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Responses to Merrill
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Responses to Merrill
Wordle Response to Classroom Managment 3
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ReplyDeleteThe strategies and techniques that I remember most teachers using in my elementary school years were reading incentive programs. One, known as the Pizza Hut "Book It" program, allowed each student a free personal pan-pizza after reaching a certain goal each month. Another reading incentive program that was used in my school was part of the Iowa Children's Choice Award. Each year my school would receive a collection of books that had been selected as finalist Children’s Choice books, and we, the students, were to read a certain number of books (determined by grade level) and write a short review/summary on them. If we reached the goal, we would be able to go to an ice cream or pizza party at the end of a certain time period.
ReplyDeleteI know that both these programs are still used in the school I went to motivate reading. Personally, I was a motivated reader as a child so the incentive was an added bonus for me and not something that made me read more since I already read a lot. Nonetheless, both in the past and present, there are students who are extrinsically motivated to read for the prize and won’t read unless they have that incentive, so this technique may only be a temporary motivator. There are also students who disregard the incentive completely and don’t enjoy participating in the program because they dislike reading immensely. I think that these programs can be used as tools to motivate students to read, but teachers should also instill intrinsic motivation for reading in students; otherwise, the incentive programs will be ineffective.
The biggest motivator at my elementary school was "Peacemaker Tickets." If a student was productive in class, attentive, helping other students, or being a "good citizen" they were given a peacemaker ticket. At the end of each month, there would be a school wide drawing of peacemaker tickets and if your name was drawn you could pick a prize. Prizes ranged from a week pass of sitting in your teacher's chair, to lunch with the principal, to erasers & pencils. This motivated students to want to learn and be kind to one another because the better your behavior and learning, the more tickets you received from your teacher. And more tickets in the drawing means your name has a better chance of getting drawn.
ReplyDeleteI definitely still think this motivator would be effective today. It was fun fo me as a student because it was a school wide motivator. Whether you were in 1st grade or 5th grade, you all were working towards the same goal. I also still think this is effective because students would still be motivated by the concept of getting their name drawn. Sure, the prizes may be different by the time I teach, but this motivator definitely could still be just as effective as it was for me when I was in school.
I remember in my 5th grade classroom my teacher would give us something called "happy corners." If we did well on a project or paper, he would write "excellent" or "good work" on the top right corner of our papers. We could cut these corners off and put them into a jar on his desk. When this jar was full he would give us some sort of reward, usually a pizza party, have class outside or an extra recess at the end of the day.
ReplyDeleteI believe this was an excellent motivator because going to a strict catholic school growing up we were not usually allowed to deviate from their schedule they had planned out. So this was a nice change of pace and gave us something to look forward to. Many teachers have used this technique in the past to motivate their students and as far as I can tell, it has benefited many of my classes in elementary grades.
I agree with what Aynur said about the "Book it" technique this will definitely motivate students to continue reading because they will receive a prize for all their hard work. Many children will not be motivated to read unless there is an incentive.
ReplyDeleteI remember growing up, my teachers would always have a special reading day. These days would usually take place on a friday or an early out day. We would take our books out to the court yard or in the front lawn and had a shared reading experience. This was memorable for me because we got a change of scenery as well as got to act as "teachers" for the day.
I remember that a technique my 6th grade teacher would use to reward the whole class for a good day was reading time. If the whole class went the whole day with no major incidents, then for the last period of the day the teacher would read to us from a book that we had chosen as a class. If we didn't have a good day, then we were told we needed to do our individual reading. This was quite the punishment because if we behaved and she read, then we were allowed to have snacks (quietly) or even put our heads down and rest. The only real rule was that we couldn't bother the other students.
ReplyDeleteI remember really enjoying this, because it was really nice to have someone else read the story while I could sit back and let my imagination handle the illustrations. I feel that this also made students enjoy reading just a little more. I'm not really sure if this would still work in classes. I think that with the right class and at the right age level it definitely could. I would like to try to implement this in my classroom, given that the students are old enough to handle the opportunity for "free reign".
I remember back in my fifth grade class, my teacher would hand out "money tickets" for good grades, good behavior, participating in class, and performing jobs around the classroom. Then at the end of the week she gave you a chance to either double your money or lose it by chancing it all on a bean bag toss. After so many weeks of this, she would then hold a classroom "auction" where we used our paper money we had earned to buy different prizes that she had. She used these auctions as a motivator to keep students on task and wanting to do better for their own good. I think this was a great motivator back then and would be in a classroom today, because no student was singled out for not having good grades or doing poorly in school, but was motivated to do better in order to win these prizes and to be able to participate in these classroom auctions. On top of the motivation, we were expected to add up our money on our own and taught the value of saving.
ReplyDeleteI liked the motivator Haley Ashenfelter listed. The happy corners is a great way to get the entire class involved without singling certain kids out, but by still motivating every kid to contribute to the jar. I think that this would still be a very effective technique in today's classroom. Also, I agree that it is a great change of pace for students, and helps them to set goals for their classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe strategies and incentives I remember my past teachers using while I was younger, was rewarding our class with parties or special themed days if we read a certain amount of books. I remember being very competitive to try and read as many books as possible to help contribute to our 'fun days.' I also remember having a 'tent day' where the teacher would set up a big tent in the room and we could dress up in pajamas and read books in the tent.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that our local library did in the summer was a reading program, where you would log in how many minutes you read and once you got to a certain number you would receive a prize. The more you read, the bigger the prize was. I remember being very motivated to finish my chart during the summer time. This was a great idea for kids to continue to motivate children to read even when they aren't in school.
I like the idea that Brittany shared about the "money tickets." I like this strategy because it was almost like a game in a sense where you could either be rewarded for your good behaviors or you could gamble and lose all of the ticket money. I think that keeps students motivated because in order to receive the ticket money; students would have to watch their behavior which makes for a cooperative and controlled classroom.
ReplyDeleteI like the Peacemaker tickets that Kelli mentioned. It's a great reinforcement for positive and wanted behavior. I think it's important to encourage and call students out for good behavior rather than just discipline them on the bad. In many of the Cedar Falls schools, the Character Counts program is wide spread and a similar motivator is used in which teachers "write up" students that they catch doing good behavior, and then those students are entered into a school wide drawing for a prize. Even if they don't get a prize, I think it still motivates students to behave well and follow the characteristics that are encouraged in Character Counts. They also become aware of what positive behavior is and of their own positive behavior. This kind of motivator also creates a school sense of community because, like Kelli said, all students throughout the school are working toward the same goal.
ReplyDeleteIn elementary school, now and even when I was there, they have two main reading motivational programs. They have "Read a Million Minutes" and they also had "AR". "Read a Million Minutes" was a program where you could read any book or have someone read a book to you and you would record your minutes. The goal was to have your school reach a million minutes to have a celebration as a whole school with arcade games and events. This is a great motivational skill because it allows students to read or have someone read to them something that they are interested in instead of reading required materials or certain books. This leads me to "AR" reading. "AR" is pretty much what I just described, with students having certain materials. Each student has their own reading level and each book is marked with a specific reading level. So students can only read the books in their reading level and be quizzed over them in order to increase their "AR" points. Once they have reached 100% or a total of 50 points in AR then they are given the opportunity to choose something special as a class to do. Like an extra recess, or math game groups, etc.
ReplyDeleteI really like Sarah's comment. It reminded me of when I was in 5th grade and we had the same deal. The teacher let us pick the book as a class and she would read a chapter or two a day. I can't believe that I still remember the book she read us and many details about the book as well. The one problem I see about this strategy is that students won't feel that they are required to read or listen for that matter. Some students might see it as a free time to not care and think of other things to do at the time.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I remember of elementary school and how teachers motivated student learning, the teachers would generally tend to use reading logs, math brain teasers, and different parts of reward programs for kids in the class. Just like Aynur mentioned, they would use pizza or other forms of reward as motivation for students to reach for. One of the things that I have noticed that teachers still do in elementary school is keep detailed logs of how much children read or study at home. I know that when I was getting older in school I would use those logs and keep track of how many books or pages that I had read or studied. I also agree with what Brittany said about teachers handing our money tickets, our second grade teacher would have a reward chest full of little prizes and if we could collect so many tickets, we were able to redeem them for a prize at the end of the week, usually for good behavior in class or working on work well.
ReplyDeleteI know for lower elementary grades a big problem in the classroom everyday is staying on task and getting lesson plans completed. This is due to the very short attention span that elementary level students have. I know one strategy that my elementary teachers used in my classroom to help us stay on task was rewarding us with "free" time when we were done with a certain assignment or task. This was still structured so the free time wasn't chaotic. Free time consisted of free reading, center activities, or programs on the computer. This strategy has its pros and cons. It was effective for the teacher because we usually got through the lesson for that day. That being said, all the students had the wrong attitude of classroom work. We were all worried about getting through the task quickly instead of doing our best quality work.
ReplyDeleteI love the strategy that Sarah listed. I am a strong believer in giving students free reading time, especially in the high elementary/middle levels. I know that studies have shown that giving students time to read during the day can be very beneficial. I know when I was that age and even into high school I looked forward to that free reading time. This is an activity that is still considered an award, but nothing I wouldn't rush through my work to get to. This is a great motivation strategy.
ReplyDelete