Reinforcing+Effort

Read and Reflect

After reading this module, it stated many things that I knew but also offered a new/different perspective on reinforcing effort. I have always believed that success has a higher correlation with effort than ability. You do have to have a belief in your ability but as stated in the module, you will always hit a "ceiling" in how far your ability will take you. If you encounter tasks that you believe are above your ability many give up, but if you are accustomed to hard work and have the determination to succeed, you believe there is no task you can't tackle.

One major thing I learned from this module is the need to teach students to understand the importance of effort and helping them to realize that the effort they put forth is correlated to achievement. While I do teach this verbally, I never thought to make it visual to them. So I created an effort rubric and chart which students will be required to complete each week. They will receive ten points towards participation once a week after the chart is reviewed. We will have more discussions on the value of effort.



Currently, students receive verbal reinforcement for their efforts in class, but now I am actively looking for other ways to reinforce effort.

Apply and Reflect

Once I decided to find other ways of reinforcing efforts, I logged onto big huge labs and created trading cards that speak about effort and hopefully motivates students to improve their effort to earn these cards as positive strokes. Students can save these cards in their binders and use the points (each card has a number included) to purchase items from staff such as colorful pencils, candy, juice, free pass certificate (students do not have to complete an assignment but must demonstrate knowledge of the material). We can discuss as a class other items that might be reinforcing.