There were two strategies talked about in this week’s resources. The first is reinforcing effort. At our school we have used the Baldrige approach. We introduce charts and graphs to show the students behaviors. One popular chart is attendance. This correlates with behaviorism because usually if the student has good attendance then they will get an award or some type of praise at the end of the quarter.
The second strategy is homework and practice. I use a couple websites to help me with this. The first one is Quia.com. I have online quizzes and have set up games to help the student with vocabulary. Another website is one from the book I use. On this website the students can take a test, quiz, or just play games all while learning or reinforces the material discussed. This correlates with the drill and practice idea of behaviorism.
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I love these classes because they help us to put a name to some of the strategies and techniques that we implement in our schools and classrooms. A great example of this is the reinforcing of effort. We currently do data chats at school with every child so that they can see how they performed maybe a month ago on a certain task compare to a week ago. This gives the students an opportunity to become apart of their own success.
ReplyDeleteI believe internalizing learning is a key component in student achievement. Through monitoring activities such as the one correlating effort with achievement, students are responsible for monitoring their growth and the areas they need to improve. This along with other engaging elements such as the use of technology make learning more rewarding because of their own efforts, not through some external factors.
ReplyDeleteYou are right in that if homework is not given any feedback, it's a waste of time. If teachers don't take the initiative to reiterate the importance of homework and providing feedback, students just aren't going to do it. And, those that do take the iniative to complete homework and proceed to do it incorrectly, there is not much hope for success. Providing feedback to homework is critical so students can monitor what they are doing wrong and correct it before it's too late.
I like your idea of using charts in your classroom to show classroom attendance. This would defiantly help students that are visual learners to see how they are doing in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you use the internet to come up with fun quizes and homework for your students to do. This helps students to reinforce what they learned during the day as well as use technology in the classroom!
I'm just curious if all students can see other student's performance or if through the websites their identities are protected. I don't really have a problem with the sharing, but I know of some parents that might have concerns, especially if their child was being presented in a negative light.
ReplyDeleteYour use of on-line quizzes is a great strategy. I really like the use of these tools, and even allow my kids to take "Tops" tests (quizzes with 5 essential questions) in lieu of their homework. Students performing at 80% or higher do not need to complete the assigned homework. This has been a great incentive for some of the kids.
Szczipp,
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the charts these are done individually. The students can share this information with each other if they want to.
The websites only show their results and not the results of others.
Thanks for your comments
Kwitt,
ReplyDeleteThe one common element I observed that promotes the behaviorist theory of learning between reinforcing effort and homework and practice is feedback. When students relate poor academic achievement to stimuli outside of their control, they have that “why bother” attitude because they feel they will not achieve no matter how much effort is employed. Behaviorists believe this is not true. They believe behavior can be unlearned and replaced with a desired behavior. Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski found this to be true in reinforcing effort. By creating an effort rubric, students can gain immediate feedback on how their effort correlates with their achievement and then make the adjustments needed to improve so they can meet their goals, thus changing a specific behavior/s.
~Retta