Rewards Made Easy

If you are like me, you may realize that your good students need to be recognized just as much as your challenging students need to be guided.

I thought and thought and came up with this FANTASTIC idea to help recognize and motivate my students who worked hard in class and followed the classroom rules and procedures.

I searched on-line and found a FREE scrabble font. Next I decided on what "prizes" my students could earn. This is the best part because you can choose items that cost you ZERO. ZIP. NADA. ZILCH. Hey- as a teacher, this can be very important!

After deciding what I wanted to allow my students to earn (and I could live with), I typed up the prizes (careful to avoid words that, when partially spelled create words we want to avoid- like "class" which could lead to an embarrassing moment for you).

When you have your prizes typed, print TWO copies of the words. I printed one on colored cardstock for each of the classes I teach (Each class is assigned a specific color in our school). If you only teach one class, you can use any color you want- or go with the traditional brown scrabble tile color.

Next, trim down and mount the white copy on a sheet of colored cardstock and laminate. These will be your wall mounted game boards that students place their earned tiles on (see below). Also, laminate the colored copy of the words as well (these will be cut out and used to cover the gameboards).

After you have laminated the words on the colored cardstock, cut around each tile. I stored my tiles in zipper pencil bags.

When the students behave, or earn a tile, have a student reach into the tile pile and draw one out. I told my classes that the student who draws the tile gets to decide where it is placed. I roll a piece of masking tape and the student adds his/her tile to the chart. As you can see, students have different ideas of what they want to win.

When a class spells a word the class wins that prize and a date is set to redeem it (make sure it is reasonably soon, or students will lose their interest in playing). After a word is spelled, ALL the tiles are removed for ALL the boards and the games starts again. Depending on how generous you are with your tiles, you students could/should win about one time every 1-2 weeks.

I am enjoying great success with this and I hope that I have inspired you to try something new as well! :)

-Cheers!