Classroom Rewards

I've always found rewarding pupils to be a positive approach to dealing with behaviour and a great way to encourage pupils to do the right thing. In this post, I'll outline my approach to rewards.

I have an area of my classroom, including a display board, dedicated to rewards and sanctions. On my display board I have a 'Bonus Point Chart' which shows how many bonus points the children have earned. I'll get onto how children earn the bonus points in a moment, but first I'll explain how the system works.

Once a child has 10 bonus points, they earn a 'small dibble'. A small dibble usually consists of a small sweet treat (I tend to buy bags of lollies) or a small toy, such as a bouncy ball or parachute man. Following 10 bonus points, children work towards 20. At 20 they receive a 'big dibble'. I tend to spend about £1 on the big dibbles and so they are quite good prizes. These include things like colouring in books, stationery and age appropriate toys. I buy these from shops such as The Range, B&M, Homebargains and anywhere that has a good deal going! Children enjoy earning the dibbles and often check the bonus point chart to see how far away they are. Once children have reached twenty, my TA covers their spots with a new track and they begin again. What I like about this is that no one ever knows who has the most spots and so it doesn't appear that anyone has a smaller amount to others.

Bonus points are represented by spots. We have five different colours that represent different reasons for spots. The most commonly used is the blue spot (good example or good work) as these can be earned at any time, even multiple times a day. The reason we have colours is so that we can determine what children are doing well with and how they could earn more bonus points. For instance, I have had children complain that they don't get many bonus points but when you look at the chart, it's clear that they don't bring homework back or never bring PE kit. It's a good way of the children identifying rather than the adults constantly nagging.

The 'Dapper Drawer Award' was an idea I had a few years ago. And it has worked really well with every class I've had. Each child has their own tray in which they keep stationery, hymn books, achievement files and other things. Children also tended to store things that they've brought in also and as their drawers are under their work desk, they'd sharpen and leave rubbish in them. I was fed up of spending lots of time getting children to tidy their trays out and so I introduced this award. I never tell the children when the award is coming, but once every so often I have a quick look around the class and then put the token in one of the tidiest drawers. When children next come in and realise the award is missing from the display, they get quite excited and are keen to check to see if they've won.

Not all children keep their trays tidy as a result of this, but a large majority of the class do and it makes life much easier when trays aren't overspilling with paper and rubbish.

We have more rewards as a school, but these are the things I do within my class.

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher