Middle School Reward System

[mrsamandab]

Hi all!  As the new school year gets underway, I'm trying to reorganize how I run my classroom.  I teach middle school.  Like many, I have mixed level classes of 36-40 students.  I teach 27 classes all together.  (2nd grade every week, 3rd grade every other week).  What I want to know is if anyone has an effective rewards system for classes this big that you don't see that often.

~How do you give out reward points?  Stickers, stamps, points on the board, etc?

~How do you keep track of reward points?  By individuals, groups, as a class?

~What rewards do you give?  Candy, ramen party, etc.? (I don't want to go broke trying to reward 27 classes worth of good kids)

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! 
 

[TeePee]

I'm also a middle school teacher and I will be trying a new system.  I will be putting the students in groups  of 4-6 students and having them make an English group name.  I then make a sticker chart with all the  group names listed.  I have a set of rules for the students.  Good students will be rewarded and if I have problems I will take stickers away from them.  They can be rewarded for anything from participating in class, helping other students, or winning games.  At the end of each month the group with the most stickers will win a prize (mostly likely choco pies or something similar)

[Janitor]

I made up some money using a monopoly money template. I just used 1's and 5's. The 5's were instant rewards and 1's they had to collect 5 to get a candy.

I usually gave them out for answering question that I made up from outside the book where they had to think a bit to get the answer. Also during the free talking session that I do at the beginning of the class I use the 1's to get the ball rolling.

5's are giving out rarely in the event that a students does something special of exceeds my expectations for the class. The cases have been helping the Special Ed. students in the class. Cleaning the desk with out being asked or telling a length story in class. Something above and beyond.

For rewards, I just get candy from costco, whatever is cheap. I find the bags last longer than you think because half my students lose theirs or something.

Some problems that I found were some students complained that the chocolate was too small for the effort. Others traded or gave their "dollars" to other students. So if there was a smart kid he would answer and give his cash to the kid who did not want to talk. Lastly students ignored the "only AFTER class" rule for redeeming candy and would get annoyed because they would want to eat their candy during class.

[Epistemology]

Im going to try something new. its a class performance chart for my school. Good classes get a point, bad classes lose a point. at 10 points it gets converted into a star point and the class with the most star points at the end of the semester gets a prize (pizza and chicken party)

If a class drops to zero points, they get held behind at the end of the class for 5 minutes. Some people might not agree with punishing everyone for the actions of a few, but it is a good way to get the kids to keep each other in line

[strawberry]

Good idea for when you're moving between classes as well! which is my problem at the moment.. cant exactly put up point charts in every class...

Im going to try something new. its a class performance chart for my school. Good classes get a point, bad classes lose a point. at 10 points it gets converted into a star point and the class with the most star points at the end of the semester gets a prize (pizza and chicken party)

If a class drops to zero points, they get held behind at the end of the class for 5 minutes. Some people might not agree with punishing everyone for the actions of a few, but it is a good way to get the kids to keep each other in line

[katrine]

I give candy to game winners, but for class rewards, I give stickers. Each class has a laminated piece of paper with their class name on it hanging in the room. If you participate a lot, you earn a sticker. Stickers go on the papers at the end of class, and if they get 50 stickers collectively they get a party day. My co-teacher and I rigged it a bit last year so the party day just happened to coincide with Christmas

Since every other classes' paper is hanging in the room, it motivates the students a bit more. They see class 2-5 has 28 stickers, and their class only has 23, and they behave a little bit better.

For the party, we just did a movie, and we had enough classroom funds to buy some snacks for them.

[Epistemology]

Good idea for when you're moving between classes as well! which is my problem at the moment.. cant exactly put up point charts in every class...

Im going to try something new. its a class performance chart for my school. Good classes get a point, bad classes lose a point. at 10 points it gets converted into a star point and the class with the most star points at the end of the semester gets a prize (pizza and chicken party)

If a class drops to zero points, they get held behind at the end of the class for 5 minutes. Some people might not agree with punishing everyone for the actions of a few, but it is a good way to get the kids to keep each other in line

If you have a TV screen in the classrooms then at the start of the class just show the kids the chart document on the computer so they remember where they are at, and if they are good or bad, show them it again at the end of the class, with the correct adjustments to the points.

[girodimo]

Last semester I made fake money and called it G-money. G for my first letter of my last name and also because G-money kind of sounded like T-money, the debit transit card system here in Seoul. If a student had an excellent response, or did exceptionally well on an activity I gave them a bill. I gave them out to each person in a a group if the group did really well or won a game. At anytime during the term they could redeem their G-money for  prizes. I didn't tell them what they were but just told them if you save them the prize was better. It was like 1 g-money=piece of candy, 2=gmoney-two pieces of candy and so on,  the top prize being a snickers or a big cookie.

I'm going to change it a little this semester though.  Someone on waygook.org mentioned Seth Priebatsch with regard to motivation. I want to adapt some of those ideas to make this reward system better.  Level-up strategy seems particularly useful....

[jdniii]

Girodimo,
I looked that guy up and it sounds quite interesting.  Any ideas on how to apply the game philosophy to the classroom?  Seems like it would take a lot of organization and upkeep.  I'm really interested in this so let me know if you think of anything. 

[matthews_world]

Individual - Find A4 sized cardboard, 1 per each student, and have the student design name tents.  Students, if they behave, do a chore, or answer a question to the best of their ability in class, can display the stickers on the front.  On the backside, I write up some basic beginning small talk phrases and classroom English to put on the back to help them.

Team - I use a chart for winning teams to display stickers.

I only give out candy in order to motivate students to help clean the classroom. 

The cost may be a bit exhorbitant but the rewards will outweigh the expense.

[Kurtbob]

Hello,

I am trying a raffle system this year in my middle school. I hand out a ticket to students when they do well and collect the tickets at the end of the class and place them in an envelope, one evelope per class. I find it much easier to hand out a piece of paper to a student and collect it later than posting stickers and chucking candy.

I will then reward classes once a month by pulling names randomly. Each student can only win one prize and there are only three prizes per lottery. I plan to hand out treats and stationaries as prizes, though I am skeptical as to whether my Grade 3 students will be impressed enough to work for these prizes. I will post my results at a later date.

For those interested, I will attach my prize tickets. They are pretty basic, but do the job.

Kurt

[zenbone]

Im going to try something new. its a class performance chart for my school. Good classes get a point, bad classes lose a point. at 10 points it gets converted into a star point and the class with the most star points at the end of the semester gets a prize (pizza and chicken party)

If a class drops to zero points, they get held behind at the end of the class for 5 minutes. Some people might not agree with punishing everyone for the actions of a few, but it is a good way to get the kids to keep each other in line

I am doing something very similar to this. I have 1st and 3rd middle. my chart is by class broken into weeks (i only see them once a week) so 1st grade is only competing against 1st and 3rd is only against 3rd, i give points based on how well they follow my 5 rules and 1 class from each grade level will be given bonus points for being the best class of the week. At the end of 8 weeks the winning class from 1st and 3rd each get a pizza party.

[Ectofuego]

Im giving my students stamps and dollars with a reward system that is more like winning a game.  It keeps up with the Games Theory I learned in college about business

5 stamps = 1 dollar
5  dollars = 1 level
at level 1 they can spend dollars to get candy
at level 2 they can spend 5 dollars to get small prizes
at level 3 they can spend 10 dollars to get stationary prizes

If they are bad, I take away dollars or stamps.


And of course I use fake dollars..  ^_^