February 12th, Class competition

I had not yet come up with another good idea for controlling behavior since the apparent loss in effectiveness of the behavior contracts by Friday. Also, this was the last day before a three day break, and the day of our Valentine's day party, and I knew that controlling the class would be more difficult on this day than on normal days. In addition, my lesson plan for the day was a game, and that always gets them more excited and talkative than less.

So, my plan was to do a class competition. I knew I was tracking talking for this project anyways, and so I decided to say that there would be three 5 dollar prizes for those who were the least talkative that day. Also, I added that if more than three tied for least talkative, then I would randomly draw three names from all those who tied.

It was an effective strategy for the day. No one talked more than four times that day, and most of my focus students did particularly well. R-0, J-2, D-1, T-0, G-0. Only for N and B was it less than effective with both of them still talking out 3 times.

Overall the class was fairly well behaved and it was easier than normal to do the games.

As I am writing this blog, I am thinking about how it is interesting how not a single strategy works for all of the boys that I am testing it on. This goes right along with what we are taught in teaching programs: differentiation. I think that some of the boys succeed when they have one motivation and others fail with it, and vice versa and the "winning" strategy for my class (which is that all 7 focus boys are quiet during phonics on a regular basis) will have to be one where not every boy has the same task.

Over the upcoming weekend, I will look back over my acquired data by then, and see what day/strategy was the most successful for each boy, and next week I will try giving each boy the strategy that worked best for them.