Behavior Intervention Plan Newsletter: What Families Need to Know About BIPs

Behavior intervention plans are among the most misunderstood documents in special education. Families sometimes experience them as confirmation that their child is a problem, when in fact a well-designed BIP is a tool for teaching the skills the child has not yet developed. The communication around a BIP shapes how families understand it and how much they can contribute to its success.

What a BIP Is and Why It Exists

A behavior intervention plan is a document that describes the strategies a school team will use consistently to support a student whose behavior significantly affects their learning or the learning of others. It is built from a functional behavior assessment, which is an investigation into why the behavior is occurring.

The key framing for families is this: behavior is communication. When a student engages in challenging behavior, they are communicating something, often that a task is too hard, that they need a break, that they want attention, or that a sensory experience is overwhelming. The BIP identifies what they are communicating and teaches them a more effective way to communicate it.

What the School Is Doing

Your newsletter should describe the specific strategies in the BIP without overwhelming families with technical detail. Cover: what behaviors are being addressed, what the team believes is driving those behaviors, what the response strategy is when the behavior occurs, and what skills the student is being explicitly taught as replacements.

Example: "When Marcus becomes frustrated during writing tasks, he sometimes pushes materials off his desk. We believe he is communicating that the task is too hard or that he needs a break. We are teaching him to say 'I need help' or use a break card before reaching frustration. When he pushes materials, we respond calmly without attention to the behavior and prompt him to use the break card instead."

What Families Can Do at Home

Consistency between home and school is the single most important factor in behavior plan success. Your newsletter should describe the same key strategies parents can use at home:

• Identifying the moment before frustration peaks and offering a choice or a break proactively
• Responding calmly rather than with heightened emotion when the target behavior occurs
• Using the same language the school uses, so the student hears consistent expectations
• Celebrating when the replacement behavior is used successfully

Communicating Progress Without Overwhelming Families With Data

A simple weekly summary, whether on a behavior chart that goes home or in a brief newsletter update, tells families enough to stay engaged. Frequency counts and baseline data are useful for the team but not usually necessary for family communication. "This week Marcus used his break card three times before reaching frustration" is more meaningful to a parent than a graph of antecedent-behavior-consequence data. Daystage makes it easy to send weekly or biweekly BIP updates in a readable format families can actually use.