Behavioral Strategies for Academic Growth
By: Dr. Michael Toto, BCBA-D, LBA-CT, LABA-MA
If you’re a parent of a school-aged child you’ve probably experienced some level of frustration related to homework (or when attempting to teach your child academic skills at home). Although your child’s school is responsible for teaching your child a host of academic skills, some children still need family members to strengthen those academic skills in the evening or on the weekends. Here are some helpful tips for supporting your child with academic tasks at home:
Collaborate with their teacher: Your child’s teacher(s) should be the first point of contact for understanding what your child is currently learning, or currently expected to learn while at school. Reach out to their teacher(s) and ask questions like, “What should I focus on at home?” “What are some of their identified areas of weakness that we could work on together?” and, “If I could devote 30 minutes a night to my child, what are the most important academic skills to tackle?” Let your child’s teacher guide you. It not only helps your child, but it also builds a stronger parent-teacher relationship.
Provide choices: No child wants to work on non-preferred academic tasks all week in school and then come home to do more of the same. Instead, try to give your child academic options (MacNaul & Cividini-Motta, 2021). For example, “Would you like to practice reading or practice math?” Providing them with the power of choice should increase their overall cooperation with home-based academic tasks and make the parent-child experience much more positive.
Establish rewards: Children love to know what they’re going to receive once they’ve completed academic tasks. Therefore, try to establish what their reward will be before they start the academic task (Gureghian et al., 2019). Spending a few minutes before an academic task even begins discussing potential rewards is time well spent. You might start the conversation off with, “Hey, we’re gonna do some reading in a few minutes but I would love to know what you’d like to do when our reading time is over? Anything fun you really want to do after?” Establishing these rewards can increase your child’s compliance and academic effort. Getting your child excited about a potential reward can create excellent behavioral momentum for them to tackle their non-preferred academic tasks.
Reinforce their effort: Reserving your parental praise for when your child only demonstrates academic accuracy may send them the message that they have to be perfect. Instead, praise them for trying their best. Praise them for demonstrating strong effort. Teaching a child to persevere through difficult academic tasks is a behavioral trait that can have far-reaching implications.
Start small: Instead of expecting your child to complete 20 math problems before going outside to play, why not expect them to complete two? Then, tomorrow you can expect them to complete four. Once you’ve slowly increased your academic expectation (and they are meeting those expectations), then you can keep them on their academic toes by sometimes expecting them to complete a small number of problems while at other times expecting them to complete a larger number of problems. This is called a variable schedule of reinforcement which is a means of establishing and maintaining a steady rate of response.
Create a routine: Many parents make the mistake of sitting down with their children from “time to time” to complete academic tasks, instead of making academic practice a part of their child’s everyday (or every weekend) routine. By making it routine, and bringing their siblings into the routine, it makes academic tasks much more predictable. So, perhaps you want to establish in your household that from 6:15 to 6:45 every evening everyone will participate in practicing their own academic tasks. Or, letting your children know that after dinner each night is when academic practice begins. If you reinforce the routine by rewarding your child with preferred activities once they’ve completed their academic tasks, then the academic routine itself is something they are likely to look forward to.
Don’t forget to teach: A parent’s role is to not simply point out their child’s errors. If your child is struggling to understand an academic concept, then take several minutes to model the appropriate academic skill for them (Kupzyk & LaBrot, 2021). Don’t know how to correctly model it? Collaborate with their teacher on effective teaching procedures, or even search the internet for fun teaching tutorials. Your child may not want to learn directly from you, but they might be receptive to learning from an online video. An effective teaching procedure you can adopt known as Behavior Skills Training (BST) focuses on four key aspects: explaining the skill to your child, modeling the skill for them, allowing your child to practice what you modeled, and then providing them with feedback so that your child improves their performance. And no, TikTok is not a website that teaches children how to tell time!
When you consistently apply the tips outlined above, it will lead your child closer to having a positive relationship with academics. Remember, academic learning should be enjoyable and something that a child looks forward to. One of the most important lessons you can teach your child is that learning can be incredibly fun.
Sources:
Gureghian, Vladescu, J. C., Gashi, R., & Campanaro, A. (2019). Reinforcer Choice as an Antecedent Versus Consequence During Skill Acquisition. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 13(2), 462–466. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-019-00356-3.
Kupzyk, & LaBrot, Z. C. (2021). Teaching Future School Personnel to Train Parents to Implement Explicit Instruction Interventions. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 14(3), 856–872. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-021-00612-5.
MacNaul, Garcia, R., Cividini-Motta, C., & Thacker, I. (2021). Effect of Assignment Choice on Student Academic Performance in an Online Class. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 14(4), 1074–1078. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-021-00566-8.
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