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2-9-00
Question 6
Dear Preschool
Teacher,
I teach 3yr. olds (they all
turned 4 this past fall). I am looking for positive ways to
discipline them. Time outs are not working that well! I am
interested in any type of rewards for good behavior type ideas.
Any and all suggestions would be helpful!
Tired of Timeouts!
Dear
Tired of Timeouts,
I applauded you for looking into positive
discipline. Far to often time out's are used wrong. Time out's should
always be a last resort. The most important thing to do is reward,
reward, reward. (Please remember never to use food as a reward.) What
I have done in my classroom for years is sticker rewards. The children
know that they can earn 3 stickers a day. One for cleanup time,
another for be kind to other children, and the last for behaving and
listening to the teacher. Each day my children strive to go home with
all 3 stickers. Get the parents involved too. If the parents are
excited to see that the children come home with the stickers it will
also help motive the children. Another way is to have a sticker
calendar. Have a calendar for each child and at the end of each day if
they where good, give them a sticker to put on their calendar.
Now, another thing I
do in my classroom, is what I call Time away. It is not a time out,
but a time away from the situation that was causing the problem.
Another approach I have used is putting an object in time out. When
the children inappropriately playing with a toy, rather then putting
the children in time out or just taking the toy away, what I do is I
will put the toy in time out. This is again to prevent the over using
of the traditional time out. There is a wonderful book I could
recommend called 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12
by Thomas W. Phelan Ph.D. This can be purchased through Amazon. Please
see the link below.
There are also a few
WebPages and wonderful articles that you can look into to help you
make the right choices for your classroom:
http://www.disciplinehelp.com/home.cfm
http://www.nncc.org/Guidance/guide.disc.page.html
http://www.allkids.org/Epstein/Articles/Discipline.html
http://www.disciplinehelp.com/behindex/default.htm
http://www.redirectingbehavior.com/
http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/archive/timeout.htm
http://www.nncc.org/Guidance/cc35_timeout.over.html
http://www.nncc.org/Guidance/sac13_word.timeout.html
Good Luck to you!
The Preschool Teacher
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