Reinforcing+Effort

**Reinforcing Effort**

**Read and Reflect**
 * One way I reinforce effort in my classroom is by verbally telling children when I notice how long, hard, or determined they were to stick with a task. Whether it be something that takes place over the course of one class period or with an activity that may take weeks or months to work on. For example, it took one of my students with special needs months to learn how to skip count by (multiples of) 6's. While other kids had moved on to 7's, and then 8's. For months this student kept at it everyday until she was successful. In another case, I individualize mastering math facts. First students work on addition and subtraction and then into multiplication and division. Some kids pass the test the first week, others may take 5 weeks on the same level. I make sure to let the child that it is taking 5 weeks to reach their goal know that the effort they put in to practicing is how they were successful and finished that level.


 * My purpose for reinforcing effort is to let my students know that it isn't the end product or answer that makes them successful or tells me how smart they are. That what I look for and want them to understand is that we all have the abiltiy to be successful. That it takes work or effort to achieve these goals, and that depending on the task the amount of effort for each of us will look quite different. My goal is for all of us to get from point A to Z. Some of us will get there slowly and take a lot of effort and some of us will get their quickly and with a little effort. It's not that were smart/dumb. It's that we have either a lot/little experience in certain areas.


 * Reinforcing effort can be effictive if were not praising students who didn't put any effort into a task. It needs to be genuine and honest praise. We shouldn't overuse praise or it will become an ineffective motivator.


 * I would like to know more ways to say, "You worked hard on that project/task, you put in a lot of effort". or "I saw you practice that, erase again and again, and not give up". "That means you put in effort." What else might be meaningful to get my point across?

**Apply and Reflect**  Once again, I previewed all the different ways I can use Big Huge Labs, yet I'm just not ready to use this in my classroom. With all these new techologies being learned, I'm trying to start with the things that go along with what I'm currently doing in my classroom. So this one will take a seat on the back burner. I think I'll use it in the upcoming weeks, as my students have been working on mastering their multiplication facts. This will be a great tool to reinforce their effort.

As far as the a chievement website goes, I had a difficult time deciding on a person that I felt would be meaningful to discuss in my classroom. I wanted to tie it to someone in science instead of sports because I feel kids and parents already "place too much" energy and blame on not being able to do "homework" becaue of all the after school programs they're involved in. In the field of science, I thought the best people they could relate to are Jane Goodall, Sally Ride, and Kent Weeks. During my investigation into this topic, I found some other resources I found to be useful. I plan to use the video on Mr. Holland's Opus (deleting a small scene) during a parent education night next year. I believe this will help foster the importance of effort. media type="file" key="wee0-per-004b.mov" width="216" height="216"media type="file" key="rid0-per-013b.mov" width="300" height="300" []

[] //Sally Ride discusses how she had to put in a lot of hard work to make it through the physical trainging to become an astronaut. She needed to learn// everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle. She express that once you've learned it all,you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years
 * //How did “effort” contribute to the success of the person you’ve chosen?//

//Here are some examples:// //Example 1//
 * //How do attributes of “effort” seem to be highlighted in the life of the person you’ve chosen?//
 * I went off to Swarthmore and started college at Swarthmore College, and about a year and a half into my college experience, I decided, "What was I thinking? I should have been a professional tennis player," and I quit college, and that did not go over well with my parents, but I quit school and moved back to Southern California, and actually focused on tennis for about three months before I saw the light and transferred to Stanford, went back to school**

Example 2

I was a professional student. I had made it through high school, undergraduate, graduate school, to a Ph.D., so I knew how to learn things. I knew how to study, I knew how to concentrate and to dedicate myself to learning.