Achieving Excellence in Elementary Education Archives

The Teacher vs Students Game: A great tool for behavior management

Posted on October 17, 2025October 18, 2025 by Dr. Don

We all know that in the learning process we engage in certain behaviors because those behaviors have been reinforced. Something nice has occurred when we have behaved in a certain way. Other behaviors are not engaged in because those behaviors have been punished – something unpleasant has occurred, or quite often nothing has happened at all. By considering which behaviors lead to pleasant consequences and which behaviors lead to unpleasant or neutral consequences, every human is constantly learning.

Recently there have been those who have attempted to advance the idea that teachers shouldn’t use methods of reinforcement or punishment to manipulate student behavior. This opinion indicates an inadequate understanding of the principles of behavior. Every interaction that we have involves reinforcement or punishment, whether the process is overt enough for us to be aware of or not.

Advantages of positive reinforcement

Reinforcement has several advantages over punishment/nagging:

Reinforcement can be used to teach a new skill and to encourage its use. Punishment procedures teach students what behaviors to avoid, not what to do.
Reinforcement procedures can teach the student to behave even when the teacher is not in the room because at some point the new behavior acquires its own reinforcing qualities. Punishment only works if the teacher is around to enforce the consequences.
Reinforcement used effectively makes long lasting changes in student behavior. Punishment doesn’t.
Reinforcement procedures bring about positive feelings. Punishment procedures will never lead to positive feelings.

At least three positives for every correction

It has been clear for a long time that at a minimum of a 3:1 positive to negative interaction ratio is necessary for long term success in the classroom. Teachers must overtly recognize appropriate behaviors at least three times more frequently than they recognize or attend to behaviors they don’t want. If teachers’ interactions with their students are less frequently positive than 3 to 1 then students will not be focused on appropriate behavior. Less frequently positive than that and students will not think they are being good and therefore won’t be motivated to continue being good. Less frequently positive than that and teachers will be primarily attending to, and thereby reinforcing, inappropriate behavior.

Benefits of the Teacher vs Student Game

It has also been clear for a long time that one of the best ways to be certain that the ratio is in place is by use of the Teacher/Student Game, AKA the Teacher/Kid game, the Me/You game. While this “game” has been around for a long time, its fundamental usefulness as a student motivation and management tool is often overlooked. This game has several important benefits, especially for teachers who need to improve the effort, motivation, and behavior of their students.

The Teacher/Student Game allows the teacher to have a visual record of the amount of reinforcement and recognition being given—so the teacher can see when he/she needs to increase it.
The game allows the teacher to provide an immediate consequence for inappropriate behavior, but a very mild consequence, and one that can be delivered in a friendly-upbeat kind of way.
This procedure allows the teacher to provide social reinforcement for specific behaviors—but provide it to the group, thereby improving group solidarity.
Playing this allows the teacher to keep track of the ongoing ratio of interactions during the lesson. If the teacher sees that interactions regarding inappropriate behaviors are increasing—he/she will have to diligently increase the frequency of “catching them being good.”
Because of the social nature of the game, it is not always necessary to “pay off” with tangible reinforcers.

Setting up the Teacher vs Student Game

So how does one set up this amazing behavior-monitoring-and-improving game? To set up the game prior to class starting, the adult draws a “score board” somewhere (anywhere! paper, white board, blackboard, etc.). See the example above. The scoreboard must be both visible to the students and easily accessible so the teacher can award points to the class or him/herself as frequently as needed.

At the very beginning of the lesson, during the lesson introduction, the teacher tells the students that they will be playing the Teacher/Student Game and goes over the expectations as part of explaining how the game will work. At the beginning of the school year, this is the time when the rules/expectations for the particular setting (small group instruction, whole class instruction, etc.) are taught to mastery. As the year goes on, the expectations for the setting are mentioned as a “reminder.” The initial set-up with the kids could go something like this:

“We’re going to play a game, me against you. I think I can win because I’m really smart and I win this game A LOT! Here is how it works: You get points for getting things right, and for following the rules which are (Replace with your expectations here.) everyone answering the first time on signal, everyone keeping their eyes on the lesson, and everyone waiting their turn to talk. But I get points whenever someone forgets the rules or makes a mistake. I bet I’m going to win. I’m really good at this game!”

Begin immediately awarding points for good behavior

Right away, as you are naming your expectations, the children will straighten up and pay careful attention. Immediately give their team a point, dispiritedly, saying something like:

“Oh Gosh! You guys have your eyes on me so well I have to give you a point. You’re already ahead! But I know you’re going to forget the rules and then I’ll win!”

Of course, the children immediately begin enjoying their lead in the game and begin feeling proud of their accomplishment. And if you are disappointed and ham it up a bit—the children begin to have fun, while they try even harder to beat you.

As soon as the lesson starts, give the students points for meeting all of your expectations—before they have a chance to forget. Give them points for answering correctly, keeping their eyes on the lesson, etc. and tell them what it is that they did to earn the points.

“Oh my! I’m going to have to give you another point because everyone waited to be called on. Darn! You’re ahead, but I’m going to catch up soon!”

Gleefully give yourself points for every off-task behavior

Give yourself a point energetically, obnoxiously and gleefully whenever, even one child, needs a question repeated, doesn’t have his/her eyes on the book, interrupts you, talks to a neighbor, etc. When you give yourself the point (Keep the score board VERY public!) tell the group:

“Yea! I get a point because someone talked out [or whatever the misdeed is]. I knew I was going to win!”

Be obnoxiously cheerful about getting a point. Make sure that you are so annoying that they really want to beat you! If you do this right, they will hate letting you have even one point and so will be motivated to monitor their own behavior closely and follow the rules carefully.

Many teachers who are reluctant to give themselves points, end up ignoring minor misbehaviors. Some teachers may be afraid to discourage the children or want the children to have more points and be enthused. However, this is exactly the wrong way to play the game. Instead, the teacher should catch EVERY infraction and take EVERY point possible. This will enforce high standards and make the children adhere to excellent behavior.

Be vigilant to “catch ‘em being good!”

Remind yourself that you want to increase the positive behaviors, so you have to notice them and give points for them. Catch, comment on, and give points for students being good at least three times as often as you have to give yourself a point. Focus hard to catch students answering correctly, demonstrating attending behavior, tracking in their books, looking at the Teacher Presentation Book, answering on signal, etc. Comments must be brief, exciting, and clearly identify both the behavior and the student.

The rule is to keep the ratio of positives up—at least 3 times more responses to good behavior than infractions you catch. Catch every infraction, but then catch three times more instances of students doing the right thing. The less mature the group, the more frequently you are going to have to reinforce correct behavior—until they get into the groove. A teacher working to bring a primary age group under control might need to find 50 or 60 instances of students doing the right thing, and give them positive comments in a 30 minute period. This is hard work, but it pays off, because student behavior will improve to the point that lessons will go smoothly.

Remember, you must “ham it up” and act discouraged when you give the group points and they continue to beat you. You’re always going to lose the game—but you will be winning in your classroom.

Tool skills: foundational academic skills

Posted on October 15, 2025 by Dr. Don

What are the foundational academic skills or tool skills?

The foundational academic skills are 1) fluent reading or decoding (being able to read the words on the page easily), 2) fluency with math facts (instantly answer single digit facts like 9+6 or 7×8), and 3) spelling correctly and easily. Educational researchers call them “tool skills” because they are the tools students need to do academic work successfully. These skills need to be developed to the point of fluency, where students can do them accurately, quickly and easily.

Why are foundational academic skills important?

These tool skills are critical because they form the foundation of academic work. Students who struggle to figure out the words on the page or who make a lot of errors, do not have much attention left to think about the message of the passage. Students who read correctly and fluently, can think about and benefit more from what they read. In elementary school students transition from “learning to read” in the primary grades, to “reading to learn” beginning in about fourth grade. By the end of third grade students should be able read fluently and easily. It can be measured by having students read aloud for a minute. They should be able to read 125 to 150 words per minute with very few errors. Conversely if students are still struggling with learning to decode in the later grades, (a) they will not get much help to improve that, and (b) they will not learn from or benefit from what they are assigned to read, and (c) they will not read for enjoyment. They are unlikely to ever be successful or enjoy school.

Students who can answer math facts instantly, without hesitation, are able to learn computation and higher math skills with relative ease. Those who are still counting on their fingers to do math facts in the upper elementary grades start falling behind in math. They come to hate it, because it is so onerous. Students who have not memorized the math facts do not succeed in high school math.

Students who struggle to spell, also become averse to writing. They avoid it and do not write well, as the struggle to remember how to spell words gets in the way of expressing themselves. Conversely, those who can spell easily find it far easier to express themselves in writing.

Are foundational academic skills an issue in many schools?

Yes. Back before the 1960s, these tool skills were the major focus[1] of the elementary years. Over the past few decades, unfortunately, most American schools of education have denigrated the importance of these tool skills. Worse yet, teacher preparation courses include almost no training for teachers to learn how to help their students develop tool skills. While some students develop proficiency in these skills without help from their teachers, the rest of the students need the teacher and the school to provide some focus and attention to fully develop these foundational skills.

What Parents should look for to evaluate foundational academic skills

It’s very easy for a school to proclaim that they care about foundational academic skills, (AKA tool skills) but don’t take their word for it. You really need to see evidence of it. Interestingly, the effort needed to teach these skills and to motivate students to build these skills requires that the school do things like post records and keep track of students’ success publicly. If an elementary school wants all its students to be able to readily read, they are going to have to have students read aloud and correct their errors. They are going to have to frequently measure students with timed readings and keep track of how they are doing. Parents need to look for the activity of reading aloud during reading class.

If the school wants students to acquire fluency in math facts, they are going to have to recognize students as they develop this skill—and you’ll see it on classroom walls somewhere. The same with spelling. If it is a priority, then you’ll see evidence of that on papers posted on the wall, or even spelling tests posted. You may also see words that are being learned posted on the wall.

Conversely, in schools where these foundational academic skills are not emphasized, you won’t see evidence of students striving to excel in these areas. If you see student papers posted, you’ll find uncorrected spelling errors and arithmetic errors. In a classroom where decoding is not emphasized, you may not hear any students reading aloud. When you do hear students reading, you’ll hear many errors made that are not all corrected by the teacher. If you visit an elementary classroom during reading and you do not hear students reading aloud and being corrected, you know that accurate decoding is not being developed. Don’t expect that school to teach your child to read.

How teachers can support foundational academic skills

It is quite hard for a teacher to support foundational academic skills in the absence of school-wide support for these skills. Most notably in reading decoding, it takes a school-wide structure and placement to get all students at the correct instructional level.

To develop decoding skills, students must be carefully grouped and instructed at their instructional level, where they can read 98% of the words in the material without help. That’s less than 1 error per sentence. To group students that precisely for reading instruction requires a school-wide effort and sharing students between classrooms. If a student is asked to read material in which he or she does not know several or even a couple of words in each sentence, the students will not be able to learn all those new words and will become discouraged. This is what happens in schools when the teacher is left on his or her own to do instructional grouping.

If students can be grouped at their instructional level in reading, you as the teacher must then learn to correct all errors in word reading. The procedure is to interrupt the student, tell them the correct pronunciation of the word, have the student repeat it, and then go back to the beginning of the sentence and re-read it. We want the student to learn to read the word correctly the second time through. Every time, with every word they don’t know. If you try to spare your student’s feelings, by glossing over errors they make when reading, they will have no opportunity to learn the words they don’t know. [The importance of proper instructional grouping becomes obvious if you are to correct all errors.] To be most effective you should keep track of error words and put them on the board and give students extra practice on reading those words in isolation. Practice in reading words in isolation (learning them) as well as reading aloud every day is essential.

Timed readings are essential to measure the growth of fluency in the early years of reading instruction. As students learn more and more words, they can read with greater fluency. Doing timed readings frequently tells you whether or not the student is progressing by being able to read more fluently and easily. You have to keep track of their correct words read per minute. Students who are not progressing need to be given extra time to read aloud with a partner who corrects all their errors. By fourth grade, students should be reading between 125 and 150 correct words per minute. Once they reach that level of fluency, they don’t need as much focus on timed readings. Students who are below 100 words per minute need intervention to develop their fluency, by daily practice reading aloud at their instructional level.

When it comes to developing math fact fluency, this takes time every day throughout the elementary years. Once a teacher starts trying to build this skill, they realize that they have to keep track of what facts the students know and what facts they still have to figure out. Teachers need a systematic presentation of what students need to learn as well as some review of what they’ve already learned. A teacher needs a systematic instructional program to keep this in order, such as Rocket Math. There needs to be at least 10 or 15 minutes a day devoted to math facts fluency development each day—but not much more than that. Students need to be encouraged to do the work to become fluent in math facts, so the teacher will need some way of motivating students by recognizing progress and celebrating it.

Spelling is also not supported in many schools and a teacher would need to find a spelling program to use to build the skill in the absence of a school-wide spelling curriculum. Learning words for a weekly spelling test is not a particularly effective way of developing spelling, but it is better than nothing. Writing words multiple times in a row is not effective for learning either. A better spelling curriculum is one that requires students to spell from the teacher’s dictation and do it on a daily basis. Also, dictating sentences and requiring them to be spelled correctly is a very good exercise as long as it is at the students’ instructional level of about 98% correct from the beginning. See Rocket Spelling. So again, the importance of careful instructional grouping becomes apparent.

It is important for teachers to know that spelling for the sake of spelling, as in a test, is far easier than spelling correctly while composing and writing a composition. Therefore, assigning a spelling test of words that students misspelling in their written work is not helpful. The error was usually only a result of not paying attention, and is easily corrected when the error is pointed out to the student. However, requiring students to re-do and correct any spelling errors in their written work is still very important.

How a school can support foundational academic skills

The most important curricular decision a school or district can make is the choice of a program for developing reading skills. The reading program they choose must provide systematic and explicit phonics to help students learn to break the code and learn to read. It must be decodable, meaning the material students are asked to read consists of words they have already had an opportunity to learn in earlier lessons. The program must include, at least for the first three grades, timed readings to ensure that students are developing adequate fluency. Some students need quite a bit more practice to develop reading skill, and therefore you have to measure their skill to see who needs extra work.

The reading program must have careful placement tests so students can be placed at their instructional level. This implies that some students will have to “walk” for reading (move to a different classroom where their level is being taught), so that all students can be placed at their instructional level. The program must require students to read aloud daily and to read accurately as well as be timed to see that they are developing fluency.

It is extremely rare for an eclectic or teacher-developed reading program to have these essential features. In fact, most commercial reading programs do not have these features. However, a program that does have these features can teach all students to read and succeed each year in developing reading skill. The school should be measuring the development of decoding fluency systematically. Then it will be clear whether or not the reading program is effectively developing fluency in reading.

Beyond choosing an effective reading program, the school administration must monitor the implementation as well as the student data on mastery of the material and the development of reading fluency. There must be clear guidelines on what to do to remediate students who are not improving in reading. There must be plan in place to provide extra reading practice for students who are not developing fluency at the expected rate.

An important truism about education is that the sooner you provide remediation and extra help the easier it is for the student to catch up. If you work with a student, who did not learn something from today’s lesson, later the same day, you can catch them up in five minutes. If you wait a week, it will take an hour to catch them up. If you wait a couple of months, it will take many days of work to get that student caught up. Therefore, the most important thrust of a school is to test frequently and begin remediation quickly. This should be the most important mission of the instructional leaders—to help teachers readily identify and quickly remediate any student who is not fully mastering the material.

To develop math fact fluency in all its students, an elementary school must have a math fact program. It is rarely sufficient to have a “math facts component” in the adopted math curriculum. Math fact fluency must stand by itself to be sure it is addressed daily. Then the teachers need to make it a priority to set aside time for focusing on it. Math facts have to be in the daily schedule and it cannot be skipped over. There need to be school-wide expectations on what the curriculum being used expects teachers to do.

Administrators should visit classrooms to be sure teachers are following the expectations of how fact fluency is to be developed according to the curriculum being used. Teachers must be expected to keep track of student progress and to test students to see if they are learning as they should. If the program does not develop noticeable improvement in math fact fluency, then it needs to be modified or replaced. Every student can develop fluency with math facts and it is malpractice to allow students to reach the upper elementary without knowing their facts.

For a school to effectively support spelling proficiency, there must be a spelling curriculum that is shared across the school. The school leaders must insure that all students are successful in the spelling curriculum, and that remediation is provided ASAP for any students who are not doing well. This means that if some students are far behind expectations for what they are able to spell, they may need to “walk” to a lower grade classroom to receive instruction at their level.

The second component in developing spelling skill is to hold students accountable for spelling correctly in all their written assignments. It begins by not allowing any papers with spelling errors to be posted on the board. All errors must be corrected before recognition.

There will be two types of spelling errors. One type will be words that have not yet been taught in the spelling program. Those should be corrected and the work re-copied to practice spelling the word correctly. The second type will be words that have already been taught in the spelling curriculum. Making errors on those words is not good and should have some kind of consequence on top of re-copying the assignment, such as writing the word ten times.

Remember, a focus on spelling in the elementary years means that students will learn to automatically spell words the right way, and it will enable them to express themselves more easily and fluently in life. The more words students know and spell automatically the more students can concentrate on their composition and the expression of ideas.

[1] More time was spent on the foundational academic skills than any thing else during the elementary years. All teachers knew these were the most important skills. They were measured and teachers knew that for students to succeed they needed to be good at these skills. It went on everyone’s report card. There were plans to help students succeed if they were struggling, sometimes even having students repeat a grade if they were not doing well with these foundational academic skills.