Praise

It is important that the adult influences of the classroom recognise and praise the positive behaviour of individual pupils – especially those who struggle to maintain good behaviour and tend to be told off more than others. It is also essential to praise constant good behaviour (from pupils who never misbehave) to avoid the development inappropriate behaviour. Children respond to all kinds of positive praise. In my setting, the class teacher and LSA’s often add positive words like ‘fantastic’, ‘brilliant’ or ‘well done’ when acknowledging their input towards the class. We also use house tokens to

Kohn’s first reason is that praise is used to manipulate the children. Kohn says that praise is “sugar-coated control” (Kohn, 110, 2001) adults use to pressure their child into good behavior. Kohn’s second reason is that praising children creates “praise junkies” (Kohn, 111, 2001). He believes that the child will no longer perform an activity for the proper reasons, instead of doing a difficult task to be able to say that they could their motives altered to only desire the

At Shelf School we praise and reward children for appropriate behaviour in a variety of ways:

Regardless of age, we all like to be noticed and praised for something good that we have done. Research has shown that in order to balance out a negative, we need to be given 6 positives. It is important therefore, to recognise and reward positive behaviour, especially for those pupils who perhaps need to be reprimanded more than others. Whilst it can be easier to simply react to the negative aspects of a child’s behaviour with “don’t do this, don’t do that”, it is also really important to point out what they are doing well, whether it’s sitting nicely, listening well, joining in, following instructions, etc. It is also important not to forget those children who always behave appropriately and openly praise them too. In the 1940’s BF

Rewards and praise will be given wherever possible for both work and behaviour to encourage a positive attitude to learning.

Praise is not bad, however, Bronson suggests that rather than praising students with this “blanket praise” they should be given specific praise on individual attributes. By offering praise

In my lesson plan 3, I had learned to add praising to the whole class as they are participating in class and following the directions with minimum teacher’s instructions. On a daily basis when I am with the students,

The Perils and Promises of Praise by Carol S. Dweck is about how students are praised can be harmful to their academic growth. He elaborates on four key points which are fixed or malleable, two faces of effort, the effects of praise, and the motivation to learn. His first key point about fixed or malleable speaks about students with a fixed trait worry about how smart they are which look for ways to display that trait and lose the desire to actually learn. However, malleable students have a growth mind set which means if they learn it they will be smarter. Secondly, he speaks about the two faces of effort which means that the fixed and the growth mind set creates two psychological worlds.

The Perils and Promises of Praise The article The Perils and Promises of Praise covered the topic of praise and how it affects students with growth and fixed learning mindsets. This topic is commonly discussed in schools today, because educators and researchers began studying student motivation in schools. They noticed that students with the fixed learning mindset had a more difficult time staying motivated in school due to their belief that intelligence is a fixed trait or that they have a certain amount of intelligence and that is it. The other category of students studied were those with the growth learning mindset, this group of students believe that their intelligence level is something that they can build onto and develop through effort and education. These mindsets create different psychological worlds for the students.

Following the introduction of the whole school behaviour policy, it was also made compulsory for schools to include a system of rewards and sanctions (Elton, 1989, Steer, 2005; DFE, 2014; Payne, 2015). Within school X it was found that this system was based on the behaviourist principles of Skinners (1974) theory. The use of rewards and sanctions in school X consisted of positively reinforcing desirable behaviours and correcting negative behaviour through sanctions. The behavioural theory underlines that by reinforcing a particular behaviour, children will repeat it as they begin to associate rewards with a particular behaviour (Skinner, 1974; Morgan, 2009; Rogers, 2011a). For example it was observed that when a child was positively praised for helping others, the teacher would reward the child by awarding a dojo. A dojo is used as a form of praise which amounts to a score at the end of the week based on how many dojos a child receives. This will then feed on to the merit card and sticker system enabling children to be rewarded by prizes. Consequently children were able to make associations between the desired behaviour and its outcome. This is therefore identified as a form of extrinsic motivation (Roffey and O’ Reirdan, 2001; Payne, 2015).

The praise would come because students were utilizing all their materials, helping each other, and answering questions correctly. These are examples of secondary reinforcers and were more apparent in the classroom; however, there was evidence of a primary reinforcer like security and warmth. Julie would greet the students everyday and provided a warm environment. There were some students that needed more attention than others and Julie was sure to give it to them. The reinforcement was also helpful when it came to motivating the students because they felt secure in this environment and because there was secondary reinforcement such as praise, they were ready to learn and participate. Students can use this reinforcement to create their own motivation. John Marshall Reeve (2013) writes,

I agree with the author Karen Barkslade, and Brenda Nelson on their views of children getting rewarded for getting good grades. Allowing children to receive awards is allowing them to be able to say the only way I will do something is if I get something in return. When that should never be the case. Children should not be rewarded for good grades because they stop striving for greatness, they will only do the work when they know a prize is involved, and never learn the true meaning of working for something.

Praise is a special kind of spoken words. It includes thanking and praising God for who He is and what He has done for you as well as singing sweet melodic songs to worship Him. God instituted music. He has angels who sing songs to worship Him twenty-four hours a day. Everybody loves music so does God. Praise is a very wonderful and powerful golden master key.

For the critique portion of this discussion, I want to discuss the aspects of this article that I found to be absolutely true. The portion of this article about the praise students not having a failure mechanism was relatable. I still do not have a full grasp on accepting and learning from failures. Leaving high school I definitely did not have a failing mechanism. Getting my first B in organic chemistry at college was a tough time for me until I learned from it, and currently I can handle sour grades better than some of my peers. Another point that was completely true was the parent’s response to why they provide praise. My parents started to provide praise once I began to get consistent A’s in Jr High. They were proud of my accomplishments,

The point system is designed to help improve classroom management and improve academic achievement. The point system allows teachers to establish classroom management. Teachers should assign the appropriate point rewards or penalties to fit how the teacher classroom should function to promote an ideal student-learning environment (Xenos, 2012). Academic achievement is improved using the point system. Teachers can designate points for completing homework, participating in class, and the grade achieved on a test. Students can receive points for completing these activities in the classroom. A drawback of using the point system is that the teacher must properly implement the system starting the beginning of the school year. It is important that students clearly