Positive Reinforcement

M4.U5.A1

Applying Classroom Rules and Procedures

Positive Reinforcement

There are 9 Action Steps that come from chapter 7 in “The Art and Science of Teaching” that a teacher can take to incorporate positive reinforcement. The steps are broken down into two categories; those that are following the rules and those that are not following the rules. I will talk about these nine action steps and when I have used these steps in my own classes.

Positive reinforcement for those that ARE following the rules.

Step 1: Use Simple Verbal and Nonverbal Acknowledgment

Verbal

• Simply saying good job and encouraging the good behavior
• The teacher can also choose to single one student out or commend the whole class.
• if the teacher knows that a student is not particularly fond of public acknowledgment the teacher can walk by and speak to the student in a tone that is not audible to the students sitting nearby. This way the student isn’t embarrassed in front of the whole class.
• this can go for positive or negative behavior

Nonverbal

• Nonverbal acknowledgment can also be a great tool this can be done by;
• smiling, thumbs up, nodding, a wink or even an OK sign.

*** I do these all the time. I am constantly saying good job and encouraging my students. Kids here in South Korea love high fives so I try and give out as many high fives as possible! ***

Step 2: Use Tangible Recognition When Appropriate

• The teacher can use a points system and then at the end of the day or week the student(s) can be awarded a prize.
• With high school or middle school, the teacher can do something like a phone call home, email or a written note to be given to the parents.
• I also thought of the teacher possibly awarding a few points extra credit if the students accumulate a certain amount of points.

*** Most of my classes have some sort of points based system in them. When I am working with grade 1 and 2 often times their team reward is to line up first at the end of the class. I know when I was in middle and high school I loved when a teacher assigned extra credit, so that could be a great encouragement for higher level grades. ***

Step 3: Involve the Home in Recognition of Positive Student Behavior

• This step is very similar to step 2 for the students in high school and middle school however for elementary school children you can send home a note, email or phone call home to the parents.
• This does not have to be extravagant but just something to highlight the student’s good behavior.

Positive reinforcement for those that ARE NOT following the rules.

Step 4: Be With-It - (withitness)

In this chapter they break down withitness into four different sections; being proactive, occupying the entire room, noticing potential problems, and using a series of graduated actions.

• Being Proactive
• The teacher should try and notice or know what is happening outside of the classroom:
• Students in an argument in the hall...
• The previous day certain students got into a fight…
• Occupying the Entire Room
• The teacher moves throughout all areas of the room
• This does not mean that one area cannot be utilized more for teaching - the teacher should just always be aware of what is happening in all areas of the class.
• Noticing Potential Problems
• Be aware of your students normal behavior so that way you are able to notice when they are not acting within their normal behavior.
• Prior to class, several students are huddled together talking intensely.
• One or more students have not been engaged in a class activity for an extended period of time.
• Students sitting in one area keep looking at each other and smiling.
• Members of the class keep looking at a specific location and smiling.
• Students giggle or smile whenever the teacher looks at or walks near a particular part of the room.
• When the teacher’s back is turned toward the class, whispering or giggling can be heard, or unusual noises can be heard from a particular part of the room.
• Using a Series of Graduated Actions
• Once the teacher realizes what issue is causing a disruption in the class, they can then act in a manner that puts an end to the behavior problem that it caused.
• Looking at the suspected students.
• Moving in the direction of students.
• Stopping the class and confronting the behavior.

*** Surprises me about Korean teachers. not moving students and not anticipating future misbehavior. This happened as recently as last week. Two students were randomly put in a group together and when they are together they cause a lot of disruption. I noticed this right away and mentioned it to my co-teacher, they hesitated and then went ahead and followed my suggestion. Many of the students misbehavior goes unnoticed by the Korean teachers that I work with. Students hitting other students isn’t really as serious in Korean elementary schools. I will notice students slapping the back of the head of the student in front of them all the time, and the Korean teachers continue on without noticing. So, when it is time for me to teach I will often separate the students even before they have a chance to fool around in class with the other students that are sitting near them. ***

Step 5: Use Direct-Cost Consequences

Direct-cost consequences are applied once a negative behavior has progressed beyond a point where it can be addressed by withitness.

• For an elementary school that could be a small office just outside the assistant principal’s office as the time-out room. This room is constantly monitored by a teacher or administrator.
• For middle and high this could be Saturday school and detention

*** In the school that I work at, once a situation is a little above a simple in-class discipline, they will take their students to either the head teacher or the VP. In Korean schools, there is a tier ranking for teachers. From top to bottom; principal, vice principal, head teacher, lead teacher for the grade, then the normal homeroom teacher. ***

Step 6: Use Group Contingency

• This can be when the teacher decides to hold the whole class back for the misbehavior for one or a number of students.
• This idea is that all the students are in this together.
• This can also be used in the same way for positive behavior.

*** I have not implemented this very often in my class, however my co-teacher does this fairly frequently. In Korean society is very much “we are one.” So if the teacher is going to hold a student after they will hold the whole class back. When I hold students after class i tend to try and give them one on one so that i am not embarrassing them in front of the whole class. I do not hold students after class only when they are disrupting or misbehaving, more often than not i actually hold kids after to give them praise and commend them on their work or behavior. I did this last week actually in my summer camp. I asked for three students to stay after and since I was teaching at a camp these students are not used to my style. So, when I asked the students to stay after they were very scared and very nervous but this time it was only to give them praise.***

Step 7: Use Home Contingency

• Home Contingency is when the student, teacher and parents meet to discuss the child’s behavior.
• This allows the student to explain themselves and also to help come up with a plan to remedy their misbehavior.

*** This is very difficult for a foreigner in Korea to do but I see the benefits for this action. If the teacher and parents are able to communicate more effectively I see how this step is a great action plan to use with children that need extra help in and out of the classroom. ***

Step 8: Have a Strategy for High-Intensity Situations

• A high-intensity situation is when a student’s behavior becomes too extreme and begins to threaten the other students or teacher. There are a few steps to take when a child behaves this way.
• Recognize That the Student Is Out of Control
• Step Back and Calm Yourself
• Taking a few steps back can indicate that you do not mean to bring any physical harm to the student.
• Listen Actively to the Student and Plan Action
• If the student still has not calmed down then the teacher will plan on how to get the student or the other students out of the classroom.
• When the Student Is Calm, Repeat Simple Verbal Request
• Ask the student to step out into the hall with the teacher.

*** This very important. Some time or another a student (or students) will behave in manor that is much more difficult to manage. In these high-intensity times the teacher MUST stay calm and think clearly. As humans we will have a tendency to want to react, but as teachers we must ALWAYS breathe deeply, remain clear headed, and react appropriately. We must not be caught of guard and ill prepared for any given situation. The times when teachers are not prepared for how to handle a situation that is when teachers overreact or mishandle a situation. ***

Step 9: Design an Overall Plan for Disciplinary Problems

• Teachers should design a plan that addresses multiple different behavior problems and how to handle them.

Here is a flowchart that a teacher can use to address multiple different behavior problems.

Academic Performance Expectations

Korea’s Performance Expectations

National Rank

When it comes to testing there are not many countries that can contend with Korea. If you want TEST results then Korea is the country for you. Depending on what charts and years you are looking at South Korea is in the top five when it comes to Mathematics and Problem Solving. They contend with Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan. In looking up statistics and numbers, there were a couple other countries that would sneak into that top five but generally it was these five Asian countries.

4th Grade Math

8th Grade math

Korea Overall

Why?

So why does Korea do so well in their test scores? Much like other countries teachers have to constantly go to teacher training seminars. The teachers in Korea are well educated. Teachers in Korea are constantly being evaluated and critiqued. It is not like yay I received my teaching license, so now I can relax. They are always under review and needing to improve themselves. Teachers in Korea (at least the province I work in) actually cannot stay in the same school for more than 4 years. The teacher must rotate schools and always be under different leadership. Because of this constant change teachers are always learning from their peers and learning to get a wide range of teaching styles and techniques.

Korea also gives a LARGE amount of money into their education. Koreans view of education is that it is extremely vital to their success as a country because they cannot rely on other means of economic growth. (ie. natural resources or even their land mass since they are such a small country) In my opinion I think this is why Korea has made such a large push in technology and electronics in the last 25 years. This is one of their greatest assets and strengths to their country.

Academic Expectations

These students have a tremendous amount of expectations placed on them.

Teachers -

Are constantly evaluating them and giving them tests. Their class work is strictly designed for testing. The teachers only teach for the test, so many of them put a lot of pressure on the students to perform well on the test because that will then reflect on them preparing them for that test.

School/School District -

The government of Korea analyses each province and their test scores. As a result, this trickles down to the district and school. Each school will push their students to do better. From what I have seen, the better the test results, the more funding the school will receive.

Parents -

Parents put a TON of pressure on their children. They make them go to academy or after school programs until late into the night. For the families that have more money, this will generally mean that the students will go to more private academies and have more pressure on them to receive high marks. In Korea, the measure of success is your pocketbook.

Students -

Since the teachers, school and parents put so much pressure on them they feel like there is nothing else they can do but perform at academics. With all of this pressure put on them they end up putting it on themselves and so they become very competitive with their classmates and must ALWAYS be first (which is nice when you want to play a game with them :P ). In Korea the competition for jobs and getting into the ‘best’ university to get that job is extremely high. So students will study endlessly in High School so that they can receive high enough marks on their Korean-ACT to get into University. This pressure is so enormous that Korea is among the highest rate of teenage suicide in the world.

Personal View

Korea has its strengths but it definitely has its weaknesses. It is important for teachers to place a level of academic expectations on their students, but it should not be at the extreme that i feel Korea places on it students. Sure, I think that their scores are phenomenal but at what expense? So many of the children here cannot be children. They are getting only 3-4 hours of sleep a night in high school, because of their private academies and amount of studying they do. USA is nowhere close to perfect, in fact USA needs a lot of improvement in its education world, but kids can still be kids. Education is extremely important, but to me life should be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. Life is not about studying 18 hours a day. If studying is something someone enjoys and they WANT to invest this time into it, the by all means do it, but the children in Korea should not receive this much pressure to perform.

Learning Environments

Creating High-Performance Learning Environments

This blog post is an analysis on three videos.

• Academic expectations - do you think the teacher holds high-performance expectations for students in each of these scenarios? Why or why not?

• Behavior expectations - do you think behavior expectations are high for students in each scenario? Why or why not?

• Norms and Procedures - what are the norms and procedures in these scenarios that support high student performance?

Video #1

Click this link to see the video.

Academic Expectations -

In this video, I could tell that the teacher, Ms. Migdol, was holding all students accountable for their progress as a team. They had to collaborate as a team and complete the objective of building a successful rollercoaster. Each member of the team had their own role and they each had a responsibility that they had to perform. Some students were in charge of measuring, recording, accounting, and organizing. The students all had to work together to complete the task. They were also given limited resources that would then cause them to use a higher level of problem-solving. You could see the way that Ms. Migdol was interacting with her students and level of challenge she gave them that she was holding them to a high-performance expectation. If the students were incorrect in their assessment of what they should do, Ms. Migdol would walk them through their thought process and let them realize on their own what was wrong, and what they should do to fix the problem.

Behavior Expectations -

Although Ms. Migdol never mentioned behavior or disciplined any students in the video, you could sense that the students had an expectation of how they should behave and interact with their classmates. The students all seemed to be engaged in the class and willing to participate in the lesson.

Norms & Procedures -

All the students looked as they knew what was expected of them and participated equally in the lesson. They also had an idea of the flow of the class. They knew that they could not just jump right into racing the marble down the track, they knew that there were steps that had to be taken first in order to complete the objective.

Video #2

Academic Expectations -

In the video, it looked like the teacher had her rhythm and the students knew her format of teaching. Most of the students seemed engaged and participating in her lesson. I felt as though they had done this many times and that it was not something new to them, so the level of expectation the teacher had for them in this particular video might have been on par with what they were doing. In the video, it didn't seem like it was as much of teaching as it was a review. In the required reading, it talked about the way teachers teach and a method they have been using for a couple thousand years. While it does work (Chinese math scores are very high) it is very boring and uninviting to the students. I work with a Chinese woman, and she told me that she never did anything to engage them in class. It was always lecturing and testing. While expectations were high for her there was not any enjoyment in learning.

Behavior Expectations -

There was a child in the back that was looking around and not engaged in the lesson at all. I would assume maybe he didn't know Chinese well enough to keep up or was just generally uninterested in the lesson. The teacher did not seem to notice him much because her time spent teaching was with her back to the students and them all surrounding her. So if some of the students are not engaging or decide to not participate in the lesson they could easily fall through the cracks. In the required reading that we had, the students could feel board with this style of teaching and then in that boredom, they could act out in class.

Norms & Procedures -

As I mentioned above in the academic expectations portion, it looked like the teacher had a rhythm to teaching and the ones that were participating looked like they were learning from her. When working with elementary school children it is important to have a system and order to your class. Children need structure, so it was good that she had a rhythm to her class that helped the students engage with her a little better.

Video #3

Academic Expectations -

During this video, the students were constantly interacting with the teacher through actions and attention getter type chants. When students are engaging in the lesson with actions it is another type of learning other than visual or audio. The teacher seemed to have some sort of academic standard that the students must obtain. She was trying to get them engaging more with the curriculum so that their retention of the subject matter would be increased.

Behavior Expectations -

Since she was constantly chatting with the class and having them respond back to her and with their other classmates it left little time for the students to get bored and start disrupting their neighbors. Most of the class seemed to enjoy it and were participating in the motions & response. I watched another one of her videos and there was a girl that came in late to her class, as that girl was sitting down she reviewed the rules in her chanting/action sort of way. It was clear that she didn’t let it happen and that she stuck to the rules in her class.

Norms & Procedures -

This teacher had to teach her students a lot at the beginning of the year what she wanted from them in terms of teacher-student responses. With this style of teaching, she would not be able to get to many different areas of subject matter since she spends so much time on the actions and partner responses. With this style of teaching, it can be good for the students to remember certain vocabulary words but she will not be able to spend as much time on other areas. So there are definite strong and weak points to this whole brain style of teaching.

Personal Summary -

I really liked the first video. This really looks like a class that i would enjoy learning or teaching in. The interactiveness of the lesson, the hands on learning was really awesome to see. I have never seen or heard of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)  learning. It is great to see multiple subject combined into one to reach a certain goal. I liked this more than the other two styles. With the chinese math lesson, the teacher seemed very much engaged in her rhythmic style teaching and much of the class was focused on her. The 21st century style teaching we are trying to get away from teachers lecturing in front of the class with their backs to the board. As for the whole brain style of teaching, my first reaction was i do not like this at all, but as i watch more of it and thought about it i could see some of its benefits. For me as an individual I don’t really see myself participating in this style of learning or teaching. I am usually a little more shy and with all this action and involvement it would make me feel a little out of place and uncomfortable. It does help engage the kinesthetic learners though (which i would say i am - just not in this way).

I would like to teach higher levels of elementary or middle school science, and STEM education would fall perfectly into what i would like to do. I loved the collaboration with their classmates, the individual jobs they had to reach a team goal, and multiple subject matter used to achieve that objective. This was a great video and i could see myself in this role more than the other two videos.

Establishing a Positive Classroom Climate - M4.U1.A3

Positive Classroom Environment

Constructing a Positive Classroom

Setting up a positive classroom is an essential part of being a teacher. A positive classroom changes the students learning and behavioral dynamics.

Safety is one of the number one things that a teacher should establish in their class. The teacher must be able to let the students feel that they are always cared for and that they will be safe in the class. Safety is not just limited to physical harm. Safety can also refer to a student's emotional well-being. In the classroom, students must be able to feel like they are able to express themselves and integrate themselves without any hindrances.

Another thing that helps contribute to a positive class is when students are heard and when they feel like they have a voice. Students like to feel as if the classroom belongs to them. They need to feel comfortable with a sense of ownership when they enter into a learning environment --- Ex. Say a student has finished their work early. Instead of pestering their neighbors, they can choose one of three options to do quietly while their classmates are working. When students feel like they have a say in what they do, they feel more prideful of their education and, as a result, respect the rules and classroom more. Encouraging the students to effectively make choices will only enrich their involvement and independence in the classroom.

The last thing I will mention before I talk about my own personal classroom dynamics is expectations. Students must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. For elementary age students, these expectations must be continuously reminded to them. You cannot simply just tell the students their expectations once at the beginning of the year, and think they will be able to follow them properly. This time in their lives they are still working out who they are and formulating their own personalities. So, this time is especially important for the elementary school teacher to set positive and clear expectations for the students, and to reinforce them daily.

Personal Classroom Dynamics

I have been teaching over in South Korea now for nearly 4 four years and it has always been important for me to set a positive classroom environment. I personally felt that it was one of the most important things I had to install in my classroom because, for many of these students, I am their only interaction with a westerner. So if my class is chaotic or I am conducting the class in a way that is anything less than positive, my students might end up looking at all westerners or English in a negative way. I always try and maintain a calm demeanor in front of the students whenever any of them misbehaves. I also try and make English exciting for them and make them laugh. As a foreign English teacher, it is a priority of mine to make sure the students are comfortable and able to enjoy the class.

I work at a Foreign Language Center, so all of the neighboring town schools come and visit my center. In a normal semester Monday - Wednesday, I will teach the surrounding area schools’ grades 3-6. Since I only see these students once a semester, it is extremely important for me to set the expectations and rules of the center in a very quick, simple, and easy to understand way. Since I go through these expectations and rules daily, it is very easy to assess the students and communicate with them at their level. One thing that is difficult to do is to build relationships with the students since I only see them for a short period.

On Thursdays and Fridays, I teach the same set of grade 1 and grade 2 students. These days are my chance to build more of a connection with the students. Also during these classes, it is important for me to stay consistent with my learners. We do a points system where the students are clear on their expectations and how to receive points. I encourage participation as much as possible. The key component of my class is to motivate students to try their best and for them to not be afraid when making mistakes. English is a learning process and can be fun if students are engaged properly.

The last thing I want to talk about is building relationships with the students outside of the classroom. In my tiny town, there aren't many foreigners, and since my wife and I have taught here for so long, we are mini celebrities in Gokseong. Everyone knows our names and any child in our town from kindergarten through high school, has been taught by us in some capacity. Since the students see us all the time outside of class, we really try and invest in them when we are not at school. We are always asking questions about their lives and what they are doing. We often go to the park and exercise/play frisbee, and it’s fun to have our students join us. To build a great classroom climate teachers must also be willing to put in the ‘work’ outside of the classroom and invest in students’ lives.

Overall, students need to be cared for and shown their importance. By teachers providing safety, student ownership, and clear expectations, the students will be able to excel in the classroom. It has been rewarding to see these approaches come to life with my personal experience. I will always continue to encourage my students and hope that it will only help them believe in themselves along the way.