Blog Post 2
Mr. Gates
teaches math in a first grade classroom.
He uses a sticker chart to give positive reinforcement to students that
turn in their homework everyday for the week.
The chart is a positive way in which students will increase the behavior
of turning in their homework each week.
Once a student receives a certain amount of stickers they get a prize
for their positive behavior. Mr. Gates
uses negative reinforcement to increase student’s positive behaviors. When students actively participate and listen
during class time, he awards them with less homework since he understands that
they listened during class and participated they will be more likely to
understand the concepts. Mr. Gates uses
positive punishment in his classroom to decrease negative behaviors. Mr. Gates might add on a homework assignment
to students that are not listening during class time. This added on homework assignment will hopefully
eventually decrease the negative behaviors of students not listening or
participating during class because they wont want to have extra assignments.
First, I love the sticker chart idea! I think that kids love getting prizes and would definitely do their homework to get those stickers! On the other hand though, with your less homework and more homework, the book tells us that we don't want to send our students the message that homework is undesirable. (Although I'm pretty sure this would have worked for me.) We do, though, want to show our students that learning is important and therefore it is important to have the homework that we assign them.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly to your last post, what do you mean by 'positive' behaviors? It's important to be specific, because these things are relative. Talking loudly may be considered 'positive' in a project based learning classroom, while 'negative' in a strict instructionist traditional classroom. Additionally, be careful (or use another term) since positive and negative have an entirely different meaning for Behaviorists.
ReplyDeleteBe very careful in using any language about 'understanding' when talking about behaviorism. Above it seems that you're implying students will understand concepts simply because they produced particular behaviors, while that's not necessarily true, and behaviorists simply wouldn't discuss the mind. They would aim for the child to produce the desired behavior (the specific desired behavior may be 'responding to this question as I train them'). You specify some of the behaviors above, but could be even more specific. For example, 'listening'--how can you visibly tell they're listening? Is the behavior 'making eye contact and not looking distracted'? And participation is something like 'raises hand when question is asked'?
Nice job in breaking down the type of negative/positive punishment/reinforcement and each behavior!