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Like many here are saying, I catch myself saying "Good job!" in the rush of the moment.  However, I do feel that this year we have all had a stronger focus on being specific, so I suspect that many of us are giving more direct and specific feedback more often this year than we realize.  I hear specialists giving specific reinforcement at the end of classes all of the time.  Eliminating the generic "Good job" is a learning curve and a habit to break for sure!  As expected, I tend to do better at being specific when things are running smoothly and things are on schedule.  However, when "classroom life" happens, I know that in the rush of dealing with all of the unexpected things, I revert back to that nonspecific recognition in those moments.  It's a work in progress.
Wendy

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I am so good at this from August through early January. I praise and state the specific skill that is the cause of the praise. Then we begin to get very, very busy in first grade. Lots of testing and more behavior issues and different daily 5 activities and more involved writing pieces and somewhere in the hectic-ness of each day, I neglect to recognize and reinforce as much as I did at the beginning of the year.  I need to fix that for my students and for myself. I need to recognize their successes and not get bogged down with the negative aspects of the daily routine.
Maureen

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I do recognize and reinforce student behavior.  I often use “I notice” type statements to recognize social and behavior items, but I feel I can improve being more consistent in recognizing academic successes.  I can improve this in whole class situations, small group situations, and at the individual level.  Along with recognizing academic successes, I would like to improve giving more specific feedback to students.  I find myself telling students “good job” or “well done”.  More specific feedback will enable me to provide more directed reinforcement at each student’s level.  More personalized and specific feedback is a goal I will have to continue to try to work on and improve.
John

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Making sure to provide specific feedback is something I feel good about. I think having such small groups throughout the day helps to make sure that my feedback is specific and frequent. Making sure to think about if students truly want that feedback out loud or in private is important.

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I feel that I do recognize and reinforce student behavior.  I am successful at using,  I noticed statements.  I like how this makes the other students respond and follow suit. I would like to improve on recognizing the effort that some of the lower students put in.  I agree with Kristi, that we are balancing teaching, classroom management, time constraints and little issues like going to the nurse, that it can be easy to overlook the little things.
Sherri

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Recognize and Reinforce:
I feel that my strength in this area is that recognizing and reinforcing student behaviors and student achievement in a general sense are natural, i.e. not uncomfortable for me or far from my personality make-up. I enjoy being able to reinforce positive behavior and achievement in my students. Even though this is a strength, the way that I need to improve is HOW I go about it. I am specific at times, but probably more so lately because it has been discussed in professional development sessions even before The Fundamental 5 and of course, in our book talk. I need to be specific in my praise and also remember to reinforce effort,  especially for students that struggle and are showing hard work and improvement. 
-Joanie

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Recognize and Reinforce:
I feel that my strength in this area is that recognizing and reinforcing student behaviors and student achievement in a general sense are natural, i.e. not uncomfortable for me or far from my personality make-up. I enjoy being able to reinforce positive behavior and achievement in my students. Even though this is a strength, the way that I need to improve is HOW I go about it. I am specific at times, but probably more so lately because it has been discussed in professional development sessions even before The Fundamental 5 and of course, in our book talk. I need to be specific in my praise and also remember to reinforce effort,  especially for students that struggle and are showing hard work and improvement. 
-Joanie

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Recognize and Reinforce
This chapter was a good reminder of why giving descriptive positive feedback, no matter how big or small, is a great tool to help with students success.  I too find myself at times, saying "good job" and not stating the why.  The why is more important than the words "good job".  One thing I do find that is successful is stating " I like how ______ is ready for Daily Five.  He/she has his/her folder out, is quite, and is looking at the speaker.  This can have a domino effect with the other students.  
~Darby

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Recognize and Reinforce
This chapter was a good reminder of why giving descriptive positive feedback, no matter how big or small, is a great tool to help with students success.  I too find myself at times, saying "good job" and not stating the why.  The why is more important than the words "good job".  One thing I do find that is successful is stating " I like how ______ is ready for Daily Five.  He/she has his/her folder out, is quite, and is looking at the speaker.  This can have a domino effect with the other students.  
~Darby

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Reflecting back on what we talked about with this chapter, I feel like I need to be better at giving students a more personalized comments whether it be in academics or behavior. Also, as I feel I do good at reinforcing and praising students for good behavior or academics, I need to think about those low students. The low students that tend to not do well on quizzes, test, etc, I need to find ways that give reinforcements for the small feats. I feel that I overlook this and always seem to look at the higher students and the ones that always are getting the 100's. Recognizing and reinforcing are two very important ideas to have a successful and positive classroom for all. Jaci

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Recognizing that students are motivated to work for a variety of reasons and work to identify and provide those motivators. Recognizing we don't all have the same people in our corners cheering for us and helping us to succeed.

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Making sure to make more of an effort to give specific comments and not general ones to the students. 

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Making sure to make more of an effort to give specific comments and not general ones to the students. 

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I feel that I do well recognizing and reinforcing student behaviors.  I know to make it personalized and specific and try to make a conscious effort to recognize student behavior each day.  I try to reinforce the behavior I want to see and try to point out students that are doing something good when they usually struggle with that behavior.  However, at times it does get put onto the “back burner” as the day goes on and other teaching duties come into mind.  Also, I struggle more with providing specific and personalized recognition for academic successes.  Lots of times I just say “good job” instead of providing something personalized and specific to the academic success.  I need to make more of a conscious effort to provide that as well.
- Janel

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I think I do well with providing positive feedback to students on a regular basis, for both behavior and academics.  An area I would like to improve on is providing more specific and direct feedback to students. I usually say things out of habit, and often vague like "Good Job." I would like to be more individualized with my feedback and specific to particular students.

-Ashley S.

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I thought this was a great reminder to be more specific with giving feedback to students.  I also agree with the thought that some students need positive reinforcement or recognition for effort. All students are different and need different things.  I do believe the more you use these strategies correctly, the more the students respond in a positive manner.
Nancy K.

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The daily and often reinforcement and recognizing of students’ abilities is a struggle for me at certain times in the day. During Guided Reading and Math I struggle with focusing on the group I am seeing and the students working individually. I tend to focus more on bad behaviors than positive when students are going through centers on their own. I believe this is because I focus on students at my rainbow table and only have quick reactions for negative behaviors outside of my GR groups. However, during whole group lessons reinforcement comes as a habit and is a strong area for me while teaching.
-Sophie

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I feel I struggle with recognizing the small "wins" for some of the kids. It's not that I'm looking for perfection, but I think there are many times I overlook the hard work some kids put in.
I'm getting better at giving descriptive feedback. I still often find myself saying "that looks great!" but I'm  now catching myself and I try to follow that statement up with more specific feedback.

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As we implement this strategy, I feel like I can sometimes witness a student do something and fall back into the habit of saying "Good Job" as I am busy doing multiple things throughout the day. Other times, I have found that when I work with my small groups, I am much better at giving the more in-depth feedback to students because I have the moment to focus on that small group.  I think it's a struggle just because of the how many ways we are pulled in the classroom as a teacher.  It's usually not intentional that we are not giving more feedback, it might be the lack of time or the constant struggle of balancing classroom management, teaching, dealing with the little issues (sending students to the nurse, etc).
-Kristi