Effects of response cards on disruptive behavior and academic responding during math lessons by fourth-grade urban students

The authors evaluated the effects of response cards on the disruptive behavior and academic responding of students in two urban fourth-grade classrooms. Two conditions, single-student responding and write-on response cards, were alternated in an ABAB design. During single-student responding, the teacher called on one student who had raised his or her hand to answer the question. During the response-card condition, each student was provided with a white laminated board on which he or she could write a response to every question posed by the teacher. Nine students were targeted for data collection because of their history of disciplinary issues in school and frequent disruptive behavior in the classroom. Data revealed substantial reductions in disruptive behavior and increases in academic responding during the response card condition compared to single-student responding. The findings are discussed in terms of the beneficial effects of direct, high-response strategies for urban, low-achieving learners.