Reinforcing+Effort

=Reinforcing Effort=

Our district has adopted an effort-based learning philosophy to improve student achievement. However, many of the policies in place are not proving to be effective. As educators, we need to find a way to improve the achievement of our students and prepare them for life after high school. Instead of just using an effort based grading policy we can utilize the instructional strategy of reinforcing effort. “The instructional strategy of reinforcing effort enhances students’ understanding of the relationship between effort and achievement by addressing their attitudes and beliefs about learning” (Pitler, 2007).

Majority of our students do not realize the importance of effort so teachers need to teach students about the importance of effort. One way we can teach our students that effort leads to achievement is by having them keep track of their effort and achievement.

One way to teach effort
The teacher can introduce the students to the Effort Rubric. After reviewing the effort rubric with the students the teacher can have, the students create an Effort & Achievement Table. Each week before a test, the students can enter their rubric scores for that week. After the test is graded and returned to the students, they can enter their test grade and compare it to their total effort score for that week. As the weeks go by the students should start to see the correlation between effort and achievement.

media type="custom" key="5066919"

//References Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 155-160.//