Ideas for Classroom Incentives

Hey there! Hi there! Ho there! 

Ok so it's been a little while since I have posted much that is teacher related! This is purely out of lack of time to do bloggy type stuff when I am in the classroom! As it is I get there early and feel that I am one of the last ones to leave! (Pretty sure I am the last one some days!) Anyway, here's a teacher related post! 

 I thought I would share some of the incentives that I use in my classroom! I may or may not have explained what population/type of school that I work at, but please know that I work with kids who have a wide variety of needs! I work with K-2 special education students and their needs are many! One of their needs is most definitely incentives! We have random incentives, individualized programs for incentives, weekly incentives, monthly incentives, and sooooooooooooo much more! 

 Here's a list of a few that don't cost a dime: 

1. A free photocopy from a picture book/book cover 

2. A hand stamp (if you've already got some) 

3. Sitting next to a chosen friend at lunch 

4. Playing on the playground for 2 minutes (this works for me because the playground is adjacent to my classroom. Plus I have awesome aides who can help to watch the kiddo outside) 

5. Helping to pass out work

For these rewards, i use a coupon system. The kids can randomly earn these coupons (pictured above & below) or, for some, we have specific programs where the kids can earn these and pick them as their incentive. 

 Here's a list of incentive that are truly not free but not terribly expensive: 

1. Skittles, m&ms, or other small pieces of candy that you can give one at a time! 

2. Bookmarks 

3. Erasers (themed ones are GREAT!) 

4. Stickers (I have a whole drawer full!) 

Here's my bookmark bucket. Mine are actually made for free by printing free printable bookmarks, laminating them, and then adding magnets (that i acquired for free sometime ago) or yarn!

 

Here's some weekly/monthly incentives that you might try out:

1. Student of the week - this little one can become the line leader, earn a special treat, or even be the one to help the teacher pick something out) for example on rainy day schedule my student of the week helps to pick out the recess time movie. 

 2. Student of the month - this can be geared towards a certain academic standard, character trait, turning in homework, or even how many pages were read in a months time. 

 3. A weekly activity based on a specific criteria. At our school we utilize points that are then are averaged out each day and then again a the end of the week! The scores are then broken down into different levels: GOLD, SILVER, & BRONZE. Then each Friday our campus does an activity for Gold leveled students to participate in. This can be done on a much smaller scale or even between 2 teachers! 

 I hope this info gave you some hints and clues as to how to do incentives in your classroom. Many of these can even be put to use now, but you could

also begin using them in the fall! Either way i hope they gave you some hints!

A Teacher's Organizational Friend!

Happy President's Day! 

I haven't shared much teacher stuff lately... so here's something my aides and i use on a minute to minute basis! 

We use a file box as a holding place for all the work that is prepped and ready to be used! Here's what it looks like: 

(Just a note that all those clips do have student's names on them. I whited them out for privacy!) 

So basically there are 2 hanging files (at least) per subject and the subjects go in the order of our daily schedule from front to back. So what you are looking at in the picture is Warm Up packets (you can see the tab hiding in the bottom right corner of the photo) and then Math with all their math work photocopied and ready to pull out the next unit, then test, and so on. After that there is handwriting which is in my spelling folder because we do handwriting while spelling tests are given. Then on to reading where you can see some manila folders (one saying "The Trains"  and one for "The Ships" for some of the groups I have themed this year - I will post about this another time!) Anyway, you get the idea. 

You may also notice how there is work standing up vertically and other stuff that is filed properly. The stuff standing up vertically is work that the kids will work on next. The other key to this box is that all work that comes next is on top. For example when we pull out a clip of work for math, the next item that is taken out is the packet on top. Not all of the work is organized by child. Some of it is just in a huge stack, but yet organized that same way. Here's another shot to show an up close look:

This way of organization may seem a bit hard to understand but once you get the hang of it, it can truly become a teacher and a teacher aide's helper. It makes it easy to just pull work out of the file box and it really makes it easy to plan and store work ahead of time. The trick is to always make sure work gets put back into the box when done working on that subject for the day. I am not a fan of one page worksheets and then having to make new work for each student each day. As a special educator that would mean i would never know where my students are at in the curriculum and i would be a basket case trying to figure out a classroom of 12 kiddos. This is how i organize all my student's work and store up coming lessons!

How do you do it in your classroom?