As the weather warms up, students and teachers both will begin to experience spring fever. This oven results in overactive students who would rather act up than sit in class and pay attention. Finding new methods of disciplining and motivating students during this time can be helpful.
Take Advantage of Nice Weather as a Motivator
When motivating students to behave in class as the weather warms up, often the most effective strategy is to go outside. Some ideas include:
- Come up with activities that can be completed outside (active games and scavenger hunts are great options).
- Reward good behavior with extra recess
- Offer an extra class period outside given a set of requirements met.
Focus on Beneficial Life Skills
While the mandated curriculum is important to follow, once the standardized state testing is completed, it is a good idea to shift the focus of lessons to why students need the information. Making the information geared towards life skills will help students stay motivated and will often change the tone of classroom instruction in such a way that discipline problems from spring fever can be minimized.
Remember during these final weeks of school that patience is important. Training students to become life-long learners is as important as any individual lesson so remember to take advantage of every teachable moment in the classroom.
Many education programs are training new teachers to not say the words “good job” to students as this is ineffective praise. Let us take a closer look at why this is, and whether it would be appropriate to use this praise in the classroom.
When praising a student, it is important to be as specific as possible.
- “Excellent handwriting!” is praise that will encourage more neatly written work.
- “Good question” thanks the student for participating and provides great opportunity to further learning.
- “I like the way you….” tells the student exactly what he or she did well.
The more specific the praise, the more sincere it is to the student and the student in turn knows exactly what he or she is doing well.
Does this mean that saying “good job” is bad? Not necessarily. Let’s take a look at when it would be appropriate to say good job to a student.
When praise is appropriate but time is short, good job might be an acceptable statement. For example, after a student gives a presentation to the class, a teacher might say “nice presentation, Sam” and turn to the next student in line. Specifying one thing that the student did well during the presentation might put undue stress on the next student, so a generic well done is appropriate.
Anytime when specific praise might complicate the situation, general praise is useful. For example, if a student has done something that helps prevent embarrassment for another student, a simple thank you is less intrusive than a more specific praise.
Finally, when praising a student for accomplishing a task, such as finding an answer in the text, the general praise “good job” is appropriate. This tells the student that the teacher is pleased when it is not necessary to tell the student exactly what he or she has done.
Read more about praising students.
