Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Blog Post 2
Mr. Gates is a 3rd grade teacher and he is giving his students a lesson about grammar. The topic is noun and verbs and how we use them together in sentences. Later on they will talk about the past tense of these verbs. One thing that one could observe in his classroom is that he uses a positive reinforcement strategy to get students to participate in the activity. When Sally answers a question correctly, she got a gold star on the classroom chart. This is Mr. Gates giving Sally something to increase her behavior. A second thing one could observe is that when David talked rudely to another student who had the wrong answer, Mr. Gates looked at him sternly and David immediately sat in the chair in the back of the classroom without being told. This is an example of operant conditioning because Mr. Gates has repeatedly preformed this punishment for the students' bad behavior. David automatically knew the punishment for his behavior. A third thing one could observe is that Mr. Gates implements negative punishment as well. During this activity all of the students started with three animal erasers. If they misbehaved in any way he would take away one piece of candy to decrease the behavior.
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This is an excellent example of Mr. Gate's reward/take away strategy, which would most definitely be seen in a classroom of a behaviorist, like Mr. Gates. If one was observing Mr. Gate's classroom, he/she might also see this system at work, and observe the increasing and decreasing behaviors.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that this is an excellent example! I didn't think about that aspect of the class, like what he would teach and how he would. I talked more about the ways in which he would reward them/punish them. I think your examples seem realistic and one could see how the behaviors differ.
ReplyDeleteI like your examples and how you broke down each one into the specific behavior and how it was being shaped. However, isnt the second example also negative punishment? Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteI like your examples. So many little things, such as the example of the stern glance, fall into behaviorism, though I don't often think about that! The fact that you emphasized Mr. Gates's repetition of reinforcement is also very important. I know in my experience, if a teacher only does something once, such as yell at students, no one will take it seriously, but if the teacher's behavior continues, the students' behavior will adapt to it.
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