Thread: Please give me some new ideas for rewarding my students!

I also teach grade 1, and I have found it quite difficult to reward them as they get distracted pretty easily. Stickers are all well and good, but with the case of my kids, they seem to have their own that are much fancier than the ones I can afford to give! They even give them to me!

Anyway, I'm trying this new reward system that I call "Teacher D's Dollars." I made fake money on the computer and printed and copied. They are in denominations of 1, 5, and 10. I have given each student an envelope, and when they are good I give them 1 dollar. They store them in the envelope throughout the class and when class is over, they return the envelope to me. At the beginning of the class, when I call attendance, I give out the envelopes. If they have 5 ones, they can exchange it for a 5 (which look fancier and are bigger than the ones), etc.

They seem to like it so far since they get to keep their envelope on their desk during class, count their money, etc.
At the end of them month I am thinking of doing a "marketplace" idea with the money; for example, buying small things like pencils, erasers, rulers, that they can "buy" with their money. I kind of have an advantage as I live in China and these supplies are extremely cheap.

Thanks for the new idea TeacherD_inChina! I will forsure give that a try. I know what you mean about the short attention spans! My kids always seem to get easily distracted as well.

That is why I found the stickers were working to keep them quiet. I know it is a form of bribery, but I normally would say something like "Whoever does the best drawing without making noise or talking gets a Sponge Bob/Hello Kitty/etc Sticker" and it has seemed to work so far!

Thanks for the new idea, I will give it a try this week! If anyone else has any ideas please tell me as well!

Thanks,
Mary

We do the dollars at our school as a whole school character ed thing. The kid with the most roadrunner dollars at the end of the month gets recognized by the office.

However, I have extra rewards besides stickers that I give out like:

sock day - take off shoes and wear their socks (very popular)
computer pass - extra computer time when work is done
homework pass - no homework one night
sit at the teacher's desk
sit with a friend - they can take a friend to the back table & sit for the day.

they are all free and they seem to like them. I teach grade 3. I used them last year in grade 2 also. HOpe they help!

Those are some great ideas messa! Thank you very much. I am grateful that other teachers have responded with some ideas as I am very much a rookie teacher with only two years of experience so far.... Thus, I have much to learn still.

Anyone else have some other ideas as well?

Thanks again,
Mary

I teach 1st grade. I've done the No Shoes for a day and kids love it. I've also done:

Wear your hat day (In our room only)
Eating lunch with special person (guidance counselor, principal, secretary...)

My most current is a "Punch Card". I developed a template for small cards that have ten boxes around the students' names. When I catch them being good, I punch their cards with those paper punches you can get at Dollar General, Walmart, and Craft Stores. When the Punch Cards are full, they trade them in for prizes from my prize box. The kids love the punch cards and I get some great looks when I tell them "I owe you a Punch!"

You could easily use stickers instead of the punches if you'd like to.

I teach kindergarten. I don't usually give out rewards. I have my kids sitting in cooperative learning groups of 4 or 5, and if they're all on task, helping each other, or doing what they need to do, I give their group a marble in a marble jar (each group has one). That's enough to keep them motivated, believe it or not. I don't even tell them what the reward will be when it gets full! They simply want to get to the top.

I'm not big on competition, but it has made a huge improvement in my classroom management. Individually, pointing out students who are following directions or doing their personal best often seems to be enough to get others to pay attention. Of course, sometimes intrinsic motivation is not enough, but more often than not, I don't have to offer big rewards. That's just my take. The minute you say "I will give each student a ____ if they're on task" or whatever can create expectations, and then they will not do what you want unless you offer big flashy rewards.