Here at Oxford Learning Solutions, you know we are ALL about the positive praise.
“Excellent”, “great job” and “keep up the great work, secret agent”.
5 positives to 1 negative phrase may seem like an unnaturally high ratio of praise for a child, but it sure is successful in building their shattered confidence back up, one high five at a time.
So it’s great to see teachers like Hannah Lester, @keeponteeping, are thinking outside the box when it comes to giving students targets in their school reports, in order to achieve a growth mindset for each and every one of her pupils.
Lester is replacing all use of modal verbs and indefinite pronouns like “Must/Should/Could or All/Most/Some” as she says that “there are some fatal flaws in these specific wordings. Lazy students will only ever strive to complete the basic Must/All. Could/Some creates a ceiling for those students with low self esteem, who don’t believe they can reach for the stars.”
Lester introduced the new technique of 3 levels of positivity: Good, Great, Awesome, to inspire all achievers.
“I implemented this strategy quickly and personally added in an overarching learning objective, so students could see each stage of G/G/F as building blocks. I coloured coded them, as is common, and occasionally colour coordinate to grades or tasks.
I found these words helps maintain students positive attitudes and embedded this positivity for learning in their lesson. It also helped intrinsically motivate them to strive to do better and reach that “Fantastic”. After all, who doesn’t want to be fantastic?” (keeponteeping.wordpress.com)
