How do you design and implement effective rewards and consequences systems for your students?
由人工智能和领英社区提供技术支持
Rewards and consequences are not just incentives or punishments for students' actions. They are also signals that communicate your expectations, values, and feedback to your students. They can influence how your students perceive themselves, their learning, and their relationship with you and their peers. Therefore, rewards and consequences can have a lasting impact on your students' academic performance, social-emotional development, and classroom climate.
-
The structure provided by rewards and consequences has the added benefit of helping your students feel safe in your classroom. They know what to expect from you and what you will or will not tolerate as a norm in the room.
Prior to implementing rewards or consequences, it is essential to have a plan that is in agreement with learning objectives, classroom regulations, and student needs. To help design a rewards and consequences system, one should first define the desired behaviors and outcomes that should be rewarded or reinforced, as well as undesired behaviors and outcomes that must be prevented or corrected. Additionally, it is important to select types and levels of rewards and consequences that are appropriate, meaningful, and fair for each behavior and outcome. Verbal praise, tokens, privileges, activities, or grades may be used as rewards while warnings, time-outs, loss of points, or referrals may be used as consequences. It is also important to communicate the rewards and consequences system to students by explaining the rationale and expectations. Furthermore, the system should be reviewed and revised regularly based on observations, data, and feedback from students in order to accommodate changing needs and challenges of the classroom.
-
Your system should be posted somewhere in the classroom, where students can read it. As well, when a student has escalating behavior that is moving towards an infraction, you can refer to the posting and read out the portion that addresses the particular behavior.
-
Consequences should serve to teach the appropriate behavior or agreed upon behavior for the social setting, i.e. there are school rules and home rules, as well as be a deterrent for negative behavior. One common misstep with consequences that I have often seen is to let a student out of doing classwork by sending them out of the room or to another area. One must ensure that the consequences given does not reinforce the negative behavior or action.
-
In my experience, I had to first figure out what my expectations were exactly and then teach/model those behaviors. It was important to know what I could and would tolerate. Sometimes I wasn't aware I didn't want a behavior until it happened. When that happened I examined the behavior and the student to determine if it was disability-related or not. If it was disability-related, then I had to figure out a way to tolerate the behavior. If it wasn't, I didn't discipline the first time. I taught the student the behavior I wanted and then worked with that student to change the behavior. It is crucial to be painstakingly precise when teaching wanted behaviors as well. Be Respectful and Be Nice are too generic and need to be explained.
-
It is important to consider the age groups of the students you are working with. For example, if you are a teacher in primary grades, it’s best to show up with a concrete plan already in place. Conversely, if you teach middle and high school, it may be best to design a plan WITH your students. Research shows that beginning in the 6th grade, students will be more engaged in what goes on in the classroom if they have some skin in the game. This means that if you teach an elective or special area, you may need to employ different strategies and plans, depending on the group age, grade, and dynamic of your students.
-
In online education badges can help keep students motivated and engaged. They can also help students keep track of their progress in the course if they are doing asynchronous learning.
Once you have a plan for your rewards and consequences system, you need to apply it consistently and effectively in your classroom. To assist with implementation, monitor and document student behavior and outcomes using various methods, such as checklists, charts, journals, or portfolios. Rewards and consequences should be delivered as soon as possible in a specific, positive, and respectful manner. Additionally, you should balance the use of rewards and consequences, avoiding either overusing or underusing either one. Involve students in the process by asking them to set their own goals, monitor their own progress, reflect on their own actions, or participate in peer mediation or restorative justice. Doing so will foster their self-regulation and responsibility.
-
Whatever you do, DO NOT use any system that lets the entire class know how one student is performing at any given time. These are not motivators! Think about it from this perspective...would you want the principal to walk around the school telling all the other teachers about every mistake you make in a day? Or on the flip side, having always been almost perfect and then having a bad day? These types of systems are psychologically messing with our children. Don't have the students grade each other's or their own papers and have students report their scores out loud in front of everyone. Many children see those scores as their worth or ability level. It would be the same as having your salary shouted out in front of everyone.
-
Use debate and socratic method to talk about behaviors conceptually, assigning students to the side of the debate they don’t actually agree with, this teaching them to see the issue from someone else’s perspective.
-
In my experience with young children, headstart, starting immediately with a goal as the reward helps reinforce participation as a group. For example, if the goal and reward is a pizza part where the whole group performs the dance, consequences might be sitting out of a dance, or having to go back and review earlier parts. Setting a stage where the student is responsible for information as a reward can be challenging, but I've found that if the goal is "spectacular" enough to keep attention, then the consequences of not practicing, or being off task become more obvious to the whole group and can help reinforce peer learning.
The ultimate goal of rewards and consequences is to support student learning and development, not to control or manipulate them. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of your system on student behavior, motivation, and achievement. Consider questions such as: are rewards and consequences aligned with learning goals, classroom rules, and student needs? Are they appropriate, meaningful, and fair? Are they clear, consistent, and timely? Are they balanced, varied, and flexible? Are they empowering, supportive, and respectful? How do rewards and consequences affect academic performance, social-emotional development, and classroom climate? Answering these questions can help you assess the effectiveness of your rewards and consequences system.
-
When implementing rewards/consequences, remain focused on outcomes. Do not let the system usurp the goals. Be reflective and flexible.
Based on your evaluation, you may find that your rewards and consequences system needs some improvement or modification. To do this, seek feedback from your students, colleagues, or mentors on your system. Additionally, research best practices and examples from other teachers or sources. Experiment with different types or levels of rewards and consequences for different situations or students, then observe the results and refine your system. Lastly, collaborate with others to create or join a school-wide or community-based rewards and consequences system. This will allow you to share resources, ideas, and support to create a consistent and coherent environment for your students.
-
Remember that less is more. You should have no more than five expectations and you needn’t create a complicated bureaucratic system that is time consuming to enforce.
-
Classroom management with multi-subject, multi-level is possible in a more tutorial format, rather than a traditional classroom model. The benefit of doing that is that students who are struggling are able to get extra help as needed, while the more advanced students aren't bored waiting for their peers to catch up. With so many changes to classroom composition that makes teaching challenging at its best, some teachers are finding better success in breaking up the kids into groups to make it possible to better focus on a needs basis.
-
keep in mind not all learners are children. Adults come to learning platforms with very specific goals. How we meet those goals as teachers will determine learner motivation and participation.
-
If I am designing authentic and meaningful assessments for Art students, get them involved with students of art, first, I get them involved in various ways such as choosing their topics, themes, or media for their projects help them to create the criteria and rubrics, allowing them to self-assess or peer-assess the work. You also can invite them to share their opinions and suggestions which helps every student to improve their knowledge.