Behavioral Learning Theories

    When I first learned about Pavlov’s and Skinner’s theories, they both seemed a little confusing to me. I did not think that children could be conditioned to do anything until I began to teach. Out of the two theories, I believe that Skinner’s theory is how I get my students to do anything. Majority of my students learn by doing and when we are learning something together I am the same way. However, I have learned that when we are doing something new their behavior or the outcome of the lesson may not be what I want. So I have learned to bribe them with a good reinforcement to get the results that I desire.

    I teach both Language Arts and Science and getting 26 students to read a book for 15 minutes every day is by far one of the hardest things no one has taught me how to do. Luckily, I am a big kid at heart and I have found a great primary reinforcer to motivate them to read. “Primary reinforcers satisfy basic human needs (Slavin, p. 103, 2014). What other basic human needs, other than food, that you can use to bribe 12 year olds. I told my kids that if everyone earned ten AR points in two weeks, that we would have pizza instead of school lunch. Of course, they agreed. None of them really like the new school lunch they are receiving. Every day I reminded them of the reinforcer and every day for 20 minutes they read. They wanted that pizza so much that everyone had ten points in one week. After that, the AR points went up and the number of weeks went down. I also changed the reinforcer. I started with pizza went to popsicles, chips and a movie, and candy. By the end of the year, my language arts class earned over 300 AR points. I was very proud of them because this was the same class that did not read in 5^th grade and came to me with really low reading levels.

    Even though, I got them to read. I did notice the negative in my approach. My students are so clever that I had to give them rules to reading. I found out that they would check out books on the lowest level of their reading zone. These books only took them about two days to read and they would try to take AR test together. They liked the bribe so much they would do anything to get the points.

    Learning about Skinner’s reinforcers also helped me with my consequences in class. The behaviors I wanted, I learned to praise the loudest and the most. The behaviors I did not want I learned to correct but not in front of everyone. When I correct a student, I try to pull them away from the class and give them a second chance to earn that praise. Rarely, will I send a student to the office unless I knew they needed space to calm down and think about their actions. For every good deed in class, I praised on my Ms. Mac’s Wall of Fame. Every student wanted to be a part of the wall and every student tried to get there.