Praising your students can be a powerful motivation tool to use in the classroom. Teachers can use praise to improve classroom behavior by acknowledging one students good behavior, and the rest the of the class will will match the good behavior. Praising students can also help boost students academic performance, and speed on an assignment. However, praising your students should not be issued out to much, because students understand when your comments are true to the heart. According to
smartclassroommanagment.com:
Excessive praise:
- Is not meaningful to student.
- It lowers expectations.
- It doesn't change behavior.
- Its so prevalent it becomes a humdrum to students.
For praise to effective:
- It should be private.
- Make it subtle.
- Make it worthy.
- Make it sincere.
After learning about how to praise students, all I can think about is my future as a teacher. I plan to praise my students, but only give credit where it is due. Also, I want to motivate my students as an effort boost their self esteem emotionally and academically. My goal is to show my students that I truly care about how well they perform inside and outside of the school.
I love reading your blog today. It was very expiring. Great blog.
ReplyDeleteLeanna, Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of talk out there about new college grads, raised in an era where participation in sports = shiny trophies, expecting to be praised for coming to work on time, finishing their projects, and so on!
ReplyDeleteIt's also useful to be more specific than "Good job!" You can say "I like how you wrote your 7 so neatly" or you can ask the child how s/he feels about the work to build up that internal pride. It's a hard habit to break, since we often do a knee-jerk "awesome!" instead of "how did that make you feel, getting 100% on the test?"