Friday, November 20, 2009

Novermber 3, 2009

As soon as I showed up to the program this day the graduate assisstant sat me down to explain the program for the child that I was mentoring. The graduate assisstant and my student had an agreement. The agreement was that if he was able to stay on task with any type of school work, he would then have some free play time. If he did not fill his end of the bargain, he would not be given any privleges of play time. The other child that I mentored was with us as a reward for the child with behavior issues. They were good friends and they could be together if he followed the guidelines of the deal with the graduate assisstant. This was used as an incentive for the child with the behavior issues.
The two kids I mentored first started out with studying spelling. The child with behavioral issues was the leader of the two. Half the time he would not allow the other to spell the words. I made the mistake of not addressing the situation right away. When I did address the situation I demanded the one child to stop. To my knowledge, I thought I was doing the appropriate correction to the situation. I later found out that instead of making a demand, I should try to give hime a choice but let him no the cosequences along with the choice. The graduate assisstant told me he responds better to that. If you make a demand to him like “Can you please stop interrupting and give him a chance to spell” its like it doesn’t have an effect on him whats so ever. If you say something like “Do you think it’s polite to interrupt someone while their trying to spell and would you like someone to interrupt you?” and it actually worked. It was a very affective tool that I now have and can use in those types of situations.

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