Utilizing travel cards to increase productive student behavior, teacher collaboration, and parent-school communication

Students with mental retardation have increased access to the general educa tion curriculum (McLeskey, Henry, & Hodges, 1998). Challenges exist that cr eate barriers to successful and meaningful access. Students with mental ret ardation often exhibit unproductive behaviors such as problems of memory, a ttention, self-regulation, academic achievement, sociobehavioral, motivatio n, and generalization (Beirne-Smith, Ittenbach, ,& Patton, 1998; Hallahan & Kauffman, 2000). Identifying and altering unproductive behavior is further complicated when a student is assigned to multiple teachers and classrooms . This paper describes how the expanded concept of the Travel Card, a behav ior management strategy described by Jones and Jones (1995), increased the productive behavior of students, facilitated teacher collaboration, and imp roved parent-school communication. The Travel Card, based on earning points for social, token, and activity reinforcers, enabled students with mental retardation to have meaningful and successful access to the general educati on curriculum Students' Travel Cards became documents for teacher collabora tion, and parent-school communication through portfolio assessment. A compl ete description of the strategy components is given along with an example o f the Travel Card.