Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition

Effort and Recognition are important because they are both directly
related with the attitudes and beliefs of students.
Teachers must be able to show the connection between effort and
achievement.
Research shows that the level of belief in self-efficacy plays a strong
role in motivation for learning and achievement. (Schunk, 2003)

Reinforcing Effort

Teach students about the relationship between effort and achievement.

Provide students with explicit guidance about exactly what it means to
expend effort.
Ask students to keep track of their effort and achievement.
Share stories about people who have succeeded by not giving up.
Have students reflect on it periodically, and even mathematically
analyze the data

Reinforcing Effort Technology Resources

Create a Google Doc spreadsheet for an effort rubric (figure 2.1)

The class discusses each category and determines what is expected in
each row and column.

Then the students

create their own
spreadsheet
(figure 2.2)
The students use
this chart to fill out
their performance
every week

Then at the end of the unit you will be able to create a graph.
This graph will show students the correlation between the amount of
effort they have put in and the grades they received.
When students have well known stories from which to learn, effort is
reinforced and students begin to take more responsibility for their own
success.

Providing Recognition

Recognition can be used to promote student engagement and

decrease behavioral problems
Promote a mastery-goal orientation
Provide praise that is specific and aligned with expected performance
Use of concrete symbol recognition
Find ways to personalize recognition. Give awards for individual
accomplishments
Pause, Prompt, Praise If a student is struggling pause to discuss the
problem, then prompt with specific suggestions to help them improve.
If the students performance improves as a result, offer praise.

Providing Recognition Technology Tools

Create a class survey that allows students to anonymously rate a peers

using Micro poll
This allows students as well as teachers to provide feedback and
grades for random students
Then the teacher can see who gets the highest grade out of the class
or the top group of people, and they can be formally recognized by the
teacher