Clicker Logic

Feature Article

Tag Teach—Get the Point!

By Joan Orr M.Sc.

What is the point? With TAGteach™, a revolutionary new way of teaching, it’s a TAG point. This is a response, action or position that a student strives to achieve and when successfully accomplished wins a reward. The reward for performing a tag point correctly is an audible click sound made by a handheld clicker. The click, or TAG, pinpoints the exact moment the tag point is executed correctly and gives immediate and clear feedback to the student or athlete.

TAG™ stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance. The tag becomes a positive reinforcer through pairing with tangible rewards (candy for example) or as a result of the good feelings that are associated with success and improvement and praise from the teacher. Younger students keep track of their tags and trade them in for beads, stickers or other prizes. Older and higher level athletes often do not require a tangible primary reinforcer, since they are reinforced just by receiving the immediate and clear feedback from the tag. TAGteach is a targeted organized approach that facilitates accelerated learning while minimizing frustration on the part of teacher and student.

Clarity and simplicity are key aspects of TAGteach. A tag point is defined so that the student does not need to ask why he didn’t get a tag if the tag does not come. Tag points are never combined, since this can cause confusion, frustration and sometimes outright hostility in the human child athlete. If a soccer player is asked to kick with the side of his foot, while looking at the target and holding his arms out for balance and the tag does not come, he will ask the coach which part he didn’t get correct. The coach will be forced to answer and this leads to verbal correction and defeats the purpose of using the TAGteach method. The TAGteacher thinks ahead, plans the succession of tag points that will be required to shape the skill and works on them one at time. As the student becomes proficient with each piece, the entire skill naturally comes together. Sometimes a student regresses. In this case the teacher moves back a step in the shaping plan and works back up again. Each time the student improves more quickly than in the previous session. If a student is having trouble, the teacher breaks the difficult aspect into even smaller increments so that the student can succeed and earn a tag. TAGteachers learn to set their students up for success so that learning becomes a very positive experience for both teacher and student.

The immediacy and clarity of the feedback allows the student to form a mental picture of the movement or position in association with the click sound. “I can see a picture of myself doing it in my head”, said a ballet student when asked

to explain why TAGteach helped to fix a problem with which he had been struggling for years. This “mental picture” description is frequently articulated by students when asked what happens in their minds when they hear the tag. Some scientists think that the click sound is processed by the amygdala, a primitive part of the brain that controls emotion and fight or flight responses. This bypasses the complex processing of speech and the TAGteacher is in essence “talking directly to the muscles”. This may explain the rapid acquisition of muscle memory and excellent retention rates that occur in high level competitive gymnasts taught with TAG. We hope that scientists will become interested in the TAG phenomenon and will study the brain processes that are involved.

TAGteach has been used in many disciplines, including artistic gymnastics, Special Olympic rhythmic gymnastics, dance, soccer, volleyball, martial arts, speech pathology and in the academic classroom. “Tagging has taught my students to think for themselves”, said kindergarten teacher Amy Roberts. “We saw an almost immediate improvement in skill execution and confidence in our Special Olympics rhythmic gymnasts”, said Debbie Boycott, head coach of the Oakville Butterflies from Oakville, ON Canada. “The athletes were very quick to understand and appreciate this way of teaching and were even able to teach each other using the TAGteach method”.

This teaching each other is called peer tagging, and is one of the most powerful aspects of TAGteach. Students learn to tag each other and in so doing become caring teachers and keen observers. These students learn twice, once by doing and receiving feedback from the tagger and once by watching and marking the correct performance of their peer. Peer tagging allows the teacher to focus on individual pairs while everyone is working. All students receive positive reinforcement, even the “shadow child” who often gets little recognition in a traditional teaching environment because she does not cause trouble, but neither is she a rising star.

TAGteach International is spreading the word about TAGteach through seminars and workshops. Teachers and coaches certified in the TAGteach method are working across the US and as far away as the Yukon and Ireland. This growing community is learning and developing new techniques as the positive messages of TAGteach reach an ever-increasing diversity of disciplines.