Sunday, July 5, 2009

Behaviorism in Practice

I love the idea of using a spreadsheet to correlate effort data with my students. Previously, I have used RubiStar (Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007, p.162) to create various rubrics to assess my students, always including effort as portion of their grade. I have also created rubrics for students to assess themselves, either individually or as a group. I have never thought of making electronic rubrics for the students to use however, and think that is an idea that not only would show how important effort is in life, but also teach valuable technology skills. By having my students assess their effort and then see the correlation between their effort and their grades, they would (hopefully) be more motivated to try harder in school. This idea is linked to positive reinforcement. When a person receives a positive response to a behavior or action, they are more apt to repeat that action (Orey, 2001).

Similarly, to use the spelling and grammar tool in Word (Pitler et al., 2007, p.190) is a fabulous idea to increase my students’ vocabulary and self-esteem. Most of my students are familiar with typing research reports in Word and using the thesaurus to find better vocabulary, but often they do not choose the correct synonym. If I teach them to use the research tools, in conjunction with the thesaurus they will have a better grasp on new words. By checking their written grade level in Word, my students will be spurred to increase their “score” and make it almost a competition with themselves to have a higher grade level while still focused and understandable for a fourth grader. Behaviorist techniques can be tweaked in ways I never thought of to help make students increase their effort, motivation, and behavior in the classroom!


References

Orey, M. (Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved
from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom
instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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2 comments:

  1. UnknownJuly 8, 2009 at 6:58 AM

    I think you make a good point about effort being a part of life. It's a value that students will need to learn and acquire before they enter the "real world" after graduating high school and/or college in order to have a successful career. As Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenosli (2007) mention, even though students may not believe their effort pays off, they can learn the importance of it and change their beliefs (p. 155).

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  2. Mrs. StianchiJuly 8, 2009 at 6:28 PM

    Thank you Brooke. Effort will always be a factor no matter how old someone is, from potty training to will preparation. I think that if we as teacher don’t instill the sense that effort is hugely important, we are doing our students a huge disservice. The place I run into difficulty is when the home life doesn’t seem to care about effort, so the child is hearing conflicting messages..then I just always cross my fingers that SOMETHING I say will stick!

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