I am very pleased to present the game of Tic-Tac-Toe Products:
This is a really fun game which also happens to review multiplication facts! It’s one of my favorite math games to teach and play with my students. It’s super simple, and kids can play several rounds of this without noticing the time passing! Like most of the games I will share, it’s also very portable. If your child has learned their multiplication facts, you should really give it a go! Fun for the whole family.
It’s summertime! Time for the kids to read books, swim, play outside, and learn how to deal with boredom. I think a healthy dose of boredom is good for kids. It can be a stepping stone to creativity and imagination. Some of my best memories from childhood stemmed from boredom, and I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything!
Still, summer can get pretty… boring.
(Sound familiar?)
I filled my elementary summer days with hundreds of books, lots of sunshine, and probably a little too much TV. One thing I wish I had were the math games I’m about to share with you! They are simple, fun, and great ways to practice math facts and concepts. In my classroom, my students would cheer every time I announced that we were learning a new math game. They loved these games so much that they even chose to play them during their free time!
Several years ago, I was asked to give a talk to Sunday School teachers at church on how to discipline children. My first thought was that I didn’t want to talk about disciplining children. Disciplining children implies that they’re misbehaving, but misbehaviors can be caused by a lot of things, not the least of which is the teacher’s inability to teach well. (I’m pretty sure I could talk for hours on that topic alone, but I’ll save it for another time.) Sure, every child has their weak moments, but there is a whole lot that a teacher can do to help students compose themselves respectfully and responsibly.
I find that the smoothest path involves anticipating and preventing misbehavior in the first place. If that ship has sailed, though, this is the next one you want to get on. Sometimes children come in with certain habits and behaviors and you need to proactively help them to work them out. Maybe it’s a girl who throws a tantrum every time something doesn’t go her way, or a child who has a habit of talking back. Perhaps it’s a small but persistent matter, such as getting a boy to tuck in his chair or keep his desk area tidy.
As a teacher, it can mean training your entire class to execute various procedures well, such as walking to and from the carpet area quickly, quietly, and ready to focus as soon as the transition is complete. I’ve worked with children on all of these and more, and have found that our success generally depended on my consistent execution of a few key skills. Yes, my execution. It’s not completely up to the child to improve himself. You can’t just tell a kid to “be better” or “stop doing that” and always expect her to know how to do it. You need to actively work with them to shape their behavior and help them grow as individuals.
In a series of posts, I have shared some of my experiences in shaping children’s behavior. Big or small, whole class or individual, there were a few key patterns that began to emerge in my behavior-shaping process. I constantly fine-tuned it over the years, and grew increasingly confident of my ability to effect positive change in children.
True, I have not actually shaped the behavior of my own children yet, but I really think that all these years as a teacher have given me a leg up to that end. Actually, one of the biggest reasons I wanted to be a teacher was to garner experience and wisdom from my career in order to enhance my effectiveness as a parent. So here’s a glimpse of what I have learned, for all you parents out there who didn’t get to spend eight years working with hundreds of kids before having your own. I hope to share some of the highlights of what I’ve learned over the years with you so that it may benefit you as you parent and teach children.
This post is part of my series on How to Shape Children’s Behavior.
Over the course of the last eight years, I’ve learned a lot about teaching. One thing I know for sure is that if you don’t have students’ behavior in check, you cannot teach as effectively. Children thrive in an environment where they know where the boundaries are and are able to respect them. Some kids need more help developing this ability than others. That’s where we come in.
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to read some of my other posts on setting clear expectations and laying out a graduated system of consequences. Now it’s time to follow through with these new behavioral structures. The beginning is probably the most formative time as your child feels out just how serious you are about holding them to your stated expectations and following through with the stated consequences.
It’s likely that you will soon experience the first few pokes and pushes as they subconsciously explore the new system(s) you’ve set up. This beginning period is definitely one of the most important times to consistently reinforce the boundaries with the consequences you have set forth. However, all your work will be for naught if you don’t continually show that the boundaries are still where you said they were—day after day, week after week, month after month. I know this all too well, because I watched all of my behavioral structures collapse again and again when I first started teaching.
This post is part of my series on How to Shape Children’s Behavior.
This post is long. I thought about splitting it into three parts, but each section builds on and relies on the rest, so I decided to keep them all together. Thanks for reading!
The other day, a parent asked me for advice on appropriate punishments for their child’s misbehaviors. I don’t think he was thinking too hard about word choice, but it’s a single word that can make a big difference.The way we think about consequences versus punishments has huge implications for how we parent and raise our children. Any person who cares for children needs to know this: every parent, every teacher, every daycare provider.
The end-of-the-year party handouts have been distributed, and the last oral presentation has been given. Science fair projects are over, and the final rounds of testing are coming to a close. All this can only mean one thing: SUMMER!!! As summer nears, this also means one other thing: the school year is coming to a close. Your child has spent the better half of the last year with an adult who has probably come to know his quirks, mannerisms, preferences, and learning style better than most. It just so happens that Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up (PTA says 5/5-5/9), so whether you are looking for a way to express appreciation to your child’s teacher next week or at the very end of the school year, here are some ideas for you!
Giving teachers gifts is definitely extra and not expected (and not even allowed in some districts). Personally, I have found written sentiments to be the most meaningful over the course of the years. Of course I am not representative of every (or most) teachers, but here are some gifts that have stood out to me over the years.
This post is part of my series on How to Shape Children’s Behavior.
When I was in teacher school, I remember someone telling us that it’s best if students are intrinsically motivated do things. The idea was that children should just naturally want to improve for the sake of improving or gaining mastery, and that they should not require external forces or rewards to motivate them. We were even told that, as teachers, we should avoid phrases like, “I really like how Eric is sitting quietly,” or “Thank you, class, for beginning your work right away.” If we phrased things like that, students might start behaving well to please you, the teacher.
Oh dear.
Honestly, I never really figured out how to tap into the intrinsically-motivated angel in every child. True, most students entered my class with a strong personal desire to do their best and try hard at everything, from academics to behavior. Every year, though, I’ve had at least a couple of children who would probably rather eat dirt than write a paragraph, or who would wreak havoc at recess if there were no consequences. When attempts to appeal to the self-motivated child within failed, I resorted to the next best thing I could think of: offering rewards. I’m not gonna lie, it works like a charm.
This post is part of my series on How to Shape Children’s Behavior.
I think I’ve had about six or seven headaches ever in my life. Last night, I had my eighth. My head was growing foggy and I grew frustrated as I tried to wrap my head around how to explain my method for shaping children’s behavior. Every time I started a new paragraph, there would be some small but crucial concept that I felt the need to explain first. As I branched off and my explanations and illustrations grew, I would run across yet another concept I felt compelled to cover more thoroughly. This kept happening and before I knew it, I had spiderwebbed out of control and lost track of my initial direction. Headache, I tell you. I lay on the couch in despair. This was harder than any writing assignment I’d ever had in college or grad school, and that’s saying a lot.
I couldn’t just go back to post one and continue, skimming over these other essential points. It would be like trying to teach the algorithm for long-division without ensuring that my students were fluent in subtraction, multiplication, and a host of other concepts first. It just wouldn’t be right. Sure, I could spit out the step-by-step directions, but it would not mean anything or be nearly as effective if we didn’t first have a good foundation of fundamentals.
I am trying to teaching something I think is really important here. In the last several years of working with children, I always had this feeling that I had something really useful to share with the world. I’m thrilled that I finally get to do that! However, while I’ve been trying to frame it as “a few important lessons,” I’m realizing it’s more like a whole unit. I had envisioned starting off this series with an introductory overview, followed by a handful of detailed posts. After bouncing ideas around with my husband, however, I’ve decided to revamp my approach. I’m going to start with the fundamentals, and then put it all together in the end. That’s actually how my first two parenting/teaching posts on A Better Way to Say Sorry and Preventing Misbehavior came about in the first place. I had been trying to write up other posts when these two ideas came up, and I realized they merited their own posts.
This next post is completely appropriate, given the conclusions I arrived at last night. Instead of shallowly touching on several big concepts in one post, I will focus on one thing at a time. And today, the topic is exactly that: teach one new thing at a time.
Teach one new thing at a time
If there is something you want a child (or anyone) to learn well, follow this advice: teach just one new thing at a time. If it’s a new procedure, use familiar material. If it’s new material, use a familiar procedure. As a teacher, this played out in many different ways for me. When I wanted students to learn a new vocabulary activity, for example, I used simple words they were very familiar with to teach it to them. This way, students could focus on learning the new activity without fumbling over what the words meant or getting frustrated with how to spell them. Once they grew comfortable with this activity, I could turn it around and use this now-familiar procedure to teach them new vocabulary words. If I had given them new words and a new activity at once, it would have been a frustrating experience and neither would have been learned as well.
Teach one new thing at a time is an effective principle for teaching anything new—a new skill, new content, a new procedure. For the purpose of this series, I will apply it to teaching good behavior.
This post is part of my series on How to Shape Children’s Behavior.
I believe that children want to be good. I think even the most challenging children wish, in their core, that they could behave well. I imagine it’s not dissimilar to the way adults want to be more disciplined about exercise, eat a generally balanced diet, or get their finances in order. It would be nice, but sometimes we just can’t seem to keep it up. Breaking poor habits is one of the first of many difficult steps in forming better ones. Wouldn’t it would be much easier if we could just go find our younger selves and keep poor habits from forming in the first place? Until time machines work, then, let’s do our children a favor and help them build good habits before the bad ones begin. This, of course, is also known as prevention. Today, I hope to share with you some reasons why you should be proactive about anticipating and preventing misbehaviors, and how you can more effectively do so.
This post is part of my series on How to Shape Children’s Behavior.
“Say sorry to your brother.”
“But he’s the one who–”
“Say it!” you insist, an edge of warning in your voice.
He huffs, rolls his eyes to the side and says flatly, “Sorry.”
“Say it like you mean it,” you demand.
“Sorrrrry,” he repeats, dragging out the word slowly with bulging eyes and dripping insincerity.
You sigh in defeat and turn to #2, “Now tell him you forgive him.”
“But he doesn’t even mean it!”
“Just say it!”
“iforgiveyou…” he mutters, looking down to the side dejectedly.
“Now be nice to each other.”
Harumphy silence.
This scenario might sound all too familiar– if not from your experiences as a parent, then at least your own experiences as a child. It’s easy to see how it isn’t always that effective. You, the teacher/parent/authority, probably benefit from it the most because now at least you can feel like you did something about it, allowing you to close the case. Problem solved… now stop bickering. You know inside, however, that the offended still feels bitter, because the apology was not sincere. And while it may seem like the offender got off easy– not even having to show proper remorse or use a sincere tone–he is actually the one who loses out the most. He not only learns a poor lesson that he can get away with lies and empty words, but does not have the opportunity to experience true reconciliation and restoration of relationships. He will probably continue inflicting similar offenses, feel less remorse than he should, and undergo less positive character change than he could have.
But what alternative do you have? What else are you supposed to do? It’s not like you can force a genuine apology and repentant heart out of him, right?
Actually, you can. It’s not 100%, but it’s a lot more % than the scenario you read above.
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