I seem to be finding a trend with all of our BIPs...students are having a hard time intrinsically motivating themselves to improve their behavior. When there is a reward, someone is watching them, or someone is reminding them of their behavior, the students do quite well. However, when they are left entirely on their own their behavior drops. I've been trying to think of a specific reason for this, but just can't. I honestly think it is simply because children like attention, and work harder when they know they are being watched. While this is not an ideal situation to be working with, I do think it is normal and ok for some students. Even though the goal of any BIP should be towards independence (no longer needing the BIP), not every child will be developmentally ready for that within one year. I think just showing the student(s) that you are making an effort to help them improve, and giving them that extra attention, is going to help so much in the long run.
I love how you talked about displaying student work to create classroom community. It's such a simple thing, yet so important!
It seems that we all agree on one thing, creating a BIP that actual alters children behavior over the long run is an extremely difficult task. We all had moderate success when we tried to alter behavior through incentives. However, once those incentives disappeared so did most of the work we put into the BIP. I do not know about any of you but the real problem with my BIP was that I focused on a surface issue, completing assignments. What I should have done was to try and improve the underlining behavior causing the student not to turn in assignments. While I had little success improving his stamina or independence, I feel that if I had focused more on improving his stamina and independence it may have been longer lasting. The real questions becomes how do we improve such a big underlining issue like lack of stamina or independence in such a short period of time?
Hey Laura!
ReplyDeleteI seem to be finding a trend with all of our BIPs...students are having a hard time intrinsically motivating themselves to improve their behavior. When there is a reward, someone is watching them, or someone is reminding them of their behavior, the students do quite well. However, when they are left entirely on their own their behavior drops. I've been trying to think of a specific reason for this, but just can't. I honestly think it is simply because children like attention, and work harder when they know they are being watched. While this is not an ideal situation to be working with, I do think it is normal and ok for some students. Even though the goal of any BIP should be towards independence (no longer needing the BIP), not every child will be developmentally ready for that within one year. I think just showing the student(s) that you are making an effort to help them improve, and giving them that extra attention, is going to help so much in the long run.
I love how you talked about displaying student work to create classroom community. It's such a simple thing, yet so important!
I hope you are enjoying your time off!
~Michelle~
It seems that we all agree on one thing, creating a BIP that actual alters children behavior over the long run is an extremely difficult task. We all had moderate success when we tried to alter behavior through incentives. However, once those incentives disappeared so did most of the work we put into the BIP. I do not know about any of you but the real problem with my BIP was that I focused on a surface issue, completing assignments. What I should have done was to try and improve the underlining behavior causing the student not to turn in assignments. While I had little success improving his stamina or independence, I feel that if I had focused more on improving his stamina and independence it may have been longer lasting. The real questions becomes how do we improve such a big underlining issue like lack of stamina or independence in such a short period of time?
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