Close observation during tasks helps teachers correct misunderstandings and celebrate when students are getting things right.

Further, teachers often expect that by middle school, kids are old enough to behave without being coddled. As a result, positive reinforcement techniques widely used in elementary school are often ...

The study found that when middle school teachers praised students at least as often as they reprimanded them, class-wide on-task behavior improved by 60–70%. Students speaking out of turn, texting, ...