COVID-19 disrupted schools across the country. Students and teachers were asked to work together virtually. During this virtual experience the students at Frederick County Middle School struggled to complete learning activities independently. An improvement science approach was used to investigate this problem. Through the improvement science approach, it was determined that students may not have the skills they need to be competent to engage in learning activities independently. Self Determination Theory highlights competence as one of the basic psychological needs that needs to be met for a student to be motivated to complete learning activities independently. To see if a student's competence can be increased, a mental contrasting with implementation intention skill called WOOP was implemented by two teachers with a group of students at FCMS. These two teachers made multiple adjustments to the intervention throughout its implementation. Students who received the intervention (WOOP) showed an increase in their perceived competence and an increase in their goal attainment. Perceived Competence Scales (PCS) were used to measure the increase in perceived competence of the treatment group. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to analyze the data for the PCS. Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) was used to measure the impact WOOP had on the students attaining their goals during independent learning time. A mixed ANOVA was used to analyze the GAS data. There was a statistically significant interaction between the treatment group and the control group when WOOP was implemented, F(1,74) = 0.27.998, p < 0.001, n[superscript 2] = 0.123 with partial eta squared indicating a large effect. When ignoring time, students who received WOOP had higher goal attainment scores than those who did not receive WOOP. By explicitly teaching the skills students need to develop their competence, students may increase their competence to become more independent learner. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]