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“Great job!” These words would flow from my mouth without any thought as a classroom teacher. Wanting to leave a positive mark on my students, I’d give them positive feedback without much planning or strategy.
Vague Praise for Easy Tasks: Bad!
Imagine this situation: you’ve poured cereal into a bowl and then filled it with milk. Your friend, husband, or wife walks by and showers you with praise: “Great job! That’s amazing!”
What would your reaction be?
I’d be suspicious.
Why is this person praising such a simple task? Are they unaware of how easy it is? Perhaps all of their praise has been equally ridiculous. Or maybe I’m so bad at cooking, that they have to praise something this easy.
Specific Praise: Good!
Now imagine this compliment: “Wow! I’ve never seen anyone pour the milk so quickly without spilling, and then you stopped at the perfect ratio of cereal to liquid. I can never do that!”
Even in this silly situation, the specific praise is clearly more valuable. If I received this praise, I might think, “Oh, I never realized I was good at that before, I thought everyone could do it!”
Of course, the specific praise is truly valuable when the task is at an appropriate difficulty level.
If you cooked a turkey to perfection, specific praise about its juiciness or its crispy skin would help you more than “Your turkey was great.”
Thoughts On Compliments
Del Siegle and D. Betsy McCoach write:
Teacher compliments should be specific to the skills students are acquiring. A specific compliment, such as, “You really know how to calculate area,” provides more information to a student than a general comment, such as, “Good job.”
Promoting a positive achievement attitude with gifted and talented students
Not only is the vague praise less useful, but combined with easy tasks, it can even be damaging to students’ belief in their abilities. Siegle and McCoach continue:
Gifted students who remain unchallenged in school and receive high praise for work that is easily accomplished may begin to doubt others’ beliefs in their abilities.
Promoting a positive achievement attitude with gifted and talented students
Just as in our milk example, vague compliments for a simple task can make the person giving the praise appear foolish or aloof. A stream of “great job”s can make students doubt if you’re really paying attention or if you even know what you’re talking about!
This ties in with issues like impostor syndrome.
Breaking the Habit
Breaking the “great job” habit can be difficult! Specific praise requires more thinking and attention.
If you’re very brave, you might even let your students know that you’re trying to avoid vague praise. Enlist them to help you. Ask them to point out when you just say “great job:”
Class, this year I want to give you useful compliments. My habit is to say “great job,” but that’s not always helpful. Instead, I need to tell you something specific that I thought was great.
Just like you have to back up your thinking with evidence, I need to back up my compliments with evidence. Please let me know, nicely, if you notice me saying just “great job,” ok?
Have any strategies for consistently giving specific praise in the classroom? Send your thoughts to ian@byrdseed.com!