I was wondering what everyone thought about reinforcing effort and providing recognition in the classroom. I was wondering what everyone does as far as using reinforcing effort and providing recognition in their classroom. Finally, what positive and negavitve things has happened by using these tools.
Several things I do are thumbs up, a warm expression, extra credit, extra opportunities(play games, computer, library time - no negative things have happened - students respond positively.
I just read a blog by Cathy Davidson on HASTAC about this very thing. She didn't really give any ideas about how to do this, but she said how much she'd rather gives badges than grades to show levels of knowledge, effort, mastery and leadership in a public way.