Throughout our daily lives, we unconsciously and continuously employ reinforcement. In this course, you will gain the ability to recognize and apply reinforcement techniques to enhance children's appropriate behavior. You will discover how to utilize reinforcement effectively, identify diverse methods of administering reinforcements, and evaluate their effectiveness as reinforcers.
Use Reinforcement to…

• Increase appropriate behavior throughout the day in your classroom. Catch children engaged in sharing/turn taking and provide reinforcement to increase the likelihood of the children engaging in the desired behavior again.
• Increase reinforcement within difficult routines to increase participation and follow through. For example, if transitions inside from the playground are difficult, learn ways to implement reinforcement throughout the transition to keep the children moving along into the classroom.
• Increase compliance throughout the day. For example, let the child turn off the lights on the way out of the room because they lined up when the instruction was given.

Learn how to present choices to children to encourage appropriate behavior, foster engagement in activities, and give children a little more control over their daily routines. In this course you will learn how to offer choices to maintain children’s engagement and understand when to provide choices to redirect unwanted behavior.
 Use choices to…

• Offer choices to promote calm behavior in difficult situations. For example, a child asks for a turn with a toy while another child is playing with the toy. Provide choices of other toys that are available for the child to play with.
• Offer choices to redirect unwanted behavior. For example, when children are engaged in unwanted behavior, offer the children choices of other activities that are appropriate and available.
• Offer choices to encourage children to continue to engage in current activities. For example, when children are appropriately engaged in play with cars, offer blocks for them to play with to build roads, garages, and building to encourage longer play.

Just because an instruction is given, doesn’t mean children will follow through with it. In this course, you will learn how and when to present instructions to increase the likelihood of follow through and learn next steps if children do not follow your instructions.
Use instructions to….

• Break down big tasks with numerous instructions into smaller, more successful steps. For example, when implementing a self-care routine (handwashing, bathroom, getting dressed for outside time), provide single instructions throughout the routine rather than all the steps at once.
• Persist through less preferred tasks or activities. For example, provide support and small instructions when children are expected to clean up toys/activities.
• Increase compliance in your classroom without yelling.

The classroom is a busy place! When one child gets off task, it can disrupt the entire classroom very quickly. In this course you will learn techniques to redirect off-task or disruptive behavior in a positive way to prevent escalation of unwanted behavior and encourage calm behavior in your classroom.
Use redirection techniques to…

• Offer activities by interacting with the child. For example, if the child is reading a book, sit next to the child and look at other books the child might be interested in looking at or reading with you.
• Offering activities without interacting with the child. For example, get other activities out to play in sight of the child. Put cars out on the carpet, build a house and garage for the cars with blocks.

Children make requests frequently throughout the day. When the item they are requesting isn’t available, sometimes it can be difficult for the children to move on with their day. In this course, you will learn how to respond to a request that is not immediately available or available at all and help the children calmly engage in the next activity.
Use respond to requests to ….

• Increase appropriate communication in your classroom. For example, when children whine or yell while requesting an item, model an appropriate way to request items/activities.
• Support children with smoothly changing activities when their initial play choice isn’t possible. For example, if a child wants to ride on the trike and another child is using the trike, provide other ideas for play.

Respond to Upsets: As children learn to navigate the classroom, there will likely times they become upset. Learn to positively respond to tantrums, upsets, and other unwanted behavior to minimize the frequency, length, and duration.  

Use respond to upsets…..

• Learn when to talk and interact with the children and when to give them a minute to calm down before you talk with them. For example, a child was given an instruction to “use the bathroom” and they ran from the play area yelling and crawled under the table. Your next best step is not to crawl under the table with them and continue talking. Instead, give them a minute to calm and then use redirection techniques to get the child out from under the table before giving additional instructions.
• Learn how to get back to and follow through with instructions or tasks that originally caused the upset.