Think back to your days in the elementary (or even secondary) classroom. I'm willing to bet that most of you will be familiar with some version of the controversial reward chart as exemplified above. What are your thoughts? Do rewards work? What has been your experience with rewards in the classroom? Go ahead and think about this for a minute before you read on. My Grade 2 Experience: I distinctly remember the day my grade five teacher decided to implement a "Merit Points" system in our classroom. There was a blank chart on one of the the side walls with each of the student names listed in rows, and empty boxes for check marks next to each name. Our teacher explained that these points will be very difficult to earn and would only be awarded for "exceptionally good behaviour". None of us really knew what that meant, but I was interested in seeing how this would play out. After our return from recess that day, the class began filing in when all of the sudden Mr. R yelled, "EVERYBODY FREEZE!" And so we did - "Megan has earned her first merit point. She picked up a piece of garbage that wasn't hers - WITHOUT BEING TOLD TO DO SO." Man, I thought, if that's what it takes to get these merit points I'd better pick up every single piece of garbage I see, but only when I'm not being told to do so. As the year wore on, Megan, a naturally kind-hearted person and good friend of mine, began accumulating more and more points. Eventually, there was no way to catch up. A large portion of the class had no points at all! Naturally, I stopped caring - what was the point? I was never going to get enough merit points to win the prize, and it didn't matter if I did good deeds outside of the classroom because Mr. R was never going to see them anyway. What I Know Now: I watched a lecture presented some years ago by Aflie Kohn as a part of the MacClement Lecture Series at Queen's University. To answer the question, "How do we create kind, compassionate, and caring children?" he asks us to consider the following question, "How can we destroy a child's inclination to care?" The answer: competition and rewards. Grades, stickers, praises, money, are all forms of rewards commonly used by parents and teachers - these are thought to encourage positive behaviour when in fact research shows the opposite effect to be true. Providing extrinsic motivators (i.e. rewards) for what are inherently intrinsic values and behaviours (compassion, resilience, grit...) simply does not work! Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are inversely related. According to Kohn, research shows that children of parents who frequently use rewards tend to be less generous than their peers. Thinking back to my grade two classroom, the only thing that the Merit Points system did was reward the students who were already good. While I was motivated to "try" for a short period of time, I quickly reverted back to whatever I was doing before once I decided it was a waste of my time. Praise can be similarly perilous to your child's development. If you are like me, you often get annoyed when others give you empty praises like, "Good job!", "You're awesome", or "You're so smart!". Not only do praises like these provide no context or constructive feedback whatsoever, they can also be detrimental to a child's confidence, grit, and self-esteem. This article ("How Not to Talk to Your Kids") does a good job at explaining the basics. In general, kids who are praised for intelligence over effort tend to give up more easily on tasks that they believe they have no inherent talent for. Specific praises like, "I like that you moved on to the next question when you got stuck," are key to providing students helpful strategies to succeed. In general, I think that rewards can act as good short term motivators for getting necessary but uninteresting tasks done and out of the way, like rewarding myself with candy for completing chapter readings for a course I don't enjoy for instance. However, in the long term, rewards can hinder a child's development of good attitudes and behaviours and should generally be avoided. Once children hear praise they interpret as meritless, they discount not just the insincere praise, but sincere praise as well. - Judith Brook, New York University Professor of Psychiatry For more information on this topic, I recommend reading more of Carol Dwek's Mindset Research.
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Grade 11 Genetics Focus Question: Why do you look the way you do? Diagnostic: Begin by asking students to answer these questions independently, then discuss in groups.
Encourage students to share their ideas (snowball activity, think-pair-share, placemat...etc.) and allow students to keep adding to this as they learn more about genetics throughout the unit. Grouping: Ask students to pair up. Give each pair an envelope containing a set of pre-made "chromosomes" for either a father or mother. Ask students to make a group of four with another pair who has a parent of the opposite sex. Learning Activity: Reebop Babies Materials: - Envelopes - Colored Construction Paper (for chromosomes) - Colored pencils or markers - Large Marshmellows ("body segments") - Push Pins ("humps") - Pip-cleaners ("Tails" - Small iron nails ("Antennas") 1. Tell students that they have received an envelope with the "code" in it for a reebop parent. Ask students to lay out the pairs of chromosomes (each set of chromosomes will be one color) from largest to smallest. Give them a copy of the key/legend so they can determine the genotype (code) and phenotype (what it actually looks like) of the parents. 2. Have students fill out a chart with headings for phenotype and genotype, and get them to draw what their parent looks like. 3. Students predict what their baby will look like based on the genotypes and phenotypes of the parents.
4. Once predictions have been made, the two pairs of students randomly pull out chromosomes from the "dad" and "mom" envelopes until they have a full set required to build the baby. 5. Build the baby with the materials provided! Why I like this activity: Reebop babies are a fun hands-on, exploratory activity that can be used to introduce students to the genetics unit in grade 11 biology. You can start the unit with this lesson by using the appropriate terminology (chromosomes, genotype, phenotype...etc.) without having to explain what each of those terms mean. Just be sure to give students enough information either on the hand-outs, or through visual cues (e.g. the envelop containing construction paper "chromosomes") so they have enough working knowledge to complete the required activities. This same activity can used to introduce concepts later on in the unit such as errors in meiosis, punnett squares, dominance...etc. Original lesson idea by Dr. Cathy Christie. |
A Note from the Author
This blog documents some of the things I learned while I was in teacher's college at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario back in 2015. Many of the ideas presented here are taken from my classes, professors, and fellow students. I do not take personal credit for the work presented here. Categories
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