The revamp
Well, I’ve hit the wall: after 5 years of consistently working in my favor, my classroom management plan ran into a group of kids that wanted nothing to do with it. I traditionally have run a modified Assertive Discipline. I’ve generally not been a big fan of rewards, especially after reading Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards.
Unfortunately, this year, the students just don’t seem to be as interested in learning for the sake of learning. A month or so ago, I slightly restructured my rules to emphasize certain points, and drastically restructured my behavior sheets to provide less seemingly random points and more specific feedback for parents on behavior in the classroom. Sadly, this wasn’t enough.
Needless to say, I’m well aware of the basic tenet that good lesson plans lead to less behavior problems. There’s only one problem: that’s not really in my control. I spend about two thirds of my instructional time teaching scripted programs. Awesome for McGraw-Hill, certainly, but honestly not full of excitement for me or the kids.
So here I am, with one third of the school year left, and students still having difficulty focusing and controlling their classroom behavior. I need to take drastic action, which can include upending some of my traditions and closely held beliefs in the effort to try and make the upcoming twelve weeks successful in a way that the rest of the year wasn’t.
I’m caving on rewards.
I’ve been pondering the best way to do that for a couple of weeks now. Finally, this morning as my mind wandered while I showered, I came up with what to me seemed to be a workable system.
This afternoon I went out and hit the local Lakeshore Learning store, Staples, and Acme to get a bunch of stuff that I can use:
If you click on that, you’ll see my notes about the different items.
The basic plan: Each period of the day students can earn a sticker on the chart that will be attached to their desk. They will earn those stickers for following the rules in class, as demonstrated on their behavior sheets. I’m pretty understanding that my kids will slip as we learn a system, so I’ll give them the benefit of doubt. If they make one mistake but fix it, they can still earn their sticker.
I’m looking for 80% compliance to start…students who earn four out of five stickers will be eligible for one of the reward items. I’m going to do an interval reward system, so it won’t be every day, but will happen more frequently these first couple of weeks with decreasing amounts of prize days over time. Students who meet the 80% mark for the week will also be eligible for reward time at the end of the week.
I figure that I’ll set alarms into my iPhone to go off at times when I want to give out rewards, which will then make it so it’s a set schedule, so that the students won’t need to ask me, they’ll just wait for the alarms. I’ll probably have more than one reward tomorrow, , reduce that over the week, with at least one day this week with no reward to show it’s not every day.
Now to come up with a concise plan for presenting it to the kids tomorrow.
March 15th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I’ve been teaching kids who are “at-risk” for a long, long time. I’ve tried all kinds of strategies and have found the one that works the best consistently for me is to catch my students doing good. I too went shopping for rewards that kids like and that they could redeem at the end of class or week. Sometimes I have a lottery for bigger prizes like gift certificate for movies or rentals etc.
I focus less on the negative and more on the positive. I find that while I’m praising kids for having their books open, being on time, listening attentively, showing mutual respect etc, other kids start to do those things to. Some students do not have the internal motivation that we would like so we have to help them in a positive way.
Good luck.
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March 15th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Well, as a school psychologist whose training was primarily of the cognitive-behavioral school, you know I am down with this sort of thing. Sounds like you’ve got the right ideas and the right structure, to say nothing of the fact that your willingness to do this demonstrates a much more humanistic approach than the teacher whose solution to a similar problem is “yell louder.”
The only suggestion I’ll add is to make sure that your reinforcers are, well… reinforcing! Will your kids want to earn these reinforcers? If not, and I hate to say this after you’ve put a lot of your own time and money into selecting them, it may pay to re-visit that end of things.
Also, can they earn stickers not only for not exhibiting undesired behaviors, but also for exhibiting appropriate/desired ones? Always want to make sure we teach the desired skills.
Again, kudos. Wish more folks would be as willing to track the data in class as you are. It’s a bit more work for the teacher up front, but you’ll all benefit in the end.
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March 15th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
If you are in the market for another program, one that I would highly recommend is Love and Logic by Jim Fay. Here’s a site for more details or to read up on the program: http://www.loveandlogic.com/articles.html It works with all kinds of kids’ even adults!
Just thought I’d pass it along. It’s difficult to monitor students when you are working with small groups. The kids need to learn to monitor themselves.
Keep us posted on how things are going.
March 15th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
When there is a group acceptance of apathy and of lack of interest to learn, It becomes very difficult for teachers to focus on anything else. I can deal with the poor behavior, but the apathy kills me.
The best chance for success with your plan is your consistency. I don’t have the patience to make this kind of plan work, I hope you do.
You are absolutely right that the best way to solve the problem would be with better lessons, but since it is scripted that doesn’t leave you much choice. I still think that the time that is not scripted could be your best option. I think if you could find a way to make that time work for your students, you may be able to get away with the scripted stuff.
There is another option that might make next year work better. Interested in moving to SW Missouri? ;}
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March 16th, 2009 at 4:31 am
I’ve used a prize bucket for several years with my 8th graders and it works pretty well (not a miracle cure, though). I tend to find cool/funky finger puppets or little plastic toys to give out. When I go to a conference, I snag a lot of stressball-type swag from vender booths. I’ve had a lot of success with little plastic animals and dinosaurs from WallMart. Also, living in rural NH, I’ve had good luck with yardsales and the swapshop at our dump for finding little plastic toys. I try not to give food.
My rules for giving a prize from the prize bucket:
1. NO consistancy at all. It is totally random re-enforcement. When a student has answered a hard question or made a really good point or done something that deserves recognition, they may or MAY NOT get a prize.
2. They can’t ask for a prize. If they do, they automatically don’t get one. (This keeps my class from devolving into endless negotiations and whining about prizes.) Their buddies aren’t allowed to ask for them either.
3. When we’re entering a big, “HEY pay attention” time – exam review, last units of the year, etc…, I visit a party store and stock up on really, REALLY cool prizes and make an extra big deal about them. In past years, that’s bought me a bit more focus when I needed it.
Good luck. I share your pain! (See my post on this year’s knuckleheads: http://tinyurl.com/bfrkb8 ) What is it with this year’s group? (We’re getting another one the year after next that make this one look like the Von Trapp children!)
May 1st, 2009 at 8:38 am
Hi Dan,
Like you I hate handing out rewards and stickers! The best reward I ever found for high school kids was being able to spend the last five minutes of every session as ‘catch up time’ if I didn’t have to pull them up for being off task.They could catch up with each other or catch up on their work -it didn’t matter to me either way. Even the non complaint ones wanted that.Gave me a chance to talk to the kids and get to know them. Some even wanted to ask questions about the work and I figured that I was wasting at least that much time trying to get them motivated anyway especially if I had to teach to a text – Blahhh!
For my junior Special Ed kids I offer a five minute time yourself out option to do something to get their alert levels just right
( within a range of structured choices) and have physical breaks with games that involve small space physical activites like chair push up competitions. It gets everyone laughing and changes the mood of the room. Not many kids have ever asked me for a 5 minute time out because once they know they can ask for it at any time they don’t have a reason to escape from the task. Hopefully that means that my lessons are interesting too! I don’t have to teach to a text – thank goodness!
Sometimes at the end of a good session we share a block of chocolate! I have some too:)
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July 31st, 2009 at 11:58 am
[...] from writing a lot, partly because I needed some serious cooldown and reflection time. As I previously hinted, I spent the last school year in my worst year as a teacher since I started teaching. My students [...]