Incentives and a Freebie
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I’m all about incentives in the classroom. I refer to these incentives as ways to keep the class quiet prize winning opportunities. Spend a day in my class, and you will probably have about 87 different chances to win something. Prizes range anywhere from the extremely popular poppers and bouncy balls, all the way to full on parties.
One of my biggest incentives revolves around bucket filling. I don’t do individual bucket filling in my room. Instead, my class works to fill up one class bucket. I use a red beach pail, and fill it up with fuzzies {pom poms}. Sometimes it’s a small fuzzy and sometimes it’s a big fuzzy.
There are many ways that my class can fill our bucket. I will put in a fuzzy in if everyone stays on green card all day, if another teacher compliments our class behavior, or if the class completes an activity quietly without needing to be reminded. They get SO excited when I add a fuzzy! And when another teacher compliments us, I hear 20 different voices ask, “Do we get a fuzzy?!”
Since I have other incentives going on at the same time, and since students have plenty of opporunities to win those small prizes, the class bucket is more of a long term reward. It takes about 2-3 months to fill up the pail… sometimes we go a few days straight where cards change, or sometimes they only earn a small fuzzy. I set it up {and maybe I cheat a little} so that the bucket will only be filled four times throughout the year. Therefore, I have four BIG rewards! Fill it once, popcorn party; twice, cookie party; three times, cupcake party; and four times, ice cream sundae party!
We filled our bucket once already and earned a popcorn party. I went all out! Three different types of popcorn, cute popcorn boxes, and a movie {because who can eat popcorn without a good movie?!}. We’re well on our way to a cookie party now. I’ll buy a few different varieties, provide milk, and probably show another movie 🙂
I created a really cute sign to go with my bucket:
And while I have your attention… 🙂 I just added my page to Facebook. Follow me!!! 🙂 🙂
