It is present in the everyday routines of the classroom. Operant conditioning is a system of rewards and punishments of actions of children. Although this conditioning applies to all of the children in the classroom, I am going to provide a specific example of one student. E., age 1 year 8 months was playing in the classroom when he saw the lunch cart being brought in. He proceeded to stop what he was doing and move toward the sink. These two sentences alone represent classical conditioning, but it changes into operant conditioning in the next sentences. E. stood at the sink and waited semi-patiently for a teacher to make it over to the sink. Once the teacher got there, he washed his hands in the correct way that he was taught. He knew that he had to wash his hands correctly, using soap and scrubbing for ‘a long time’, before he could eat his …show more content…
K. is 13 months old. He was exploring the different toys in the classroom. He chose to use a hippo crawler. The hippo crawler is a toy that moves along the floor if you push it. It is set up at the height for children who are learning to crawl. The teacher approached K. and let him play with the hippo crawler for a little bit. Then she presented him with a walker. She knew that K. had mastered crawling and was working on learning how to walk. The teacher adapted what K. was playing with to fit his developmental needs. She wanted to see him practicing a new strategy instead of staying at the same