The Premack Principle in the GT Classroom

Even if you don’t recognize this principle, I’m confident that you’re familiar with it. The Premack Principle is also known as “Grandma’s rule” and the gist is “no dessert until you eat your dinner!” More specifically stated, it is delaying a preferred activity until a less preferred activity has been completed.

What does this have to do with the GT student? Well, I can only share from my experience. I’ve found that a light application of this principle in my classroom resulted in benefits I did not expect.

We strive to provide engaging and interesting experiences and assignments for our students, activities that will be somewhat taxing and stretch their thinking. And we often provide a great deal of choice, which is important in the GT classroom. But, as Ian Byrd says, we want to “make their brains sweat.”

So, every six to eight weeks or so, I reserve a 40 – 45 minute period for Preferred Activity Time to acknowledge their hard work and effort. To give credit where credit is due, I have hijacked this name from Fred Jones’ Positive Classroom Discipline, but I’ve used it more sparingly and not in the way it’s spelled out in that program.

Introducing it to Students:

I explain to students early on that I am going to challenge them to work hard in our pull-out class, and I have high expectations because most of what we do will be shared with authentic audiences (also motivating- read more about this here). “In return for your best effort and for high-quality work,” I say, “every so often I will give you a little P.A.T. on the back.” And then, I tell them about Preferred Activity Time.

During P.A.T., we pull out the wonderful strategy games and puzzles we seem to never have time for and some of the science and art supplies that are underused. Technology is off limits- no computers, no iPads.

More about the WHY:

“Some gifted students lack self-monitoring skills. These skills include monitoring distractibility, practicing delayed gratification, and awareness of performance avoidance. The Premack principle (also known as “Grandma’s rule”) suggests using a more preferred activity as a reward for a less preferred activity. Someone may enjoy exercising, but not writing. Therefore, he exercises only after he has written a preset number of pages. Parents often mistakenly reverse Premack’s principle, which renders it ineffective. “Okay, I’ll let you watch 30 minutes of television and then you need to start your homework” does not work as well as “As soon as you finish your homework you may watch some television.”

Siegle, Del. “Making a Difference: Motivating Gifted Students Who Are Not Achieving: Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development.” Renzulli Center for Creativity Gifted Education and Talent Development, 20 Oct. 2020, https://gifted.uconn.edu/making-a-difference/.

Although that’s just an excerpt from a long list of intrinsic and external motivational strategies for underachieving gifted students (read the entire article here), it resonated with me because I’ve seen the benefits of applying Grandma’s rule in a limited way. Gifted students have a very defined sense of fairness and this principle meets their standard. It is also very clear and is a strategy that will serve students well all of their lives.

Benefits:

(1) During P.A.T. time, you can get to know your students better, especially if you have large classes. Conversations during these relaxed times often reveal things about their interests and their lives that help you understand them better. Their choices of activities are worth noting, too.

(2) A sense of community is enhanced by spending time together doing enjoyable activities with no deadline, no rubric, and no agenda.

(3) For me, I found it resulted in greater effort, participation, and quality of work from week to week. Students knew that if their effort or use of time had been short of expectations, they might have to meet with me to revisit some work before beginning their P.A.T. time. This was not a punishment, just a natural consequence. (Note: this was never a time to make up work missed during absences.)

(4) Learning continues to take place. In my room, strategy games rarely played were often pulled out, and students sometimes had to teach themselves how to play. Others experimented with building materials or did puzzles. Some students will surprise you, too. Recently, a student obsessed with Sideways Math asked if she could borrow the book to continue working on problems during P.A.T.!

(4) Students who work hard and put forth great effort learn that it pays off. This is important to teach our students. We want to reinforce the benefits of delayed gratification, something that can help them throughout their lives as they mature and become more self-directed and independent.

This 40 – 45 minute P.A.T. time every six to eight weeks worked out well for me because my students attended GT nearly one full day each week. If your time is more limited, it may not be possible to implement this. Taking things out and putting them away usually ate up about ten minutes of this time, so it seemed best to reserve at least 40 minutes for P.A.T.

Do you have thoughts about this or something you can share that works for you? Feel free to leave comments below.