Assignment #4: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 4 – Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition.
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A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategies of Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter. Below are the questions to help you complete your self-assessment.
• This chapter discusses the potential influence of reinforcing students' effort and providing recognition for their accomplishments. Think back to your own personal experiences and try to identify situations in which your learning was positively influenced when someone reinforced your effort or recognized your accomplishments in some significant way. You might also remember situations that would have been improved if someone had reinforced your effort or had given you recognition.
• Now try to remember examples of situations that you positively influenced because you did reinforce students' effort or provide recognition.
• How do you currently reinforce students’ effort in your classroom and what is your purpose?
• What makes reinforcing effective or ineffective?
• Although verbal recognition seems to be most effective, providing concrete tokens (e.g., stickers, candy, toys) can also be effective. What advice would you give to a new teacher about using tokens as rewards?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”:This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 4 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for both reinforcing effort and providing recognition. You may want to consider reflecting on the bulleted comment below.
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to teach to your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom). You may want to consider reflecting on the bulleted comment below. Please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Four: Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition. Click on the “comment” link below.
• This chapter recommends the use of rubrics to help students see the relationship between their effort and their achievement. Try to identify a specific long-term, challenging assignment that might be enhanced by using these rubrics.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Use the following sequence of questions/promps to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post your brief reflection to the posting labeled Week Four: Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition by clicking on the “comment” link below.
How has the information you read in this chapter on summarizing affected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? You may use some of the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• How might I change how I reinforce students’ effort in my classroom?
• What is something you now understand better about reinforcing effort or providing recognition?
• How might you change how you provide recognition in your classroom?
12 comments:
C.
Last year and again this year, I assigned each student two goals to set each quarter of the school year. One goal was an educational goal and the other was a personal goal. They were both short term, but this process really made my students think about what they wanted to accomplish in 9 weeks. At the end of the quarter they would determine if they reached their goal, and they then would write a short paragraph explaining why they think they did or did not reach their goal. I asked them to share their results with their parents. Many came back and said they celebrated with their parents if they met their goal and/or set more realistic goals with them if they hadn’t reached their goal(s). I would next year set up a rubric to chart my student’s progress while striving to reach their goal(s). I like the effort and achievement chart (figure 4.3) for both educational and personal goals. They can chart their progress and make adjustments as they go. I intend to continue the practice of encouraging my students to set short and long term goals. It just makes sense for students to strive for improvement in and outside of school. It will hopefully make them goal-oriented students who have endurance and the drive to be successful in and out of school. Success=Reward!
D.
At our school this year, we are newly implementing a program called PBIS (Positive Behavior, Instruction and Support). We give a lot of recognitions in and out of the classroom for being safe, respectful and responsible. Our staff gives out “feathers” to students who are displaying positive behavior. A feather is a special colored ticket with their name on it and what they are being rewarded for. The students then put their feathers in a big pot for a drawing for prizes. At first it was difficult to “buy” into the act of rewarding kids for doing what they should be doing anyway, but I am realizing that middle school students still need to be reminded of how to behave and most importantly they “love” the recognition and prizes. So going overboard to reward them for positive behavior in front of their peers is a positive thing. They are constantly reminding each other of how many feathers they have received this school year and by which teacher. So if you want to be a “cool” teacher you need to hand out those feathers. ;) This just tells me that “Concrete Symbols of Recognition,” as described on page 59, are important at middle school level and I will continue to recognize my students for both academic successes and social successes.
Week Four: Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition
Practice: Our school has recently adopted a program called Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS). Because we are only in year one of the adoption the plan we have in place for recognition is not required to be our classroom management procedure, but it is required that we use this system in the common areas of the school to recognize a student who is following our three most predominate expectations of being safe, being respectful and being responsible. If we witness a student meeting any of our specific expectations in those areas, we are to recognize their efforts with a concrete symbol. Our school has designated our concrete symbol being a specially colored ticket called a ‘feather’. The feathers are then signed by the student and turned in to the office for a chance to win individual and school wide recognitions. The most important part of the recognition is the verbal praise that is reinforcing the behavior. A teacher is to give clear, non-value based feedback to the student telling them why they earned a feather. For example, “It was very safe when you walked down the stairs.” or “You showed respect when you waited quietly in line.” Teachers are asked to avoid focusing on the pleasing statements such as “I like how to stand quietly”, and negative comments like “Thanks for not running”, and non behavior related statements like “What a great shirt, here’s a feather.”
Final Strategy Reflection: Reading this chapter affirmed the effectiveness of appropriate praise in the classroom setting. The idea that students actually make such significant gains when praised and recognized was really an eye opener for me. I have struggled with the ‘artificial’ feel of the feathers all school year. In my personal experience as a parent I have used praise with younger children but felt that the older they got the more they should meet expectations without needing the recognition. In my classroom, recognizing students who are doing the correct thing seems almost silly. Why would a student need a feather for walking when they are just following the most basic of safety rule? Why would someone need to hear that they were being respectful by being quiet in line, they obviously know it is respectful and that is why they are waiting quietly. Reading the statistics of percentile gain in Fig 4.4 and 4.7, I realize the significant increase I could be seeing if I was to use the pause, prompt and praise approach to solving both behavioral and academic dilemmas.
Assignment 4
Kelsey Boyd
C:
I read this chapter after a particularly trying Monday. All of my groups seemed to not be listening, no one really showed understanding, basically just a hard day on both teacher and students. After reading this chapter I decided that my students really needed some motivation to put the effort into their work. So although our school is also doing PBIS (more on that later) I decided to implement my own awards for effort. With all of my groups first through fifth I created an “Excellent Effort Award” if I see them trying hard the whole period then they will receive the award regardless of if they finished the project or did everything perfectly. For each student who earns this award I will put two rocks in that class’s jar. They are earning toward a ‘special day’. The students seemed to really buy into this but only time will tell if it continues to be effective or not. For my third through fifth graders I also introduced a rubric very similar to the one in the chapter but worded slightly different so that all my students could understand it. I explained that everyday they would rate themselves on their effort and their achievement for that day. I explicitly taught how effort relates to achievement and gave examples from sports and playground activities (which my students are really into). I am excited to see how this goes and how long it continues to be effective. I am also hoping that starting this before our ELPA test (yes I also hate having to teach to the test but that is our reality right now) reminds students how important their effort is and pushes them to try their best even when it’s difficult.
D:
As I discussed above it really hit me that I don’t do much reinforcing my students effort and usually focus on the achievement. I created my own classroom effort award and am going to try and remember to focus more on using our ‘eagle pride’ awards (my schools PBIS award for showing respect, responsibility and being safe. Our school does not provide individual awards for students who earn these eagle pride tickets. Instead we dump all the earned tickets into a big clear bin and show it to the school at our weekly assembly to recognize how well our whole school is doing (this is restarted every month). This chapter affirmed for me how important it is to be one of the adults in our building who really buys into the eagle pride awards and complements the effort our students are making in order to motivate them to continue making that effort and hopefully lead to an increase in their achievement. I hope that by both increasing my participation in the school wide reward system and my own personal classroom effort award program I will see an increase in student participation and achievement.
C.
For this chapter I worked on teaching about effort as well as tracking the effort with achievement. My first grade group is an advanced math group. We often work on math facts for 10 min. each day that I have them (3 days a week). Some students were getting frustrated that they were not “passing” each time that we took a timed test. As 6 and 7 year olds, I did not want them to become stressed about the time or discouraged about their effort. We discussed improving each time and everyone working at their own pace at the beginning of each practice. Some students were working on addition to 10 while others were working on multiplication already! I quickly shared an effort rubric with them last week to encourage those that were trying hard and to help those that were not trying so hard see how they could improve each week. We started by practicing the fact page, scoring themselves on the rubric, then timing and counting how many they completed correctly and finally scoring themselves on the effort rubric again. This helped them understand the relationship between working hard and improving. I began to chart the amount they finished after each timed test and discuss improvement with each individual student. I found that talking about “working hard” was really quite abstract for the first grade. Some students just “have it in them” and they were the ones with the positive attitude and showing growth. The students who didn’t have a clear picture of what effort looked like were stuck in the “it’s not fair” attitude hole. I shared several stories of my own personal effort when I was in school and discussed how it made me feel to know that I had tried my hardest, worked hard and improved.
D. I learned through this activity that the direct teaching of what effort looks like is just as critical as the direct teaching of an academic subject. The reference on page 51 to reading the book The Little Engine That Could was also helpful. We recounted that story as well as had students share a time when they worked hard for something and show improvement. They all had lots of stories of recess and PE games and one student shared about practicing more with his violin lessons. The rubric is something I will continue to use with all of the students I teach (K-5) for various subjects. The students also became better at assessing their effort with practice each day using the rubric. I also learned that I need to be more specific in my praise with students. I give lots of praise and often point out what the student is doing well but, I can still be more specific and focus the praise toward the student’s own behavior. I thought this chapter was full of great reminders for all teachers teaching all grade levels and subjects. Explicitly teaching effort, clearly understanding (and using) the guidelines for effective praise and creating a rubric for effort were all examples of strategies I plan to continue to use and refer too periodically.
Assignment #4: Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition
C. Teaching Title- I reading groups can pose the challenge of getting struggling readers to read aloud, or have a good attitude for reading or completing comprehension activities. For several years now I have had students earn “points” for effort only alone. Anyone in my room can earn points as long as they have a good attitude, try hard and make a good effort by doing their best. What they do with the points varies, but all of the students have point logs in their folders they can keep track on and they love just adding them up! (It’s also great math practice for them as well). The points are distributed each group time by using poker chips for various values: 1, 5, 10 point chips. When points are written down at the end of their group time all of the chips are turned back in to a basket. It’s amazing how many hands shoot up to volunteer for reading when I silently hand a point chip to a student that has just finished their turn. The majority of my students don’t need this motivation—they enjoy coming to a space where they feel successful and confident, but for the ones that need that extra push it is really positive for them, and helps get them out of their shell. It is also a good reward for all of the kids that come to me because they are putting in the “extra” work time, so their points, and what they can use them for, are a nice reward for all of their extra hard work.
D. This chapter was a good reminder—especially at this time of year—for helping students to be confident in their abilities and be proud of their efforts and achievements. As I mentioned in my “practice” section I have been doing points with my title groups for a long time for their efforts, but our school also uses Eagle Cards for the Safe, Respectful, and Responsible behaviors as well. As a specialist I often forget about giving these out to students because I see them all the time in my daily schedule. I think we often get accustomed to our students and their behavior and either don’t expect it to change or simply predict the results before they happen. On track students stay on track, and off track students are always redirected. It’s a good reminder that if we set the bar high enough either academically or behaviorally students will often rise to the occasion. Trying to step in before the negative and set them up for a positive focus lets them know we believe in them, and is huge. I absolutely love the look of pride and amazement when a student achieves something they think is completely out of their reach, and all they had to do was try their best to get there. On a side note—as I was “reflecting” on my reflection prior to posting is also occurred to me that I usually try to have students take risks in a supportive way first if that makes sense. I either have them try something independently that I know they can do first, then gradually make it harder, or provide a little safety net approach without them realizing it. Then as they become more confident in their successes I remove the safety net.
Hi Therese,
How cool the kids came back and were excited that their parents celebrated their success with them or helped them to set more realistic goals. I’m sure using the rubric next year will be an informative (and easy) addition to your goal setting. Well done!
I was our building PBIS building coordinator and part of our PBIS leadership team. I can tell you that we, the leadership team, had a really hard time buying into the whole reward piece of PBIS. We had a lot of questions and finally were able to come to a system that worked for us. Then we had to “sell” it to our staff. I actually shared information from this chapter with our staff. It does seem to have a positive effect. We tweaked it a little to make it comfortable and work for us. We wanted to focus on class successes and building success in addition to the individual rewards. One other thing we planned to do was change up our system about half way through the year. So, I think many educators have a similar struggle when considering rewards and recognition for our students. After several discussions with our state PBIS trainers we understood that the rewards and recognitions are very heavy at first and then toned down over time as students exhibit the desired behaviors. Then focus on new goals can be considered. Over all, I’m really a big fan of PBIS (and Responsive Classroom.)
Hello Erica,
Your post brings up excellent points on our “teacher language” and how we should word and phrase our praise/recognition. One area that we were really working on was training our para educators and specials teachers (who needed it) how to (and not to) praise and recognize the students. As teachers, this is more natural for us because of our training, but often it’s our para educators who are alone or spend the most time with our students who exhibit behavior issues. We brainstormed ideas like mini traings and posting signs and posters in areas like the hallways and stairwells so the non-teachers of the building would have the language to respectful communicate with our students.
I know exactly what you mean about the struggle with the “artificial feel” of the rewards but our state PBIS trainers were firm in their stance of the students needing the recognition. When I did our initial training for our staff to bring them on board, I was very honest with them about our (the leadership teams) struggle and discussions around the rewards. Which I think they appreciated.
Hi Kelsey,
I love the “Excellent Effort Award!” When I was teaching first grade I had to teach (word for word) Read Well (a scripted reading program) to my WHOLE class. (This is a whole other story, but I left the district after this year. ☺) Anyway, during the ridiculous stories and worksheets the students were not engaged and did not enjoy reading, so behavior issues cropped up. I one day decided to have students give themselves stars for on task behaviors or tally marks for off task behaviors. The goal was to have more stars (and really no tally marks.) That was it. Not candy, no prizes, but the stars worked like a charm. They loved earning them. Sometimes simple works best.
Hello Christi and Molly!
Christi,
Your post demonstrates the importance of “direct teaching of what effort looks like.” I think we sometimes forget that our students need instruction in what effort looks like (or explicit instruction in organizational skills for example.) Actually at all grades, it is good to consider what our students know and what we assume they know. (Teaching high school for the first time this year has been a great experience with this as I assumed that the students were much more capable than they really were. The experience has reminded me that I need to assess and not assume that they know how to do something.) I think your use of story and examples (yours and theirs) was exactly what you needed in helping the students understand the concept. I also found this chapter filled with good reminders for my own teaching. ☺
Molly,
It is a pretty powerful motivator to see the students’ excitement and sense of pride when they are recognized or succeed in an area that was challenging for them. Absolutely supporting and using safety nets are a great strategy to use with our students. We want them to feel confident and successful! Our school also tried to think of ways to encourage the dispersing of our “bees” for PBIS. We came up with a couple of ideas: One was to have them color-coded bees for teachers, specialist, para educators, guidance/office/SPED so we could see who was handing out the “bees.” Then we could gently remind and encourage the low group to pass out the “bees.” We also had them be small enough so a bunch could be connected to our name badges or keys so they were right there and easy to access. Another thing we decided was that the PBIS leadership team should prepare these forms for staff so they didn’t have to. One other thing was “rewards” for the staff or groups who handed out the most. (raffles, early leaving one day, wear jeans not on Friday, parking space, coupons or discounts to book stores or restaurants, etc…) The staff really has to buy in in order for the program to be a success.
C. As I read this chapter, I had one student in mind. There is one student I have that I feel does not work to his potential mainly due to effort. I’m sure we all have that student. I was very excited to read this chapter and try out some of the ideas presented. I found that some of the strategies listed are ones that we have heard recently. Our district recently attended a conference that Marcia Tate was at. One of her 20 strategies is story telling. As a school, we are choosing one strategy a week to try out in our classrooms and storytelling was the first strategy we used. This fit in perfectly with the idea of teaching about effort. By sharing personal examples of times that I have kept working hard and putting effort into something that at times seemed a “bigger bite than I could swallow,” I’m showing them that hard work can pay off. We are also reading the story of Gertrude Ederle in reading right now. She was the first woman who swam across the English Channel. The first time she tried, she was not successful, but she tried again and finally did it. I used this example as well to show that effort can pay off. I also referred to “The Little Engine that Could” and told students that the mountain we’re trying to climb right now is fractions. Some students will run up that hill with no problems and others will struggle and slip and fall a few times, but if we keep trying, keep saying “I think I can…” then we should eventually all be able to get to the top of that mountain. I really liked the Effort and Achievement rubrics that were shown in the book and decided to try them out as well. To get started, I printed off an enlarged copy of the rubrics. As a class, we looked at the effort rubric and talked about what it means to put effort into something. We made a looks like/sounds like chart as a group of what effort will look like in class and what it would sound like. We talked about what students should do if they don’t understand an assignment. Part of effort is asking for when they don’t understand something. I also printed off an effort and achievement chart so students could track how they were doing and see if it was making a difference. We are only tracking these results for math at this point, to do every subject may be a little overwhelming at this point and math seemed the best place to start. They keep these charts in a folder in their desk and we pull them out after an assignment and do a status check of how they’ve done. I also have them talk with a buddy about the amount of effort they felt they put into the assignment and what they would do differently next time. The only down side of the chart is that my feedback on their achievement (if it is to be given by me) needs to be quick in order for them to see that relationship. We have only been using this technique for a couple days, so the results are not in yet. I feel that “my one” student is the most resistant to the process (imagine that!) and I am personally checking in with him each time, as well as a couple other students, to be sure they know that I take it seriously as well. I will continue to review the rubrics with students on a weekly basis, and we will continue to fill in our charts. At the end of each week, I’d like to have some students share how it is working for them (if they choose to) so that there is more story telling. Perhaps students will even have stories from home of things that they had to put a lot of effort into but were ultimately successful at. Reinforcing effort and seeing its relationship to achievement is going to be an ongoing process. It’s a great life-skill to learn, though!
D. There is so much in this chapter (and this book for that matter) that I see our school doing already, which is awesome. We have Eagle cards for students caught being safe, respectful, and responsible. We have a virtue of the month that we try to teach and talk about, this month is Generosity. We have a Read at Home contest that helps to build teamwork and students feel successful and excited when their grade or class wins. We have a Marcia Tate strategy of the week, this week is “discussion.” We do so many different things as a school to try to teach students to work hard and try their best. Like Molly, I also often forget to hand these out. I feel the same in that I just know what to expect from them and I forget to tell them that they are doing a good job. We use to have a blue postcard that teachers could write positive notes on that would then be mailed home to students (gone due to budgets and the cost of postage?) and the principal would draw a teacher name each month from those submitted and they would get a prize. It is sad to see these go, but there is no reason why I couldn’t continue to do this in my own classroom and just send them home with students. Since these are positive comments only, I shouldn’t have to worry much about them getting to the parents, most kids want to share when they do well. I want my students to be internally motivated. This skill will help them to do well in life. Teaching this skill is important and by starting with the “small” things like a class assignment or a classroom job (how often do I see the same students doing the classroom jobs and not the others?) and continually practicing this skill, hopefully it will carry over into their personal lives and help them to be more successful as adults.
Hello Renee!
I love your example of climbing up a mountain for fractions. It really paints a great picture in your mind and you can use the language throughout the year for other difficult concepts, tasks or assignments. I think it would be great to have a group discussion at some point where the kids could each share an area that is their “mountain” that they slipped on or were having a hard time reaching the summit to show the students that some of the kids have an easy time with math, or some with sports, or some with drawing, but each of us has our strengths and areas of challenges (weaknesses.)
Gertrude Ederle is another great example of someone achieving greatness that had to persevere in order meet success.
Your Effort and Achievement rubric lesson sounds great. I think starting only with one subject is a very wise decision. Your point about part of effort is knowing when to ask for help is important to teach the students! Being as explicit as possible with students often avoids problems and issues later down the road. (Or at least limits the number of problems that arise.) I think having your students discuss their thoughts with a buddy and how to improve for next time is a good piece to incorporate into the process. Checking in with your challenging student should help to convey the seriousness and value that you place on the charts. This ongoing process is a great life-skill to learn as you said!
It sounds like your school does have some great programs happening to help the students work hard and try their best! I know I get excited when I realize how many things we are doing well at our school or in our district. (Often it’s easy to get caught up in the negatives, so as often as possible we should celebrate our successes as educators and professionals.) Could you bring the blue postcards up at a staff meeting and suggest that they just be sent home and not mailed? I know in staff meetings there’s been many times that someone brings up, “Whatever happened to ___ when we used to ___.” And no one really knows why or when the thing stopped. Sometimes we start it again with a new twist and sometimes we are reminded why we ended it. But it might be a good topic to discuss.
Jackie and Mary,
Good idea about the post cards and just sending them home. I should bring it up or if nothing else I could start doing it in my classroom myself. There's nothing stopping me! Thanks for the idea. Sometimes it's so obvious and you just don't see it right away. :)
No problem. :) Glad it sounds like it will work for you and your students. :) Mary
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