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Showing posts from February, 2012

Improving Children's Compliance- Part 1: Kinds of Commands

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In the classroom, the three most common types of commands that teachers give are the initiating command, the terminating command, and the mixed command. With an initiating command , we start behavior; with the terminating command , we end behavior. A mixed command , on the other hand, includes elements of both an initiating and a terminating command. I like to call this third kind of command the “stop… and…” command, because it generally resembles that sentence pattern. “Rebecca and Frankie, distribute the protractors and graph paper” and “When we get to the library make sure that you sit within your reading group” are examples of initiating commands. Examples of terminating and mixed commands follow. Terminating Commands ·         Hector, you and Ryan stop talking! ·         Camille, stop daydreaming! ·         Gregory, stop pushing in line! ·         William, stop wasting time! Mixed Commands ·         Hector, you and Ryan stop talking and get back to work!