Rewarding Young Learners

Who doesn't like if somebody give reward or appreciation word? Moreover if the reward are given to children, they will naturally be very happy to accept it. As a teacher, Reward is also called teachers’ reinforcement. Teachers’ reinforcement is one of the behavioral approaches to learning based on operant conditioning (also called instrumental conditioning) by B.F. Skinner. According to B. F. Skinner (1938), operant conditioning is a form of learning in which the consequences of behavior, rewards or reinforcement, produce changes in the probability that the behavior will occur. Reinforcement is divided into two kinds, positive and negative reinforcement. In positive reinforcement, the frequency of a response increases because it is followed by rewarding stimulus whereas in negative reinforcement, the frequency of response increases when it is followed by removal of an aversive stimulus. However, rewarding is very beneficial applied by teacher in the classroom in order to increase students’ motivation.

Motivation is a crucial aspect of teaching and learning process. In fact, young learners with higher motivation in learning will achieve the best results in their performances. Motivation to learn can be defined as the psychological processes that direct and sustain students’ behavior toward learning. The arrays of factors that may motivate a learner to learn have led to the traditional distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation involves doing something to obtain something else. Extrinsic motivation is often influenced by external incentives or rewarding. However, intrinsic motivation arises from internal factors. Thus, a child may be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel better. Therefore, both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are very essential elements on the learning process, and it is important for a teacher to be truly effective to help their students feel motivated to learn and achieve.

For young learners, intrinsically motivated to study is not easy thing. As a result, they will not be consistently motivated in learning and teaching process. It is related to their characteristic that is ego. This proves that teachers should give reward to their learner, but they do not always and should wisely give them rewards because it can make their intrinsic motivation drop. There are some rewards that teachers can use in the classroom such as praise, score or start, or games. However, before giving rewarding, teacher should know about when the reinforcement is given in order to increase motivation. According to Santrok (2010), they are:

1. Choose effective reinforcement. Not all reinforcers or rewards are the same for every child. Applied behavior analysis recommend that teachers find out what reinforcers work best with which children—that is, individualize the use of particular reinforcers (Scarlett, Pontem &Singh, 2009)
2. Make reinforcers contigent and timely. For a reinforcer to be effective, the teacher must give it only after the child performs the particular behavior. Reinforcers are more effective when they are given in a timely way, as soon as possible aft er the child performs the target behavior (Umbreit & others, 2007). Th is helps children see the contingency connection between the reward and their behavior. If the child completes the target behavior (such as doing 10 math problems by mid morning) and the teacher doesn’t give the child playtime until late afternoon, he might have trouble making the contingency connection.
3. Select the best schedule of reinforcement. Most of the examples given so far assume continuous reinforcement—that is, the child is reinforced every time he or she makes a response. The teachers can also use partial reinforcement. Partial reinforcement involves reinforcing a response only part of the time. Skinner developed the concept of schedules of reinforcement, which are partial reinforcement timetables that determine when a response will be reinforced.
4. Considering contracting. In contracting, reinforcement contingencies are put in writing

In Conclusion, rewarding can be use to increase frequency of good response of young learner.  This will also help to motivate young learner to study English. As a result, they engage themselves in every activities on learning and teaching process in the classroom.

References
Santrok, J.W., (2011). Educational Psychology (5th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill
Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Scarlett, W. G., Ponte, I. C., & Singh, J. P. (2009). Approaches to behavior and classroommanagement. Th ousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Book Review of Five Minutes Activities for Young Learner

This book is designed to provide short, tropical, and achievable teaching ideas for teachers of English  to young learner, whether they are following a required syllabus or textbook,  or preparing a curriculum that is targeted at their own group of learners. The particular value of the book is that provides teachers  with a store of activities that they can use, at long or short notice, to meet a specific learning objectives, or to fill a gap ( or reinforce a learning point) that becomes apparent as children study the scheduled curriculum or textbook.
The structure of this book
This book is organized by six themes, and each themes contains activity which have been divided into there level of difficulty: one start (*) represents the lowest level of difficult, while three starts (***) represent the most challenging activities. The themes of this book are

1. Animals
2. Journeys
3. Fantasy and adventure
4. The world around us
5. Healthy bodies
6. About me

The content of the activities
The activities focus on the four macro skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, and the ‘building blocks’ of language, vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar.
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Toothpick Game

By Weronika Salandyk—Poland
Age: 8+
Times: maximum 20 minutes
Materials: Toothpicks and pictures of people doing things.
Organization: Group work.
Aim: To practice making sentences describing the pictures.
Description: Children work in pairs or groups. They take it in turns to make sentences about the pictures, and use the toothpicks to show which part of the picture they are describing.
Preparation: You will need to find suitable pictures of people doing things. These can be pictures from your course book, pictures from magazines, a photocopied picture or a flashcard. The important thing is that there is a lot of activity in the picture. Make sure you have enough toothpicks to bring to class.
Procedures

1. Divide the class into pairs or groups of no more than four. Give each pair/group a set of about 12–20 toothpicks.
2. Give each pair or group a picture. 
3. Tell the children that they have to take it in turns to make sentences about the pictures. Elicit some examples using one of the pictures, or a picture you put on the board. 
4. Here is the fun part. As the children make a sentence, they must put a toothpick on to the picture, so that the point of the toothpick touches the part of the picture that the child is describing. The next child then makes a sentence, following the same procedure. However, this child’s toothpick must touch the picture and also the previous toothpick, like in a dominos game. 
5. The children get one point for each toothpick they manage to lay down. The child who places all their toothpicks first is the winner.

Note
You might need to cut the toothpicks in half if the pictures are small.
Alternatives

1. If you have children of different levels, you can differentiate the kind of sentences they must make. For example, lower level children can make sentences with adjectives while higher level children can make sentences with particular tense patterns.
2. You can add a level of challenge by insisting that the children cannot move existing toothpicks when they lay down their toothpick, or they lose a point.

Reference
Crazy animals and other activities for teaching English to young learner book  Download PDF

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The Snake Game

By Marina Kolar—Croatia
Age: 7+
Times: 10-20 minutes
Materials: board and markers (either magnets or some sort of sticker, such as a sticky note), a dice.
Organization: Whole class.
Aim: To practice or revise vocabulary and structures.
Description: Children in the class are divided into two teams. Individuals from each team must answer questions dictated by a square on the board snake.
Preparation: You will need to prepare a series of questions based on the categories in your snake (see Step 1 below).
Procedures

1. Draw a large snake on the board and divide its body into a number of squares (at least 15). In each square write a letter as a prompt to the category of question. For example, V might be a ‘vocabulary’ question; C might be ‘correct the sentence’, while O might be ‘odd man out.’
2. Divide the class into two teams. Explain the rules of the game. A member from each team comes to the front and shakes a dice. According to the number on the dice, they move forward up the snake’s body. On reaching the number, the child places the marker on the square and has to answer a question, according to the letter. If the child is not sure of the answer, they can ask the rest of the team.  
3. If the child answers correctly, the marker remains on the square. If the question is answered incorrectly, the child moves the marker three squares down the snake. The winning team is the first to reach the snake’s tongue.

Notes
Other categories you might consider are ‘translation’, ‘spelling’ and ‘pronunciation’. Larger classes will need more teams.
Alternatives

1. The children could prepare questions for each other based on the categories.
2. Children from the opposing team could read out the questions in a ‘snakey’ voice. They could also decide if the answer is right or wrong (if they get it wrong, they move down the snake two spaces).

Reference
Crazy animals and other activities for teaching English to young learner book  Download PDF

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Memory Game

Ester Biancy—Itali
Age          : 6-10
Times      : 30 minutes
Materials: Sets of cards with words and drawings/pictures of fruit (or other vocabulary group), one    set for each group of four.
Organization: Group work, whole class.
Aim: To introduce and practice vocabulary, to practice pronunciation.
Description: This is an adaption of the classic card-matching game sometimes called Pelmanism. In this version the children have to find picture/word combinations, but there are a number of variations.
Preparation: You will need to create sets of cards – at least 14 cards in each set. To explain the activity we are using fruit as the vocabulary set, but you can choose whichever vocabulary you like. On seven cards draw/stick pictures of fruit and on the other seven, write the names of the fruit.
Procedure

1. Show the pictures cards to the children and repeat the words all together.
2. Show the children the word cards with the picture cards and repeat again. 
3. Divide the class into groups of four and give each group a set of cards. One child in each group shuffles the cards and lays them face down on the desk. 
4. The children take it in turns to turn over two cards to try and find a picture-word pair. If the child is successful, they say the name of the fruit and take the card and turns over two more cards. If they are not successful, the cards are turned face down again and the next child has a turn. The child with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Notes
In activities where the children are working in groups, especially in competitive games such as this one, it can useful to nominate one child in each group as the group leader and give them responsibility for leading the activity and monitoring it.
Alternatives

1. This game can be played with any vocabulary set. It can be played with sound/ letter pairs, such as the letter “C” and a picture of a car.
2. The same game could be played with question/ answer pairs or with matching sentence halves to practice grammar points. For example, matching tenses and adverbs: one set cards has time adverbs such as yesterday, twice a day, since 2000, next week. The other set has phrases such as I went to the doctors’, I’m not feeling well, I brush my teeth, I’ve been at this school, I’m going to the USA. 
3. The children can draw the pictures on pieces of paper/card in preparation for the game.
4.  Gulanara Janova (Georgia) suggests another game with cards which she calls ‘Fishing’. Put the prepared vocabulary picture cards, or objects into a box or bag. Ask the children to come to the front one at a time to pick a picture/object out of the bag/box – tell them they are ‘catching a fish’. The child who has caught a fish has to name it. If they name it correctly, they take it back to their seat. If they cannot name it, they have to put it back in the bag/box. The child with the most ‘fish’ at the end is the winner. This activity can also be used to revise/practise grammar, for example, children can describe their picture (e.g. ‘It’s a big, black cat’) or say what their classmates have caught (e.g. ‘I have a cat, Dana has a horse, Ivan has a duck and Josi has a lion.’).

Reference
Crazy animals and other activities for teaching English to young learner book  Download PDF

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Book Review of Teaching Language to Young Learners (Cambridge Language Teaching Library)

This is a book about teaching that puts learning in the center of the frame, particularly teaching foreign language to young children, which in this book will mean those between five and twelve  years of age.
The organization of the book
Chapter 1 : Children Learning a foreign language
The book starts with a review of learning theories from   Piaget, Vygostky, and Burner.  The book also describes advantages to starting young with foreign language, and summary of key principles
Chapter 2 : Learning language through tasks and activities
This chapter describes about the task as an environment for learning, task demands, task support, balancing demands and support, the importance of language learning goals, defining  ‘task’ for young learner classrooms,  stages in a classroom task, Hani’s Weekend: Possible  Preparation and follow-up activities, task as plan and task-in-action
Chapter 3: Learning in spoken language
This chapter describes about guiding principles of learning the spoken language, discourse and discourse events, meaning first, analysis  of a task-in-action, effective support for children’s foreign language discourse skills, short activities for learning the spoken language, supporting the written language, using dialogues, and summary
Chapter 4: learning Words
This chapter describes about vocabulary development in children's language learning, organization of words in language, learning and teaching vocabulary, children's’ vocabulary learning strategies and summary.
Chapter 5: Learning grammar
This chapter describes about a place for grammar, different meaning of grammar, development of the internal grammar, Development of the internal grammar, A learning-centered approach to teaching grammar background, Principles for learning-centered  grammar teaching, teaching techniques for supporting  grammar learning and summary.
Chapter 6: Learning literacy skills
This chapter describes about literacy skills in English, factors affecting  learning to read in English as a foreign language, starting to read and write in English as foreign language, continuing to learn to read, developing reading and writing as discourse skills, and summary
Chapter 7: Learning through stories
This chapter describes about stories and themes as holistic approaches to language teaching and learning, the discourse organization of stories, language use in stories, Quality in stories, choosing stories to promote language learning, ways of using a story, developing  tasks around a story, developing tasks around a story, and summary
Chapter 8: Theme-based teaching and learning
This chapter describes about issues around theme-based teaching, theme based teaching of a foreign language, planning theme-based teaching, learning  language through theme –based teaching, learning language through theme-based teaching, and summary.
Chapter 9: language choice and language learning
This chapter describes about patterns of first language use in foreign language classrooms,  dynamics of language choice and use, taking responsibility, making choice, and summary
Chapter 10: Assessment and language learning
This chapter describes about issues in assessing children's’ language learning, principles for assessing children's language learning, key concepts in assessment,  teacher assessment of language learning, self-assessment and learner autonomy, use of assessment information, and messages from assessment.
Chapter 11: Issues around teaching children a foreign language
This chapter  describes about reviews of the ideas, the need of the research, the need to develop pedagogy, and teaching foreign languages to children.
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Book Review of Crazy animals and other activities for Teaching English to Young Learners

This book contains the activities for young learner that teachers can use in the primary classroom, and all activities in this book have been tried and tested by teachers. These teachers work in the most diverse context and conditions, sometimes with large classes, sometimes with very small groups, sometimes with every type of resource you could wish for, sometimes with only board to support their teaching. However, they share desire to help their students to learn English.
The Activities
For each activity, the book gives the ages of the children it is suitable for and the time it takes. It also consists of materials that teachers can use in the classroom, organization such as pair work, group work or whole class, aim or indicator, description about the activity, preparation , procedures or activity arrangements, alternatives. In alternatives , this book gives different ideas for using the activity. There is also a section called no resources? which suggests ways of doing the activity even if you do not have access to the resources needed, such as computers, flashcards, or even sufficient colored paper.
Finding activities
The activity are simply presented in alphabetical order. The book has also developed a table which you can use to find activities quickly.  The table gives the list of activities and some useful information
Rewarding children
Some of the activities in this book suggest giving rewards to children who win. Some teachers take sweets or other prizes into the classroom to give to children who complete an activity first
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