Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Word Choices: Positive Phrasing

A few nice things that came up recently:

Luna has had a lot of points
subtracted. She loves the table.
But she also loves to run all
over the place.
A student recently commented that he was a bit distressed about doing "everything wrong."    And while there definitely were some things that could use improvement with the scenario, we had a nice little talk about how it was more that "There are things that could be more efficient."    Unlike math, with dog training, there are few things that are wrong.   Sometimes there are things that are less efficient or don't work as well.   But rarely things that are just wrong.

Last week at camp, one of our teen counselors was doing an agility lesson. She explained about how the teams can acquire points by completing obstacles.  When the time period was up, teams have to run to the table to stop the time.   And for "every second over time, a point is subtracted from your score."    Subtracted from your score!   I was so proud and so impressed.  This is typically phrased as, "You loose a point for every second over course time."   She turned it around and put it in a much more passive, much less negative way!


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