Strategy: Using Behavior-specific Praise
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Use this strategy to improve these areas:
Overview
Praise is a very simple and viable tool you already have in your toolbox that can help promote successful student behaviors in your classroom. The behaviors that you give attention to will increase. Therefore, finding ways to provide attention to effective and positive behaviors that you observe from students will increase the likelihood that students will display those desired behaviors in the future. Not only can behavior-specific praise increase positive behaviors, but it can also improve teacher-student relationships. Effective communication is key in providing effective behavior-specific praise and increasing the positive behaviors that you want to see in your classroom.
Purpose
Using effective behavior-specific praise frequently helps to inform students of what successful classroom behaviors are while providing positive attention to those students who demonstrate these effective classroom behaviors. You will see more of the behaviors you pay attention to in your classroom.
How Using Behavior-specific Praise Connects to CARES
Behavior-specific praise is one way that teachers can effectively communicate with students from all backgrounds. Recall a time when someone genuinely praised you for something you did. Recall the positive emotions that you experienced. You likely felt appreciated and you probably continued to engage in that behavior and maybe even improved it. When you provide behavior-specific praise to your students, they will feel that same sense of pride and will feel that their teacher notices and values them. In addition to effectively communicating with students, by using behavior-specific praise, you will also be deepening authentic relationships with your students. Remember that positive teacher-student relationships can be especially important for students from diverse backgrounds. Most people like to receive attention and some students, often some of the most challenging students, will seek attention in negative ways. Providing behavior-specific praise is a tool that you can use to preemptively provide positive attention to students who need it. Perhaps the most important part of providing behavior-specific praise is to make sure that the praise is genuine and also that you provide it in a way that is most appreciated by the student. Knowing your students will help you to determine when or if to provide public praise or private praise to each student.
Some elements to effective praise include:
1) The praise happens immediately after the expected behavior occurs—contingent on the behavior.
2) The praise is behavior specific. Explicit feedback is provided about what the student is doing and which student or students have displayed the behavior. For example, “Jale’t, great job lining up quietly!”
3) The praise is authentic. In other words, when you provide the praise, you really mean it and it is not given for something that is not very important or valued.
How To
How to Increase Your Use of Behavior-specific Praise
One way to increase your use of behavior-specific praise is to first think of behaviors that you would like to see less of in your classroom. Sounds backward, right? In fact, giving attention to the opposite of unwanted behaviors is proactive. Using behavior-specific praise will make it less likely students will display the unwanted behaviors in the future.
- First, identify any behaviors you want to see less of in your classroom (e.g., noncompliance, not completing work, calling out).
- Next, identify the opposite of this problem behavior (e.g., following directions the first time, completing work in a timely manner, raising hand to be acknowledged).
- Next, develop behavior-specific praise statements you can use to “catch” students when they are displaying the behavior you want to see more of (e.g., “Thank you for following directions the first time.” “Great job getting right to work and finishing all the problems!” “Thank you for raising your hand.”). Remember to include the who and the what of the behavior-specific praise.
- Keep in mind that your pre-developed behavior-specific praise statements are just a starting point. You can praise any positive behavior that you see in your classroom.
- You can praise individual students or groups of students, or you can prompt students to praise each other (e.g., let’s all give Jody two snaps for safely completing that science experiment).
Example Videos:
Whole Class Compliment
Video Prompts:
- In this video, you will see a teacher using several strategies, including providing behavior-specific praise.
- Notice how she uses both individual and group opportunities to respond (see Increasing Opportunities to Respond).
- Listen for when the teacher says, “Let’s give Bailey a big hand for doing such a good job,” prompting the whole class to compliment a student.
- Lastly, notice how she uses behavior-specific praise (“I like the way people are raising their hands.“) to let students know it is important to raise their hands to answer. She is noticing the behavior she wants to see rather than pointing out the instances of students not raising their hands.
- What did you like about how this teacher used praise in her classroom?
- How do you think Bailey felt when her class recognized her good work?
- How might you incorporate some of what you saw in this video into your daily teaching?
Calling on Student
Video Prompts:
- Watch how this teacher uses behavior-specific praise when calling on a student to answer a question.
- How does using behavior-specific praise make it clear to students what the expectation is at that time?
Learner Look
Video Prompts:
- Listen for the behavior-specific praise statement, “I like how Brooke is ready to go with her learner look.”
- Notice how this teacher provides feedback to the students who are demonstrating they are ready by having a “learner look.”
- The “learner look” would be taught to the students by the teacher prior to use.
- How can using behavior-specific praise help get students not ready to get on task more quickly?
- What did you like about how the teacher used behavior-specific praise?
- How do you think it made that student feel?
- How might other students respond after hearing the teacher?
- How might you use this strategy in your classroom?
Strategy Tool
Use the Catching Students Being Good strategy tool to help you increase your use of behavior-specific praise.
Reflection
Take a moment to reflect on if your plan is going to work.
Goal Setting
Use the following form to set your behavior-specific praise goals.
References to Other Relevant Resources:
Good, T. & Brophy, J. (2003). Looking in classrooms. (9th edition). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Rathvon, N. (1999). Effective school interventions: Strategies for enhancing academic achievement and social competence. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Reinke, W. M., Herman, K. C., & Sprick, R. (2011). Motivational interviewing for effective classroom management: The classroom check-up. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Sprick, R., Knight, J., Reinke, W., Skyles, T., & Barnes, L. (2010). Coaching classroom management: Strategies & tools for administrators and coaches. Eugene, OR: Pacific Northwest Publishing.
Stormont, M., & Reinke, W. M. (2009). The importance of precorrection and behavior-specific praise strategies. Beyond Behavior, 18, 26-32.