Tuesday, October 18, 2005

pure Behaviorist classrooms

I was thinking in EdPsych that there ought to be more ways to incoporate negative reinforcement systems in the classroom. I came up with these suggestions:
  1. Every child has a small magnetic board placed on the corner of their desk. They each start the day with five cockroach magnets on their board. (Teacher is aware that the students hate bugs because of close observation during recess.) If a child does something appropriate, for example raise his/her hand to ask a question, the teacher removes one of the cockroach magnets. After all five magnets are removed, students begin to earn jellybean magnets when they produce good behavior. (Teacher is aware that they like candy because of close observation during birthday parties.) A child may earn one real jellybean for every five jellybean magnets they have by the end of the day. After one month, each real jellybean is earned for every ten jellybean magnets.
  2. Teacher fills the room with snakes. Every time a student correctly answers a given math problem, the teacher removes one of the snakes from the classroom. The teacher has a special cage outside in which to store the snakes, so that s/he can fill the room again each morning. (If a particular class ENJOYS snakes, then the teacher can substitute frogs, fox, lions, etc.)
  3. The teacher sets up a behavior chart with color-coded paper cards in pockets labeled with each child's name. Each child starts the day with a black card, which means visiting the principal's office. If they sit in their desks properly during Writers' Workshop, they may change their cards to brown, which indicates a conference with their parents. Students may work their way up to red (benched during recess), yellow (warning), and green cards by exhibiting continuing good behavior. At the end of the day, students who still have a red, brown, or black card serve their consequence. Then the cards are again flipped to black for the next day.
  4. The class begins every morning routine with Calendar. Then each child does his/her assigned "job" for the week. At this point, the teacher turns on the "Noise Maker," a machine which emits a high-pitched siren. It doesn't matter that the children cannot hear the teacher over the siren; they are working at individual machines that teach them how to read. For every job completed to the teacher's satisfaction, the Noise Maker is turned one decibal lower. Children have the oportunity to soften the Noise Maker further by turning in completed homework and neat classwork.


Lest you think, like my humorless roommate, that I am serious, rest assured. I would never touch a snake voluntarily, much less keep one in my classroom. (I would use frogs.)

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