Week 6 Activity – Behavioral Procedures
This is a tough scenario because at first glance it appears that Toni knows the material, but is just trying to get attention. I have had students like Toni before and can be disruptive and frustrating. In the first scenario you gave, where she asks what the assignment is and it is written on the board, I would direct her to where it is. I would say, “I’ve already told you this, so now read the board and write it in your agenda.” I would at the end of class make sure she had it written down. I have found that by redirecting her to the board she will have to take responsibility for her own assignment. I find the more you answer this question, over and over again, and let the student get away with this, you are reinforcing their negative behavior.
In our next scenario, once the assignment has begun and Toni pretends not to be able to it, even though she has successfully completed it before, I would speak with Toni privately and ask her why she “couldn’t” do the assignment. I would remind her that this is a review and she was successful on the first similar assignment. I would have to make the assumption that the assignment was not exactly the same, but that it was similar. My first job is to find out whether the format is different enough that it was confusing to her and try to explain. If that is not the case, then I would assume, once again, that the attention is what this student is looking for. I would have to use positive reinforcement at this time to tell her that she does a good job and can do this assignment, maybe she just needs that little bit of encouragement that she possibly does not get at home when she does a good job. I also found that sometimes you get a student who may excel in a subject and gets bored, so therefore acts “dumb”. One solution to this is to tell Toni that as soon as she finishes her assignment, she can work with another student who may need help if she would like to and if they would like it. I would use this as positive reinforcement to let her know that excelling is a good thing. To make sure I did not have her stand out too much, I would have other students work together in pairs once one was finished to help others. I find this approach to be helpful for both the students who are helping and those needing the help. Sometimes having another student explain something makes more sense to a struggling student as they can sometimes get more on their level and not do what I call “talking over their heads.” This also reinforces the information in the mentoring student and helps them feel good about excelling in that subject. When I was long-term substituting in math, I learned that although their teacher was very good, she seemed to make the explanations too complicated. One day I was reviewing some of the information she had taught, but in my way and the students seemed to understand better, because as they said I made it “easy to understand.” I used this to help students later on by using my students that excelled to help those that maybe just did not understand “teacher talk.” Diversity is a good tool in teaching.
The teacher in the last scenario I feel put Toni in a precarious situation. She was praised when she did better, but the rest of the class did not due as well and therefore did not get the attention. It seems she doesn’t like the attention of excelling, so when asked again the next day she pretended she could not do it. I feel the teacher should not have punished the whole class by making them redo the homework or by making Toni stand out and embarrassing her. In this case group consequences punished the whole class for the mistakes of one. This was not fair to them especially knowing that she already knew the assignment since she had done so well on it the day before. I feel that she needed to be dealt with on an individual basis. I could either have her continue to read the words until she got through them.
October 5th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Thanks for your comment on my blog! I liked your idea of letting Toni help other students when she finishes her own work. That way, she can strive to finish her work early in order to work with her classmates. I also like the idea of enforcing an agenda so she has to write down the assignments herself. I subbed for a high school class where students had to turn in calendars at the end of the month with all of their assignments, homework, assessments written in. I think it’s a good way to make sure students are on top of their assignments and it also helps to eliminate the “I didn’t know that was due today” type of comments. Nice blog!