For teachers, the most difficult part of their job is managing children’s behavior. While they want to spend their time teaching and passing knowledge along to children, they instead seem to spend their days intervening in arguments, calming out of control children and trying to get others to just stay in their seat for a few minutes. For a teacher, this is frustrating. Many teachers who leave the teaching profession do so because of their frustration with their student’s behavior.
While parents, home environment, too much television, violence in the street, violence on television, video games, and much more are often blamed as the source of a child’s disrespect and lack of manners, placing blame is not an answer to behavioral problems. Often a child, when placed in a well-structured and positive environment will behave as they are expected to. Children, being children, will also attempt to push the line of acceptance as far as it will go. New teachers are tested daily until a child learns what is expected of them and what they can get away with.
Children with ADHD, in particular, have a hard time following rules in class. Not because they want to misbehave, often because they are impulsive, do not have the ability to concentrate for as long as their classmates, and forget easily. But they, like most children, want to please the adults in their life. For parents, there are motivational games to play, to help improve behavior at home. Many of these games can be adapted to a classroom, either as a way to improve the behavior of the entire class or one student in particular. These games are designed to incorporate positive reinforcement as the primary mode of interaction. They are designed to help a child see what they are doing right, instead of focusing on what they are doing wrong.
In addition to the games listed on the site for parents, there are a number motivational games specifically for classroom use.
Homework Tickets
If you are having a problem with children completing their homework each night, this game can help inspire them. The game can be tailored to suit your purposes. Should they get one ticket for each subject they complete homework for? Should they get one ticket for completing all their homework? As with positive reinforcement programs, you can be more liberal at the beginning of the game, giving tickets for each subject, then, as the weeks go by, taper down to one ticket for completing all homework each night, or have your drawing once a month rather than once a week.
