Praise

1. 1. Identify the specific behaviors that you would like the student to demonstrate more often than they currently do. Consider behaviors that are aligned with your general classroom rules or expectations (e.g., be respectful, work quietly, raise hand to speak), or those that are specific to individual student needs (e.g., writing neatly, demonstrate use of a desired coping strategy when prompted).

1. 1. When you see the student demonstrate the above identified behavior, acknowledge what they did well. Be specific and immediate with your praise. Instead of saying “good job” (which is vague), you might say “good job writing so neatly on this assignment.”  Couple praise with active ignoring of challenging behaviors that are attention seeking (e.g., complaining or whining). When the student complains or whines:

      • • Redirect your attention to other appropriately behaving students in the class and provide praise to those students.
      • • Be okay with allowing the whining to escalate and continue directing attention toward the task at hand and the appropriate behavior of classmates.
      • • Once the students stops the complaining or whining, praise the alternative behavior (e.g., I like that you are using a polite indoor voice, how can I help you?; nice job taking a deep breath to calm down).

1. 1. If you are trying to improve appropriate behavior of a given student (rather than all students), consider the frequency of praise toward this student. You may see greater behavior change if you provide praise in a targeted way (e.g., more frequently, more consistently across morning and afternoon, more individualized to that student).

1. 1. Use Beacon progress monitoring tools to evaluate the extent to which this strategy is improving the target behaviors as intended.

• • Be creative with the forms of praise you use in the classroom and vary your wording to prevent sounding repetitive and robotic. Effective praise statements often start with:

    • • Thank you for X.
    • • I appreciate that you X
    • • I noticed that you X
    • • I can tell that you X
    • • I really like that you X
    • • You did a good job with X

• • Verbal praise from the teacher is a great starting point and can be supplemented with non-verbal signs (thumbs-up) or classroom recognition boards.

• • Individualize your praise. Some students need a cheerleader and others prefer subtle praise. Experiment with each and see how the student responds.

• • For some students, praising effort will be more important than anything else. Statements like “I can tell you are really working hard on that” will reinforce the on task behavior and increase the likelihood that the students persists with the task even when it is difficult.

• • Although praising the target student is critical, it can also be helpful to provide specific praise to other students in the classroom to help the target student learn what behaviors are appropriate.

• • Praise Immediately. The sooner you praise after you see desirable behavior, the more effective the praise is likely to be, this may be particularly true for children who struggle with inattention and/or impulsivity.

• • Start small. If the child exhibits many challenging behaviors, it may be difficult to find a task they can do well to receive praise. If this is a problem, look for something easy that they can do and receive praise for. You can also praise for effort in these situations.

• • Refrain from using sarcasm when you praise. (e.g., “Thanks for raising your hand, it’s about time. ”) This type of praise is not likely to be reinforcing or to increase the identified appropriate behaviors.

• • Keep in mind that you can praise specific, time-limited behaviors (Thanks for writing so neatly on that paper. I can really read it) or more enduring traits about the student (You are really a neat and organized writer). There is emerging research that suggests that praising a students’ enduring traits may be a way to highlight a students’ strengths to classmates and enhance peer relationships in the classroom. Thus, for some students (e.g., those who show challenging classroom behaviors and peer relationship problems), consider ways that you can highlight this student’s strengths on enduring dimensions other the traditional academic or behavioral dimensions (e.g., creativity, style, athletic ability, humor, curiosity).

• • When first starting to change behavior, praise every time you see the behavior. As the student improves, you can provide praise more intermittently. For instance, when learning to read, you may first praise each time the student sounds out letters correctly. But as they master this, you praise this less and only praise as they demonstrate higher skills (whole words, entire sentences, then paragraphs, and pages).

• • Praise can help improve the relationship between teachers and students and build positive self-esteem, student-teacher relationships, and peer relationships. Teachers should strive to have more praise statements than corrective feedback or reprimands. Some research suggests that teachers should strive for a 4:1; for every reprimand or correction a student receives, they should also receive four praise statements.

• • Praise, coupled with pre-corrections and corrective feedback, are a powerful way to shape student behavior (see resources on the use of Pre-Corrections and Corrective Feedback)

• • If you need help implementing or evaluating this intervention, it may be helpful to seek out Behavioral Consultation for Teachers from your school mental health professional or intervention team leader.

• Consistency is important, so once you have decided to ignore something, it is important to ignore each time this behavior occurs and ignore until the behavior ends.
• Never ignore a behavior that is harmful to the student or peers in the classroom.
• Have a conversation with the student prior to your use of this strategy. Tell the student you are not intending to be mean even if it feels that way. Tell them you want to help them make requests in an appropriate way. So you will respond to appropriate requests but not requests made in a whining or rude voice.
• Expect that the negative behavior may increase or worsen before improvements are seen. If a student has always received a response or attention for whining or complaining, they will be surprised by this change, and may increase their volume or frequency in hopes of getting attention. Responding in these moments may reduce distress temporarily, but will also reinforce the new, escalated behavior.
• Be aware that just because you are ignoring the behavior, peers may not be. Peer attention is a powerful reinforcement. Thus, you may need to have a class discussion about the skill of ignoring and how and when students may need to try to use this skill (provide several examples, not just the one behavior of the target student). Then praise students when you see their attempts to ignore.
• Talk to other adults about ignoring this same behavior in other contexts (e.g., other classes, the cafeteria). Cross-setting consistency will help to change the behavior more rapidly.
• Students often whine or make complaints in the context of behavioral compliance (e.g., complaining “I don’t want to clean up” while they are actively cleaning up). It is important to ignore the verbal statements and praise the behavioral compliance. (e.g., Nice job cleaning up! or Nice job cleaning up, even though you don’t want to).
• If you need help implementing or evaluating this intervention, it may be helpful to seek out consultation from your school mental health professional or intervention team leader.

Praise has been rated as “not evaluated” at both the elementary and secondary levels as it has not been rigorously evaluated by itself. Therefore, we cannot determine a level of effectiveness.

Elementary: When praise was studied at the elementary level, it was paired with corrective feedback. Specifically, research has indicated that it is ideal to have higher rates of praise than instances of corrective feedback. This corrective feedback intervention coupled with praise resulted in increases in on-task behavior.

Secondary: Praise has not been rigorously studied as a standalone intervention among secondary students to determine its effectiveness.

Recommendations: If you choose to use praise to address your student’s presenting problems, we recommend pairing praise with corrective feedback at a higher ratio of praise to corrective feedback.