Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part D to the blog as we’re trying to make the blog more user-friendly and easier to read. Thanks!
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.
• 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?
4 comments:
Chapter 4 Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
While reading this chapter I thought about my beliefs on reinforcing effort and providing recognition as a teacher. I have to say that I agree with the theory presented in the book as I know for a fact that effort enhances achievement. Growing up my parents always instilled in me that only if I put all my effort in a task I could achieve it. They also taught me that I could do anything I wanted in life because nothing was impossible if I work hard for it, they told to never give up on my dreams or desires. I transmit this lesson to my students; I have high expectations for all of them, regardless of their socio-economic background, race, sex or ability. I encourage my students to give their best they can and I praise them for that. I encourage them to believe in themselves, to know they can achieve any goal in life if they work hard and do not give up. I frequently use the example of well known soccer players, since most of my students love and play soccer, to highlight that these people succeeded in life because they work hard, practiced many times and never gave up. I also believe that self esteem is an important and fundamental trait and I always struggle for my students to cultivate it. Also, since the majority of my students are Hispanic they need good role models to look after in life. Children are very fragile, they must believe in themselves and their efforts in order to achieve goals in life.
About praise, I strive to give personal praise to the kids for an accomplishment. I love to see their pride for doing something well done. Our school has a reward system in which students receive a “Falcon feather” when they are caught demonstrating one of five specific behaviors; it is a very good idea school wide. However, I have seen some staff members using these feathers indiscriminately for any unspecific behavior, losing the meaning of the system. In my classroom I give out these feathers for a particular reason, I always tell the child the reason why he/she is earning the feather. Besides oral praising, falcon feathers, I celebrate students’ effort for working on our weekly homework. Students get a star when they bring their homework finished; once they get fifteen stars they get the chance of choosing a prize out of a treasure box. I have seen with this system not only how students strive to turn in their homework finished showing responsibility but also how their skills improve. I also send notes home to let parents know how well they are doing or how much they have worked on a specific task. I do not use a lot of concrete symbols other than the ones I mentioned, but I always recognize and let my students know how well they have improved. I like to try the idea of keeping track of the effort and recognition by using a chart. I might implement it in my room with a few of my students. I am very glad to know that I am doing everything that is in my power to help my students succeed in life.
It sounds like you're doing a wonderful job of encouraging and supporting your students! I often use the example of Michael Jordan for my lesson on not giving up and following your dreams. He was actually cut from the high school basketball team. So he practiced and practiced and practiced and the rest is history. There are some great picture books about him and his story.
It sounds like your school might be doing PBS. I think there is a lot of really good pieces to PBS but know that it is difficult when other staff members half-heartedly participate. At my last school we tried to create ways that honored the framework, yet worked for our school. We incorporated a lot of school-wide goals and tried to make it as easy as possible for the teachers and staff to pass out the recognitions. Plus we had incentives for the staff. :D
Chapter 4
Reinforcement is something that I believe is extremely important. However, it is something that I find that I am very inconsistent with. Currently I pass out tickets to students as a visual to students that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. They can also lose them for not following instructions. I have found that this is very affective and I can see a big change when I am consistent with passing them out and when I am not. I believe that I need to become better at being more specifically verbal reinforcement and on a deeper level than “Good Job.” I need to specifically identify what they are doing. Children do not hear enough from adults of things that they are doing positively.
I appreciate the table for guidelines of effective praise and reinforced in my mind the things that I need to work on as a teacher. Consistency is one of my biggest problems as a teacher, but this is exactly what children need. I can see a difference in my students when I have been consistent and when I haven’t been. I understand how to go about reinforcing students’ behaviors. I love the pause, prompt and praise strategy. This would be beneficial in my classroom in order to pause discuss what is going on that should not be and then prompt them to improve. Then I need to remember to praise once they have achieved the goal that was set before them.
I would like to allow my students to set goals for themselves and once those goals are met they get to put their work or something about themselves up on a bulletin board. By making goals students could reflect on positive interactions and discuss what they are doing and how they could improve. This would allow students to be more responsible for their learning and behaviors. The more I praise the students the better their desire to learn would be. My goal in the next week is to praise my students more and explain why they are being praised verbally not just giving them a reward without an explanation.
Karissa,
How did the week go with your explicit recognitions? It does take some retraining on our part to relearn how to praise students with sincerity. :D
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