Positive Reinforcement: Stars

10 May 2012

I've written before about various methods of positive reinforcement that I've tried here in the classroom in Spain. Using positive reinforcement is something that I think that all teachers struggle with, but it's something that makes a huge difference. If a student is accustomed to being yelled at, the student becomes in a way immune to it. However, give that student some encouragement for the things he/she is doing right, and the student will try harder because every student just wants a little bit of praise.

I've already written about using the Star of the Day with my 1st grade classes. However, I wanted to take that idea and give more kids the opportunity to get stars.

Today, at the beginning of class, I wrote the word "names" on the board. I stood next to the board observing the usual chaos of the first five minutes of class when the students are handing out folders and pencil cases. I was waiting to see who would be the first to open his/her folder to take out his/her books and open them to the right pages.

I wrote the names of the first two students to do this on the board and put a star by their names. Of course, all of the students noticed and immediately asked me what was going on. They wanted to know if these kids were in trouble or something. I explained to them that these were the best behaved students in the class and I told them what I liked that they did. They sat down quietly, opened their books, and waited for class to start....

Within seconds, all of the kids had everything ready and asked me if I would put their names on the board. I told them I was only going to put the names of the students who had good behavior, who were trying to speak in English, who were working hard, etc.

Of course, they had a million questions--like how many stars they could get, if they could lose stars...

This method of positive reinforcement turned out to be "teaching magic." All the kids were really well-behaved that day--even the ones that usually toe the line. All of them were eager to show me what they were doing and how hard they were working.

However, the most amazing part was the type of students for whom this was working. Some of the students who dislike working on English activities were actually working!