Friday, October 28, 2011

Everyone Loves Prizes


Incentives help motivate people—both adults and kids alike. At Partnership with Children, we use A LOT of incentives to help promote positive behavior in our students.  Good attendance is rewarded with pizza parties and notes sent home to the students’ families.  Getting forms and paperwork back in a timely manner is rewarded with small prizes and gift cards, and so on.

This week I started our “Road to Success” program in our Bookstore Group.  Ryan is still acting out in group, and I though rather than focusing on pointing out his poor behavior, I would reward all the students for good behavior.  We created a bulletin board on one wall of the classroom dedicated to the Road to Success.  Each student’s name is listed and points are awarded for good behaviors.  Paying attention in group—points! Cooperating and helping other students—more points!  Points are recorded on the Road to Success wall so students can see their progress as well as the progress of their classmates.  It becomes a bit of a competition—who can behave better?  The better a student behaves, the more points they can earn.

After their bookstore “work shift” they’re then able to trade in these points for cool prizes.  Students go wild over special erasers, pencil cases and bright colored notebooks.  The idea is enforce positive behavior rather than dwelling on negative behavior.  The Road to Success encourages all the students in the group to learn positive social and behavior skills, which will hopefully reinforce the skills in Ryan.  If everyone else getting points and prizes, he certainly doesn’t want to be left out.