, a classroom may already use visual schedules and choices, while an individual student may need a mini schedule, specific choices, individualized teaching of a break or communication response, and a more clearly defined adult response when the student has difficulty with a task. This classroom to student progression is reflected in the examples in the early childhood training.

Use the PTRR table with a team that knows the classroom or student well. The goal is not to fill every cell with as many strategies as possible. Instead, identify a manageable set of practices that address the most important priorities and can be implemented consistently.

1. Identify the focus. Decide whether you are developing a classroom plan or an individualized student plan. Clearly describe the routines, activities, situations, or behaviors you want the plan to address.
2. Start with Prevent. Look at the environment and what happens before difficulties occur. Consider routines, predictability, communication, sensory needs, instructional demands, choice, engagement, adult support, peer support, and other factors that may affect participation.
3. Identify what to Teach. Ask what skills would help students participate, communicate, regulate, solve problems, or meet their needs more successfully. Do not assume students already know what is expected. Identify how and when these skills will be explicitly taught and practiced.
4. Plan how to Reinforce. Determine how adults will notice, acknowledge, and strengthen the skills and behaviors being taught. Consider what is meaningful to the classroom or student and how reinforcement can occur frequently enough to support learning.
5. Plan how adults will Respond. Decide how staff will respond when difficulties occur. Responses should be calm, predictable, respectful, and as minimally intrusive as possible. Clarify what adults will say and do so responses are consistent across team members.
6. Look across the entire table. Make sure the four areas work together. For example, if the plan identifies a communication skill under Teach, there should be opportunities to use that skill under Prevent, meaningful reinforcement when the student uses it, and a Respond strategy that prompts or supports the communication skill when needed. The training materials emphasize that effective plans include all, or at least most, PTRR components rather than relying on one area alone.
7. Put the plan into practice and review it. Decide who will implement each strategy, when it will be used, and what information will help the team determine whether the plan is working. Focus on intentionality, consistency, and fidelity, and adjust the plan based on implementation and student response.