It is important to praise good work. But you need to ensure that the praise is well deserved, and focused on specific behaviours or actions, rather than characteristics. For example, praise work which goes beyond what is expected, which shows some extra creativity or effort. Don’t praise children for being clever.
Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0: 62 techniques that put students on the path to college. Jossey-Bass, a Wiley brand.
Stickers
A fun way to give praise is by using stickers. A sticker is not very precise, so you will need to use it as a way to draw attention to a more detailed comment. But it can make a student feel special.
Here’s how you can do it using Google Keep and Docs.
- Do an image search for stickers or badges. Save the ones you like.
- Go to www.keep.google.com and create a new label “Stickers”.
- Add new notes each containing one of the images you have saved .
- Open the doc you are marking (from Google Classroom).
- You could paste a rubric into the doc.
- Go to Tools > Keep Notepad. Use the search to select stickers.
- You should see all the Keep Notes containing stickers. Drag the one you want from the collection of notes.
Here’s a video with more details if you need them: https://youtu.be/4n5TjoW0vww