Reinforcing Effort

A major problem with my eighth grade math students is that many of them do not take responsibility for their learning. They will do whatever it takes to get out of doing work, even if it means cheating. I had a handful of students cheat on their chapter test last week, even after spending a considerable amount of class time preparing for it. I can honestly say that a majority of my students put forth just enough effort to get a grade that is acceptable to their parents which, in many cases, is just a C. I have tried very hard this year to encourage them to put forth more effort and take responsibility for their learning. Instead, many of them continue focus their effort on getting the grade they need to stay out of trouble. 

That is why I found chapter eight in the book “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works” very resourceful. Titled “reinforcing effort,” chapter eight offers a couple of great ideas to help encourage students to put forth more effort. One of these ideas is to have students use a rubric to record the effort they put into class each week. Sample categories in the rubric which are used to measure effort are note taking, attention, participation, homework, and studying. The values for each of these categories are added up to determine the total value for the effort the student puts forth each week. The students take a test at the end of each week and record their test score into the spreadsheet.  Once the students create a graphic representation of this data, they are able to see the effect that their effort has on their class grade. However, this cannot be done in just one week. It may take several weeks before students can recognize the relationship between effort and their grade.

In relation to the behaviorist learning theory, the grade that the students receive can serve as reinforcement for their effort. If a student receives a bad grade and recognizes that their lack of effort was the cause of this, then they will certainly put forth more effort in the future. If a student receives a good grade, then they will likely continue to put forth a good amount of effort. Throughout this school year, I have been telling my students that their grades are a direct reflection of their effort in class. I realize that simply telling them is not enough, so I have taken measures to support this. At the end of each quarter, I have given each student a detailed copy of their grades from that quarter. Then, my students calculated their overall class grade at the end of each week during the quarter. They created a line graph, by hand, to represent this data and then proceeded to analyze the graph. Following their analysis, they wrote a story about their experiences in my class during the previous quarter, noting how these experiences were reflected in the graph they created.

Essentially, this activity was very similar to the “reinforcing effort” activity in chapter eight. However, I now realize that there are several things that I can do to improve the activity I created. For one, using Microsoft Excel will help my students gain more interest in the graphing portion of the activity. Another is that the stories that my students wrote may or may not help them identify the relationship between their grade and their effort. It seems that using a rubric with more specific indicators would certainly help. One more improvement would be to have my students record the data on a weekly basis instead of at the end of each quarter. By performing this activity more consistently and in a more precise manner, my students will definitely put forth more effort in my class.

The behaviorist learning theory has a place in every classroom. To get the desired behavior out of your students, you must effectively use positive and negative reinforcement. Not only will you help your students get a better grade, but you will also help them build the skills they need to be successful lifelong learners.