Throughout our programme, we mainly made use of positive reinforcement, by praising and rewarding them for good behaviour, and tangible reinforcement, through our token economy. 

We used stickers as reinforcements over the sessions, reminding them of the opportunity to get more stickers if they were reluctant to participate or even threatening to remove their stickers if they were misbehaving. An instance of this was after the puzzle activity, when the children were too excited to listen to our instructions to proceed to the next activity. They were talking to each other, running about and ignoring us telling them to sit down and pay attention to us. Consequently, we were frustrated with the children and had to quickly discuss what to do. Although we were hesitant to punish them, we decided to scare them by telling them we would take away their stickers if they did not listen to us. Sundaaree told them, ‘It looks like Student A isn’t listening. They might have a sticker removed soon.’ This was highly effective: almost immediately, the child stopped misbehaving and listened to us, likely because they wanted their stickers to exchange for gifts.

There were different generalised behavioural modification skills we made use of in our programme as identified by Gladstone and Sherman (1975): giving instructions, giving rewards or reinforcements, not rewarding incorrect responses, using physical prompts and ignoring inappropriate and disruptive behaviour. For example, whenever we conducted an activity, we would clearly state what they were to do or not allowed to do. If a child answered our question correctly, we would high-five them as positive social reinforcement and give them a sticker as tangible reinforcement. Whenever they had to move elsewhere, we would also place our hand on their backs and steer them towards the direction they had to go and in the case of a child who had outbursts throughout our workshop, we ignored him until he stopped being disruptive. These methods were effective: through us high-fiving them, the children became more interested to participate in the activities for the positive social reinforcement of being high-fived. In addition, before we had started ignoring them when they had outbursts, they often took longer to stop their disruptive behaviour or it would only be solved by us giving into them. However, after we started ignoring them, they took less time to calm down and join in again, likely because they wanted positive social interaction with us and being ignored as a punishment took that away from them.
 

I also learnt that positive social reinforcement is a highly effective incentive in behavioural modification programmes targeted at Primary School-aged children. (Harris, Wolf & Baer, 1964) Positive social interaction is crucial to children’s well-being (Goswami, 2012) and how adults and authority figures around them act influences their behaviours. (Bandura & McDonald, 1963; Evers & Schwarz, 1973) Consequently, I would recommend that Student Care Centres have adult volunteers that can help teachers manage their students better, such that there is increased chance of more meaningful and supportive interaction between adults and students as each adult will be able to provide more attention to each student. Adults can thus more consistently give social reinforcement for various desirable and non-desirable behaviours among the students.