Praise Hunts

Unfortunately, some learners go through much of their school career without ever receiving praise.

This is a great shame, not least on the level of what we would like learners to take away and remember about how they were treated and spoken to during their time at school.

In addition, we can find learners who regularly experience admonishment for their behaviour, but who rarely receive a positive acknowledgement for anything they have done.

You can correct this by going on praise hunts.

This involves looking at your class and identifying some or all of those learners to whom you have not yet given praise (or to whom you have only given a little).

Primed with the knowledge of who these learners are, you can look for opportunities to praise their behaviour, their thinking and the processes underpinning the work they produce.

This is great for the learners in question.

It brings forth all the benefits of receiving praise, and this is compounded by the fact that, for them, for whatever reason, the experience is less common than we would like.

A classic example is the quiet learner who slips under the teacher’s radar.

Such a learner may seldom receive attention of any sort from their teachers, simply because they do not ask for help and rarely appear to need it.

Taking a moment to notice learners of this type and then acting on our identification of them means giving them the chance to experience praise and the feelings which stem from that.

Another common trope is the learner who is regularly told off for poor behaviour.

In this example, we might unintentionally get into the habit of focussing on the rule-breaking this learner engages in.

But they will also do some things that are good.

And we should look to praise these!

Not only does this give the learner access to the positives associated with praise, but it also helps them to see that we are not labelling them and that we recognise their good behaviour, even if we also must spend time talking to them about their negative behaviour.

Praising Role Models

Another way you can use praise is by praising role models.

Role models provide learners with a set of behaviours they can look at, copy, and learn from.

In your classroom, learners who exhibit positive behaviour can act as role models for other learners or for the whole class.

Praising these learners draws attention to their behaviour and reinforces the sense that what they are doing is good and ought to be copied.

Here are three examples:

1. During a group work activity, praise a group who are working well and use them as role models for the rest of the class. Stop the activity and briefly indicate what the exemplar group are doing and how their behaviour is supporting their learning. If appropriate, ask the group to demonstrate some of what they are doing (whether this is possible will depend on the activity). Another option is to visit individual groups and to praise learners within those groups who are role models of good behaviour to which the rest of the learners can look for guidance.
2. When a learner completes a piece of work and does so through excellent application of relevant processes, praise them as a role model and highlight their efforts. Share the work they have produced with the rest of the class, drawing attention to why it is good. Explain how learners could copy or imitate the things the role model learner has done; if you have a visualiser, use this to display the work on your whiteboard.
3. If a particular learner is struggling to meet your expectations, use another learner as a role model to exemplify for them what successful behaviour looks like. Here, praising the second learner demonstrates to the first learner what it is we want them to do. This has the dual benefit of providing an easily accessible model they can follow alongside a vicarious reinforcement of why changing their behaviour will be a good thing (because it will bring praise and approbation like what you provided to the role model learner).