Rewarding good classroom behaviour

published:15 Dec 2008

Graeme Napier, an ICT teacher in his second year of teaching at an 11-18 comprehensive school in Lancashire, was concerned that whilst he was able to use the school’s structured system of ‘consequences’ to manage poor behaviour effectively, there was little attention given to students who behaved well.

He felt that acknowledging positive behaviour was just as important and found supporting evidence in a Research for Teachers (RFT) summary about effective strategies for pupils with emotional or behavioural difficulties in mainstream classrooms.

Graeme’s reward system
Graeme introduced a new rewards system with his classes, designed to focus attention on positive behaviour. He devised a hierarchy of four kinds of meaningful rewards:

• verbal praise
• commendations (for use at KS3 and discreetly at KS4)
• headteacher’s awards (for use across KS3 and KS4)
• postcards home (for use across KS3 and particularly at KS4).

Graeme was careful to monitor his use of praise in lessons. He made audio recordings of some of his lessons and transcribed them so that he could identify opportunities where he used verbal praise effectively.

Conclusions
His results showed an overall increase in the number of commendations and a decrease in the number of consequences given.  When he asked the students about which kinds of actions they preferred (using a questionnaire), almost twice as many said they preferred commendations to consequences. In particular, they liked to receive certificates with awards, and to discuss their work with the teacher.