I agree about the imposition of adult chatter. Thank you for pointing that out. I think narration needs to be used judiciously. Often, less really is more in the classroom. The loudest voices, and the voices that are heard most frequently, should be the children's. It's their classroom as much or more than it is ours. If they have a sense of ownership they have less of a need to seek approval and attention. That's when they blossom.
Original Message:
Sent: 12-24-2020 11:33 AM
From: Karen Lefkovitz
Subject: What are intrinsically motivating alternatives to "I like that..."?
Thanks for this resource Lauren, it is really interesting and well worth looking at. It helped answer some of the nagging thoughts I had about this rich topic. While neutral sounding narrative comments may seem better than "I like" statements, a few problems jumped out at me, based on my own teaching experience.
Narrating what a child is doing always made me feel self-conscious. I have no issue with making a spectacle of myself, as in singing, dancing and acting things out- with very little native talent- but the narration method rubbed me the wrong way.
On one hand this narration can be annoying chatter, just adding to the noise of the room, and pulling the child's focus away from what they are actually doing, to pay attention to me! On the other hand, kids are as smart as we are, they can sniff out the similarity to the "I like" phrase, in that we are still calling out behaviors we value, indicating to the whole class that the kids exhibiting those behaviors are on the right track.
I think back to my early teaching days with the one kid who would not join circle, basically ever, for a whole year, but instead liked to run around and grab as much attention as possible. In a flash of brilliance, I realized that circle time was not for them, so my goal became to get them to do whatever else, but quietly so as not to disrupt the other kids in circle. You know how that went: other kids decided they would also like to leave circle. Poor me and my well-planned circles. No amount of guiding statements was changing that situation. I had to conclude that if doing stuff in the room was more compelling than my circle, then my format was simply not meeting the kids' needs. Even the "compliant" kids might not be getting much value out of the circle, when you stop to think about it.
I am glad to say, that over the years I found many ways to meet students where they were, have so much fun together, and even have circles that were highly participatory and made sense in the context of our learning process. Drummond's Enterprise Talk could have made the path shorter.
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Karen Lefkovitz
Independent Consultant
Philadelphia PA
Original Message:
Sent: 12-23-2020 07:36 AM
From: Lauren Stauble
Subject: What are intrinsically motivating alternatives to "I like that..."?
Have you heard of Enterprise Talk? https://tomdrummond.com/leading-and-caring-for-children/enterprise-talk/
The beginning explains the philosophy and that's followed by a guide for ways to interact with children to let them know you truly see them without telling them what to do or using old fashioned positive reinforcement. I was a little skeptical before I tried it but ultimately it changed my practice all together.
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Lauren Stauble
Consultant/Faculty/ECE Admin
Boston, MA
feelthinkconnect.com
Original Message:
Sent: 12-21-2020 04:56 PM
From: Monica Vazquez
Subject: What are intrinsically motivating alternatives to "I like that..."?
"I like that Mai is listening." "I like that Sami is waiting her turn." Using "I like" can result in children taking certain actions not because they know it's the right action but because they want to make their teacher happy or to get praise/recognition. What alternatives do you use to avoid this?
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Monica
Pre-K Teacher
Bay Area, CA
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