I thought it was very interesting to talk about intrinsic motivation as almost a negative thing. In every other class I've had, it has been the big "goal" we should all reach for. I personally believe that it is a wonderful thing to reach for, but in our society we need the extrinsic motivation to continue on. Our society needs quantitative evidence and tests to equate worth and though I don't always agree with it, I do believe it is necessary.

I have honestly never even heard of intrinsic motivation before this class. I had never thought about it before and I agree that it should not be a goal for children to work towards. It doesn't make sense to do that at all. I also liked what we did to figure out a plan to help the child with their behavior, it's true that focusing on the behavior will really help the child.

FBA

This week, I enjoyed the activity we did with the Functional Behavior Assessment. Seeing as I will be a Special Education Teacher, I will need to understand how they work. I also just found them interesting because it means the regular education has to be more involved, whereas often times, they find out a student needs special assistance and they turn them over to the special education teacher and stay out of the way. I also like that the FBA helps us, as teachers, pay attention to our kids and what their needs are. Before we have our own classroom, I think we have a tendency to think all students will be awesome and have no issues, which is just not the case. We need to be more aware of what our students need, and how we can help them learn, but also how we can help the class as a whole learn better.

Motivations

As a future teacher, I can honestly say that I won't always use intrinsic motivation to motivate my students only because students like to have an immediate reward because of how great it makes them feel when they see immediate results. Students are not like adults who are willing to wait for a reward that may come later in time, they require immediate pleasure in order to feel like they are important. For instance think about when you are potty training your first kid, you use rewards like candy or a toy as an incentive for them to use the potty.

Preschool

Most of my thoughts on this prompt go back to my knowledge of preschool. I plan on being a preschool teacher and in such classrooms one of the most important things is consistency. Children don't know how to deal with inconsistency, especially at this age. consequences can be difficult at their developmental stage, since they don't really understand yet. One thing I have seen in some class rooms is using a stoplight system where a child can begin in green for being good but then be moved to yellow or even red for bad behavior, but again, at this age it can only be so effective. Guiding the child by example and by word is often the most effective behavior changer and shaper.

I am going to be a preschool teacher and so it is hard to give the children a consequence for their behavior it is more of being consistent. For example one of our rules in preschool is to walk in preschool so if the children end up running in the classroom we say oh walk in preschool and then if they still do it we say, "now we have to practice walking" then we grab their hand direct them back to where they started and then walk to their destination. I know that this strategy will only work for some things. One strategy I was thinking about was doing like a Red, Yellow, Green sheet and if the child is good that day they stay in green. If they are bad they would move to the red. I am thinking about preschool age children since that is what I will be is a preschool teacher so having consequences is hard because the children don't really understand that concept yet. I think letting them see that when they act out they get to red and if they are good and come to all the activities they get to stay in green would help them. The thing that is hard about this is that they still might not understand the concept, but it is worth a try I think.

Classroom Management

I think it is important for teachers to begin the school year with telling the students what they expect from them, and let them know that breaking the rules isn't okay. In an elementary school I worked in, there was a teacher who had a consequence wheel. There was a board with all the student's names on it and a little pouch under each of their names. If the teacher had to stop a lesson and tell a student to be quiet that student would have to put a marble in their pouch. If they got to 3 marbles in their pouch, they would have to spin the consequence wheel to see what their punishment would be. On this wheel there were things like, staying in from recess, helping the teacher clean up the classroom, or writing a letter and having their parents sign it. Overall this technique was pretty successful, but a pitfall we saw was that the students would  break off the arrow on the wheel so they wouldn't have to spin. In that case we would just assign them a consequence, which helped them realize that they wouldn't get out of having a punishment for their bad behavior.