BEHAVIORISM IN PRACTICE, REINFORCING EFFORT & HOMEWORK & PRACTICE
BEHAVIORISM IN PRACTICE...
Behaviorism reminds me of make good choices and follow the rules. When students come into my classroom I have high expectations and those are communicated from day 1. I feel that students will adapt to the environment they are in and will begin to see the benefits they can have from having appropriate behavior. Behaviorism is such a huge part of my classroom practice because you either receive positive reinforcement for following directions and behaving the expected way or else there are punishments, which is the last thing a student wants and doesn't often happen in my classroom (this year).
REINFORCING EFFORT...
Reinforcing Effort was a good reminder that students need to always have some sort of reinforcement when it comes to any area of there life. When you apply effort to behaviorism is implies that students need to take information in small bits to fully understand it. Students may not relate effort to achievement and when you show them positive reinforcement for there effort they will begin to see that the hard efforts pay off. Students want to know that they are doing good and giving a good effort. As a 4th grade teacher I feel that my students are young enough to want to always give good effort. As a teacher I am always giving them positive rewards for great efforts. In an ideal situation students would strive to give 110% effort to understand the benefits that come with an achievement. Grades are a good basis for effort. I try to use technology as much as I can in my class. For rubrics I use www.rubistar.com for grading projects and writing. I have never used survey monkey (www.surveymonkey.com) but I think this could definitely be something that I incorporate into my classroom technology after each semester to see what my students enjoyed and did not enjoy.
HOMEWORK AND PRACTICE...
Homework has become such a complicated issue. So many times I assign homework and worry what kind of nasty emails I will have the following morning. Most of the time students who struggle have not been following directions, not paying attention, and yet it is the teachers fault. I would love to give technology homework however I have a handful of students in my class who have high speed Internet and only half of the class has working computers at home. I think homework is a great way to reinforce a lesson however it has to be simple enough so the student does not become frustrated easily. I have used google docs http://docs.google.com/ to help set up a 10 year class reunion but I really enjoyed using this tool. It is so difficult and impossible to assign any technology homework. For my social studies lesson we do State PowerPoint projects and we have to spend weeks of class time working on them because students do not have the technology resources at home that they need. I think that behaviorism relates to homework because it is a positive way to reinforce a lesson. Students then can do there homework and feel accomplished when they complete it.
The 4th grade age is nice, like you said they are into pleasing and usually are willing to give 100%. Reinforcing effort is important at this age so they see the value in carrying on that effort. I have found even the lower achieving students are willing to stick with the never give up attitude, even if it takes then twice or three times as long as the others if they can keep that positive reinforcement. I too am thinking of trying survey monkey as an evaluation tool to see what worked well and what did not from a lesson or unit.
ReplyDeleteAt my school, we use a schoolwide positive behavior system so positive reinforcements are the main source of behaviorism in the classroom; however, there are always students who break the rules and require punishments to get them on the right track. I also liked the idea of using Survey Monkey. I never thought of using it to see what students liked and what they didn't like for the semester. That's a good idea that I will probably use for a year-end survey.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading your Homework and Practice section, I couldn't help but feel the same way as you. Last year, I would assign homework each night and would never get it back. This required me to have to make more copies and the students would complete it during recess. Unfortunately, if I never got it back, I would have to give them a zero. As we all know, zeros result in lower grades and upset parents. This year, I am taking a different approach to homework. I will teach the skills they need to know and then the students will complete the work in class and turn it in then. This way they can't lose it. When I do give homework to be done at home, I give them two days to get it done. Still, I have parents who complain that I give too much homework, that I expect too much out of the kids, or that I am giving above fourth grade work. Just can't please everybody.
I loved teaching 4th grade last year because of their wanting to do the right thing and be constantly rewarded. I currently use www.rubistar.com for rubrics and have not used www.surveymonkey.com before. I did not realize that www.surveymonkey.com was free and now I will try to implement it now.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your Homework and Practice section I could not agree enough with you. The biggest problem about assigning online homework is the fact that not all the students have access to the internet outside of school. I wish that parents would / could understand that importance of using the internet at their homes and purchase a computer with internet access based upon the endless learning possibilities that their child could have at their fingertips.
I teach mostly 10-12th grade students, but these principles are just as important to a teacher in my position. I think most of us all agree, at least for the most part on behaviorism and classroom management, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe homework stuff is much more controversial. I am somewhat of a proponent of it. I definitely feel that if a student is behind it is their duty to catch up outside of the classroom. But I've seen some of my students bombarded with homework from up to 5 teachers of different subjects in a single night. I think homework is necessary, but think we have to take into consideration how much they are getting and also their home environment as well. Unfortunately, some students don't have much of a home--well--one in which they can get schoolwork done. I think it's important for a school to have some kind of after school program where they can get homework and extra practice done then. But then we run into the problem of parents unhappy about transportation and their children getting home on time. This is a very touchy subject and know that I don't have all the answers. Sometimes we must even take it on a student to student basis.
Some of the websites offered in the resource area would be great homework assignments as a behavioristic method of reinforcement of concepts learned in class, IF we could count on all students having access to them. There are tutorals for students who "forgot" or didn't get the information, and practice drills for cementing into memory the concepts learned in class, all in a highly gratifying format. But like you said, you never know what your going to get the next day from parents or students regarding homework assignments, and technology is still not a given in each childs home, so it cannot be counted on at this point to deliver a fullproof homework assignmnet.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the great input!! Homework is such a pain in my classroom. So many parents put to much pressure on there kids tahat I struggle to assign it without getting a bad feeling about what kind of bad comments I will recieve from parents. Last week I assigned a common nouns crossword and before the bell even rang I had 4 parents at my door upset because THEY did not understand the activity. Well I had to explain to the parents that if they would have read the directions correctly they would have understood. They all walked away a little bit ashamed that they made such a big deal and they were wrong.
ReplyDelete