The two strategies that are talked about in this week’s reading included.“Reinforcing Effort” and “Homework and Practice.” The behaviorist method has to do with reinforcing desirable behaviors. In the reading about reinforcing effort it discusses about teaching students about the importance of effort and have them keep track of their achievement. I see many problems with that scenario. One having students understand how to use an excel spreadsheet, and actually have them keep track of their achievement. The students that do not have problems learning this is a great idea. But the students that have difficulty believing that effort pays off, this theory will not work very well. I understand the point of it showing hard data to show how they excelled. But frankly this will be difficult for students who are not giving the effort to begin with.
“Homework and Practice” is the other strategy that relates to the behaviorist learning theory of repetition of the task. Homework is assigned for practice to make the student understand the concept after repetitions. Math was a difficult subject for me to comprehend. When I would receive homework it would involve repeating the skills. This method made me feel comfortable understanding the problem. But when the problem would change slightly it would throw me off because it was different. One of the recommendations explained “design a practice assignment that focus on specific elements of a complex skill or process (Pitler, 2007).” By breaking down the problem it is making it easier for the student to succeed.
Both of these strategies correlate with behaviorism because it is using a method of learning by using rewards. In this case the reward is keeping track of your grades through spreadsheets and word processing applications. At the end you get to see how well you have achieved throughout the course.
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The reinforcing effort through data application may not work for every student, but perhaps there may be one or two that it does work for. Some students will always be hard to motivate, but something like this could work for a couple of the middle achievers and make the difference for them. We know that there is a direct correlation between fitness, training and beating personal bests, not to mention keeping good records for training purposes. This could be the difference for one student getting on a team or not. Those who don't try, that is where other strategies come into play and sometimes there are those students that may only realize it a few years later.
ReplyDeleteYou could collaborate with a tech teacher or a math teacher to build the spreadsheets and you could focus on collecting the data each session.
I believe in education we will always have students that do not try and most times we will not be able to make them do much of anything. However, I do believe we should still do our best to enable student success. If you decide to present spreadsheets for students to keep track of grades or other information in your class it may not work for the students that will not put forth effort, but it may benefit the others in the class really trying.
ReplyDeleteStudents must be internally motivated to give their best effort. I think the key to getting students to give their best effort is finding out what makes them tick. I related what was said in this weeks resources to a program that I'm sure you've heard about or possibly used, which is called Fitnessgram. The basic idea is charting students physical ability based on test they take (i.e. push up, curl ups, sit and reach, pacer test). The students take the test twice during the year, like a pre-test and post-test, once in the fall and once in the spring. They can put their scores into the computer and they can see their results.
ReplyDeleteI think keep good records shows a lot of accountability. If we can implement assignments or programs that revolve around keeping good records this will benefit the students. If students are unable to use spreadsheets, than they can use their own method of recording on paper. For my own personal use i keep records for my bills with how much i owe, what i paid, when i paid the bill, and when its due. This helps me know if their was an issue when it was paid or how much is owed each month.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to motivate every student. The reality is, you just can't. But you can try your best to motivate them to do things correctly. Spread sheets will benefit those students who are willing to give forth the effort.
Students do love to see their progress throughout the year. Especially when it comes to the pacer. We show them before our second trial in the spring what they received in the fall. Therefore students have a goal they are trying to accomplish.
Your thoughts at the end of your post of keeping track of grades with word processing spreed sheets is great. There are a lot of different online spreed sheets as well, like engrade. I use a program through Promethean that shows student progression through the smart board. It keeps them motivated to do well and keep improving because of the interactive features. Incorparting technology can be easy, but making sure it is educational can be hard.
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