Action Research Project by Maria Pacheco

When displaying student work, praises, and positive words of encouragement aren't enough, what can we do to encourage students to keep up with the good behavior?

Accentuate the Positives Rewarding students for behaving appropriately can be more effective than punishing students when problems occur. Students who know that they will receive positive attention for good behavior are less likely to seek attention through misbehavior. Research has also show the effectiveness of focusing on positive behaviors whenever possible, according to the IRIS Center for Training Enhancements website Examples particularly suited to first-graders include praising students who share materials and displaying the work of students who remained on-task for assignments. BUT WHEN THIS ISN’T ENOUGH... As we get closer to the end of the year, certain distraction arise and cause a bigger disruption in student behavior such as Show assemblies Half days Spring break Pull outs Deployments Etc. All of these contribute to student behavior.

In order to collect my baseline data, I needed to go back…way back. Data needed to be collected before Christmas break. My mentor teacher provided me with documentation regarding student behavior during the month of December. My Questions were… How was the student behavior before the disruption of Christmas break. How was student behavior before the arrival of the student teacher? My attempts at improving student behavior started off with praises, displaying work they were proud of, and high fives, new seating arrangements, and table points but something was missing.

In this action research project my attempt is to not only have students learn about money management but also encourage them to work hard for their behavior. This management system teaches students about goods and services. I used the money as a reward system in your class for the last few weeks of my student teaching.

Whenever a student does a great job they get paid by the teacher. If they help a friend when they are struggling, they can earn money. Then, if a student does something against the rules, take the coins away. I usually don’t believe in this sort of behavior management {taking away things they’ve earned}, but the students encouraged this rule not me. The students are introduced to the Money Management by telling them that at the end of the week we will be having a class store.

The students will keep their money in their wallets inside of their cubbies. If a coin is found on the floor, it is always returned to the teacher. It’s very important to be responsible for your wallet. Money can only be given by the teacher {I don’t let my kiddos give money to one another} and all the students will be honest and not take others’ money. I will decide how much I want to pay my students. I have my students earn pennies, nickels and dimes and then on Friday’s, they can trade in their money for pennies, nickels, dimes, and eventually quarters and dollars.

Behavior for the weekClassroom Store

To say that this intervention cured student end of the year wiggles would be a lie. Yes, with this intervention I was able to see a slight difference but there continues to be misbehaviors that have students move magnets. This wasn’t intended to be perfect it was intended to help and encourage students to be responsible for their own behaviors. Incorporating money management was my attempt at preparing students for society. If I have this much….and I buy this from the store….then I will have this amount left.

If I were to do this reward system again I would definitely need to factor in time. Time management was very difficult with our store because there were a couple weeks were we just couldn’t get to it due to other school functions. My students were broken hearted to know they couldn’t trade in their money or shop at the store. I think next time I will have students count and sort their money the day before the store opens- that way they are able to meet with me, count their money out to me, decide if they would like to trade in for different coins, such as quarters or dollars, or purchase something. Also on days the store was closed I did not display items because I didn’t want them to distract the kids, so when it came down to opening day, kids took way too long to find and item. By leaving them out they will have a better role as to keeping kids motivated.