Using praise to reinforce positive behaviour is a great strategy to have as part of your behaviour management toolkit.
Here are five techniques you can try.
Technique One
At the start of the year, consistently praise as many learners as possible for the various behaviours they demonstrate that meet your expectations.
This helps you to quickly and positively familiarise learners with the norms and values of your classroom at the same time as it paints a praised-based picture for them of the role you expect learners to fulfil in your lessons.
Technique Two
At the start of an activity, praise the behaviour of learners who are successfully following your instructions.
Draw other learners’ attention to this and encourage them to copy what they see.
Praise them when they do.
This technique can be used with any activity though it can lose impact if overused.
To mitigate this potential failing, consider mixing up verbal and non-verbal praise regarding learner behaviour (a thumbs up sign is an effective alternative to verbalising the same praise over and over).
Technique Three
If a learner behaves in a way that runs counter to your expectations, ask them to stop and to change their behaviour.
When they do this, praise their actions.
This includes the decision they made to act differently as well as the behaviour it precipitated.
Doing this is a powerful technique for highlighting the varying consequences different behaviours elicit.
Technique Four
If a group or the whole class conduct themselves in a positive manner through the course of a lesson, praise your learners en masse.
This praise should still be specific (indicating what it is about their behaviour that was good) but it can be given at the same time to all the learners involved.
Personally, I like to praise classes as a whole group at the end of every lesson in which they have worked well.
This helps to end the lesson on a positive note and acts to bind the class together as a team working towards a common goal.
Technique Five
When you want all the learners in your class to start doing something, try praising and drawing attention to those learners who are already doing this.
For example, if you want all learners to put their bags on the floor and begin the starter activity, praise the learners who have already done this.
You can then deliver praise to learners who follow the positive example.
Soon, most of the class, if not all, will have done what you wanted and received praise as a result.
Praising Processes
Another area on which you can focus your praise is the processes in which learners engage.
Processes are the things learners do rather than the things they create.
They are inherent to learners rather than external.
Effort is a process; an essay is a product.
The former is part of who the learner is, the latter is something they have created but which then sits externally to them.
Processes persist across lessons; products come and go.
If we praise products, we find ourselves praising the things that are external to learners and that are left behind come next lesson.
If we praise processes, we find ourselves praising the things that are part of learners and on which they will call in all subsequent lessons.
Here’s an example:
- Wonderful piece of work, Darryl. I love the way the different colours work together.
- Great work, Darryl, I love the way you have thought carefully about how the different colours can work together.
Notice how the second example talks about the process Darryl has used to produce the work.
This is part of his thinking – something that constitutes him as a person and on which he will call again in the future.
In the first example, the emphasis is on the work.
This is now separate to Darryl and, while the praise may be welcome, he may find it difficult to take the point being made and apply it to what he does in the future.
(Or he may not – we’re not making a definitive statement here, just seeking to draw out the different way that process-based praise might be received by the learner.)
Praising processes means drawing learners’ attention to the thinking and effort in which they have engaged and reinforcing this in the light of the results to which it has led.
A further benefit of this approach is that it can be applied across the board, with the way in which you praise processes being tailored for individual learners.
Thus, you might praise the way in which a learner who usually gives up has persisted through the course of a lesson while also praising the way in which a more-able learner has applied their critical thinking to pull apart a taxing problem.
In both cases the product is put to one side as it is the process that has caused the product to be created; and it is this behaviour we want to see repeated.
Our praise reinforces this message.
