Praise: Goal
Example
Student Performance: Effort. Learning a new skill requires that the student
"Today in class, you wrote non-
work hard and put forth considerable effort--while often not seeing immediate
stop through the entire writing
improvement.
period. I appreciate your hard
work."
For beginning learners, teacher praise can motivate and offer encouragement
by focusing on effort ('seat-time') rather than on product (Daly et al., 2007).
Student Performance: Accuracy. When learning new academic material or
"This week you were able to
behaviors, students move through distinct stages (Haring et al., 1978). Of
correctly define 15 of 20 biology
these stages, the first and most challenging for struggling learners is
terms. That is up from 8 last
acquisition. In the acquisition stage, the student is learning the rudiments of
week. Terrific progress!"
the skill and strives to respond correctly.
The teacher can provide encouragement to students in this first stage of
learning by praising student growth inaccuracy of responding.
Student Performance: Fluency. When the student has progressed beyond
"You were able to compute 36
the acquisition stage, the new goal may be to promote fluency (Haring et al.,
correct digits in two minutes on
1978).
today's math time drill worksheet.
That's 4 digits more than earlier
Teacher praise can motivate the student to become more efficient on the
this week--impressive!"
academic task by emphasizing that learner's gains in fluency (a combination of
accuracy and speed of responding).
Work Product: Student Goal-Setting. A motivating strategy for a reluctant
"At the start of class, you set the
learner is to have him or her set a goal before undertaking an academic task
goal of completing an outline for
and then to report out at the conclusion of the task about whether the goal was
your paper. And I can see that
reached.
the outline that you produced
today looks greatit is well-
The teacher can then increase the motivating power of student goal-setting by
structured and organized."
offering praise when the student successfully sets and attains a goal. The
praise statement states the original student goal and describes how the
product has met the goal.
Work Product: Using External Standard. Teacher praise often evaluates the
"On this assignment, I can see
student work product against some external standard.
that you successfully converted
the original fractions to equivalent
Praise tied to an external standard reminds the student that objective
fractions before you subtracted.
expectations exist for academic or behavioral performance (e.g., Common
Congratulationsyou just
Core State Standards in reading and mathematics) and provides information
showed mastery of one of our
about how closely the student's current performance conforms to those
expectations.
When comparing student work to an external standard, the teacher praisestatement identifies the external standard and describes how closely the
student's work has come to meeting the standard.
state Grade 5 math standards!"
