Reinforcement is a big part of what goes on in the classroom. Reinforcement is provided in more than one way. One type of reinforcement is through direct praise for student work. Mrs. Williams mainly uses verbal reinforcement for correct student responses to questions. Reinforcement is also used if the student performs well (80% or better) on computer reading and math assessments. One example of this was on September 12th, when Mrs. Williams accredited a child’s work on the board by saying “[student’s name] changed our magnets to the correct day” to the class. Mrs. Williams then asked for the students’ help with changing the calendar. Students’ responses demonstrate that the praise was reinforcement. Generally, after praise was given for a student’s response, the student would respond again to the next question. It seemed as though the students that responded were generally the same students that always responded.
For the most part, Mrs. Williams favored using verbal praise to encourage students, saying things such as “that’s right” or “good job.” There have been two instances where reinforcement was used in a manner reminiscent of shaping. In one instance, on September 26th, Mrs. Williams was introducing a new set of spelling words. She asks the students how they think “ick” is spelled, as the spelling words were all “_ick” words. One student said “ic.” Instead of embarrassing the child, Mrs. Williams said: “You can spell it that way. Most of the time, it is spelled ‘ick.’ I bet you know lots of ‘_ick’ words.” This encouraged the child to continue to respond to questions, even though they were not sure of the answer.
Mrs. Williams likes to use modeling as a big part of her classroom management techniques. She even mentioned the...
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...istrator, who came and took the child away crying.
The children in this classroom, who are in first grade, are mostly in the concrete operational thinking stage. There are some who may be in the preoperational stage. It is difficult to tell because I have not given them any conservation tasks. Some of the students are definitely at a lower cognitive development stage than other though. These children are in the industry versus inferiority stage, as defined by Erik Erikson. They are learning how to learn and work with others. The children are constantly being assessed in this classroom. Every Monday, the day of my practicum, they go into the computer lab and take reading and math assessments on the computer. They have spelling quizzes every week, with new words each week. Mrs. Williams also uses daily classwork, such as handouts, to assess the students’ knowledge.
However, as a result of not daydreaming, Laurie’s grades improved. Her parent’s began to reward her with $3 for every A she earned, using positive reinforcement to get Laurie to continue performing well. Due to operant conditioning, Laurie passed third grade and remained a top student the rest of her life, graduating from college with honors. If you ask Laurie to
Discipline is important in maintaining a positive classroom environment and influencing a child’s development. During my field experience at S.H. Elementary, I have observed Mrs. Branson using various techniques to reinforce positive behavior in her 3rd grade classroom. Mrs. Branson’s teachers 3rd grade in a charter school located in the south suburbs of Minneapolis. Her class consist of 23 diverse student learners from various racial, ethical, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Each student acquires individual wants and needs, and exhibits a range of behaviors. Mrs. Branson practices operant conditioning techniques to acquire the good behavior she wants and needs from her students.
"Negative Reinforcement." Teaching Aids for Children with Special Needs. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2013.
In second grade I was apart of a wild classroom. Their was a lot of chaos from all the young children. My teacher struggled to get everyone on task and to complete our work. After some time my teacher decided to make up a reward system (positive reinforcement). The children in the classroom were able to earn tickets for doing their homework, being respectful, and many other things. We were able to save these tickets and cash them in on fridays for treats, toys, or even sometimes extra recess. The teacher had a separate system for when we misbehaved. There were 3 colors you could earn everyday. If you weren’t on task, out of your seat, or just being disruptive she would change your color from green to yellow. If it happened again you got a red card and lost your tickets you earned for that day. This is a perfect example of positive punishment. It gave each child an opportunity to earn tickets for good behavior, and a warning system with the cards that possibly would lead to losing your earned tickets. Our teacher was using operant conditioning to produce a change in our
Reinforcements (antecedents) affect one’s behavior by enhancing or suppressing it. Positive reinforcements (Rewards) such as a prized or fulfillment of joy may be given the occurrence of a wanted stimulus, following a response, that acts to increase the frequency of that response (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972); a kindness award given to a student for displaying kindness to other students. A negative reinforce - The termination of an aversive stimulus, following a response, that acts to increase the frequency of that response (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972). Negative reinforcement can best be seen through a child and a messy room, the child suffers being nagged until the specified behavior has been achieved (cleaning his/her room); the nagging decreases as the child increasingly continues to clean his room more. Through the prior example, a significant term has risen, learning; continued praise will result in a learned behavior from operant conditioning. Negative reinforcement may be considered a learned behavior. The negativity from a wrong doing will push a learned behavior that the continued behavior away from a specified behavior equals to more unnecessary
I try to get my work done on time and some lessons are easy for me. I appreciate having teachers that offer extra credit for those that complete their work early and could become bored. Making sure students stay motivated is something that all teachers should be aware of. The points mentioned in chapter nine are very interesting, especially in regard to what statements can be used to motivate students. Students that receive hollow feedback such as “excellent”, have no encouragement to improve. In one of my classes at MSU the teacher would praise students for speaking out even though their answers were incorrect. I did not like this and I think that teachers should provide meaningful feedback that encourages students to keep learning. Teachers should always encourage students that there is more they can do. In some cases positive feedback such as the example I used can hinder a student just as much as negative feedback. Having a balance of positive feedback and areas for improvement would work best for ELL students. Students deserve to know what they are doing right or really well at and things that they can
Acker M.M. and O’Leary S.G. (1987), Effects of Reprimands and Praise on Appropriate Behavior in the Classroom, Vol 15 No4 p549-557
First of all, I was highly interested in the concept and various factors that together make up positive reinforcement. I had a premise that I could do some experimental work on the three children for whom I baby-sit during the week after school. They leave school full of energy and it is my job to get them to complete a series of tasks before the end of the evening. I imagined that some positive reinforcement might get them on their way to handling their responsibilities in a timelier manner. My first step was to come up with a specific instrumental response that would produce reinforcement. This took no time at all because by far the most painfully difficult thing for me to do is get the children to sit down and do their homework. I then spoke specifically to each child and asked them what they would rather choose as an after school activity. They named video games, television, and going to play with other neighborhood children. I had expected these types of answers from the children and made them into the positive reinforcers that would be contingent on the children’s performance of the instrumental response; namely completing their homework. I explained to the children that if they behaved and finished their homework, then directly following they could spend an hour doing an activity of their choice.
The utilization of positive reinforcement is a possible technique for enhancing students’ behavior for a variety of school conditions for individual and as well as for the group of students (Wheatley, et al., 2009).
There are three important concepts that are in this theory. They are antecedent, observable behavior, and consequences. When we are observing a child the first thing we want to do is understand what “triggers” their behavior. This concept is called antecedent, which is anything that comes before the behavior (Rizza 2014). There are two types of antecedents, direct and indirect. Direct is what happens immediately beforehand and indirect is not immediately before. The last concept is consequences, which is anything that happens after and is caused by the behavior performed (Rizza 2014). Once again, there are two different kinds of consequences, reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement is what increases or strengthens a behavior so it will happen in the future. For example, one day Ms. W was so excited that a little boy named M was able to zipper his own jacket. She proceeded to give him a sticker and a high five. All of the other students saw how excited that Ms. W got and then they all wanted to zip their own jackets. The other concept is punishment; punishment is a way to decrease a child’s bad behavior. A punishment is anything from standing in the back of the line, going to the principles office, or taking a time out in the corner. Punishments are a way for a student to know what they did was wrong and not to do it again. An example of a punishment in my classroom
B.F. Skinner is a major contributor to the Behavioral Theory of personality, a theory that states that our learning is shaped by positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, modeling, and observation. An individual acts in a certain way, a.k.a. gives a response, and then something happens after the response. In order for an action to be repeated in the future, what happens after the response either encourages the response by offering a reward that brings pleasure or allows an escape from a negative situation. The former is known as positive reinforcement, the latter known as negative reinforcement (Sincero, 2012). A teenager who received money for getting an “A” is being positively reinforced, while an individual who skips a class presentation is being negatively reinforced by escaping from the intense fear and anxiety that would have occurred during the presentation.
Reinforcements can strengthen behaviour and can be positive, desired by students, or negative, which involve something undesired being taken away (Eggen & Kauchak, 2010). Sophie can begin the reinforcement extrinsically by introducing an immediate reward to students who complete their homework nightly, such as extended computer time (Brady & Scully, 2005). She can also reinforce their intrinsic motivations by providing stimulating and engaging homework tasks. Skinner’s (as cited in Brady & Scully, 2005) theory of operant conditioning promotes use of reinforcement, and states importance of the knowing student’s needs, likes, dislikes, and interests in deciding reinforcements. However, Bennett (2010) states BM models based entirely around rewards are doomed to fail as students may not respond, however nearly all respond to punishment. Punishments can shape student’s behaviour as they begin to understand consequences. Sophie needs to enforce punishments that are fair, proportional, consistent, meaningful, and immediate (Bennett, 2010). Storey and Post (2012) state that the longer the delay between the two punishments, the more ineffective the punishment. An example of a punishment could be sending students to time-out or removing class priviledges. If Sophie’s students do not connect to the reinforcements and punishments, they will cease to be
The first source is referred to as extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is motivation that occurs outside of the student’s self and is driven by external factors. An example of extrinsic motivation is “"if-then" motivators. According to Pink, “if-then” motivators are "If you do this, then you get that" (as cited in Azzam, 2014). These “if-then” extrinsic motivators are used quite regularly in the classroom setting. Some specific examples would be: receiving candy for bring back homework, receiving extra recess if the class is not disruptive, picking up the classroom floor for a treat, etc. The popular extrinsic motivation in my daughter’s class is homework bingo. Students who complete all their homework for the week get to play bingo. The rewards are in class perks such as bring a stuff animal to class, using marker instead of pencils, etc. These motivation methods are often referred to as operant conditioning. It is believed that a learned behavior response increases in “likelihood” if a reinforcement is available. In regards to motivation, the learned behavior response is motivation and the reinforcement is the motivator to get the needed
It is important that teachers give children a fair chance to show their knowledge when assessing. “The purpose of assessment is to provide feedback that can be used to improve student performance” (Orange 2000). Teachers assess children to ensure that they are understanding the material, and to make sure they are learning. For young children, tests should never be the only criteria for assessment. Instructors should always make sure that their assessment is fair.
The teachers were giving the students positive reinforcement throughout the day. In class we talked about how positive reinforcement helps the students to succeed in their classes. Another ah-ha moment was the environment of the classroom. The classroom had no windows at all. In class we talked about what kinds of things are distracting to students with ASD in classrooms and one of those things are the windows in classrooms. The third ah-ha moment was the parent sheets that the teacher and the school provide for the parents. In class we talked about how parent involvement is very important for the students with disabilities. The teacher fills out the parent involvement paper that lets the parents know how the child did in school this week and what their child needs to improve on. The students must give their paper to their parents to look at when they get home. The things that I had learned during my observation experience that I will use in the future for my classroom will be including student learning objectives in the classroom, using positive reinforcement, and get the parents more involved in their child’s education. I will go over with the students what the student learning objectives are in the beginning of class so the students will know what they will be doing and what they will be learning throughout the day. I also will use positive