I just started at my new school today and I need to think of a good reward system for grade 3&4 elementary students.

At my old school I taught grades 5&6 and gave teams stamps in their workbooks each lesson and these stamps could be used to purchase things.

10 Stamps = Change seats for one lesson
20 = No homework for one lesson
30 = Play games in the English room after school
40 = Cup of hot chocolate to collect after school / Change seats for one month
50 = Cup of ramyeon to eat after school

I would continue with this system except that I found out I will be teaching in homerooms for the majority of my timetable :-/ (making changing seats for one lesson awkward), additionally I cannot set as much homework for grade 3&4 as I would for 5&6. Finally, there doesn't seem to be a budget to buy ramyeon or hot chocolate as rewards.

If you have any ideas on how to change the points to suit grade 3&4 I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks

Thanks for the input, to be honest I'm a bit loathed to have to turn up to each class with a bag of sweets and be the candy dispenser. The hot choco and ramyeon took students a while to get (maybe once a semester, if that), so it worked well as an incentive to maintain their interest. It doesn't look like there's a budget for sweets either :(

Thanks for your reply. My only problem with free-time as a reward is that it reinforces the idea that studying is a punishment and that everyone is happier when they're not studying (that's probably true but I don't want to condone it in class, plus I don't know how that would go down with each homeroom teacher). Sorry if that came off as rude, I am grateful for your reply.

Thanks for the input, to be honest I'm a bit loathed to have to turn up to each class with a bag of sweets and be the candy dispenser. The hot choco and ramyeon took students a while to get (maybe once a semester, if that), so it worked well as an incentive to maintain their interest. It doesn't look like there's a budget for sweets either :(

Require the students to visit you outside of class for their rewards?

Also a lot of NETs, myself included, have no budget for our materials. I buy candy and everything out-of-pocket. My best recommendation is to just decided what is a necessary purchase and what you can work without.

I used a pretty straight forward point system.

10 points=candy
15 points= fun activity
20 points= movie

The points were based on a month-month basis. So, if at the end of a month a class has earned 11 points, everyone in that class gets on piece of candy. The points reset for the new month, start again. Giving out points was pretty straight forward as well. I made sure to not give out too many in a class and paced them so at the end of the month they almost always had at least 10. If they were being extremely difficult that month, they sometimes wouldn't get 10 points, but that was rare.

I also included a sticker chart to encourage individual success, and they got little rewards (which they earned after completing the sticker chart) as well. The rewards would range from pencils, to notebooks, or very special candy. (I ordered scorpion candy from Hotlix before I left for Korea, the boys loved them)

I never took away points or stickers, but I did have a punishment system.
i.   1st rule violation: warning (경고)
ii.   2nd rule violation: letter of apology (반성하는 편지)
iii.   3rd rule violation: loss of privileges (권리의 박탈)
iv.   4th rule violation: contact parents and homeroom teacher for a behavior contract. (부모님과 담임교사를 면담하여 행동의 수정에 대한 각서를 받을 것입니다)

I sent home a parent-teacher agreement that was both in English and Hangul that I would have the kids and parents sign. I had the parents e-mail and number. I never called any of the parents, but the treat alone was enough to calm down the most rowdy student. Usually I just talked to the homeroom teacher and they resolved it, but having the agreement papers gave me some bite to my bark.

Thanks for the input, classdojo is very useful but I tend to use it only for classes I see more than once a week. Yeah it looks like I'll have to suck it up and dive into my bank account if I want to offer a variety of rewards. Cheers for the suggestions

I implemented a sort of lottery system. I have a bunch of little paper tickets, and every time a student does something good (wins a game, answers a question well, etc) they get a ticket. They write their name on it, and once a month I have a drawing and 3 students win a chocopie or the like.

I also try to mix up the ways that they can win tickets, sometimes for speaking, sometimes for writing, sometimes for trivia, or just being on the winning team, so that it's not just the most vocal students who get a chance to win.

It's worked out pretty well for me so far, though I do have to buy an obscene number of chocopies once a month.

Thanks for the input, classdojo is very useful but I tend to use it only for classes I see more than once a week. Yeah it looks like I'll have to suck it up and dive into my bank account if I want to offer a variety of rewards. Cheers for the suggestions

Just chiming in to back up classdojo...Even works with high school students.  Used it all of last year.  I don't reset the points and top 5 students at the end of the semester get gift cards for stuff.  Leaderboards are posted outside of class every week.

I think they've translated some of it into Korean....so it could be that Korean teachers would be comfortable using it as well now!

@Nimrand

I have a similar situation to yours but maybe even more students.  This year I will have a lot more as I'll be teaching the whole class and not just A and B level students separately. (Classes are divided into A, B, C levels).

Last year I had an average of 25 students per class.  This year it'll be close to 40.  We'll see how that changes things.

For feedback in real time I have the website up at the beginning of class on the TV.  If the activity I'm doing doesn't require the TV the whole time then I leave it up and use my smart phone to dole out points for students who speak or are working hard.  Negative points for sleepers, etc.  The sound blares out and everyone takes notice to good or bad behavior.

If , though, I need to use the TV for the activity then I make sure I have the sound cranked up on my cell phone so they can hear the good or bad sound.

Maybe this year since I will have more students, I will be using my tablet so that I can see more of them on the screen.  It was even difficult to find particular students on my phone out of 25.