Hey guys, today I 'm going to share how my classroom prize system and what I call "Prize Day" works for elementary and/or middle school teachers looking for ideas.
I tried a prize ticket system last year where students got a circle on their punch card colored in each time they answered a question correctly, were extra helpful/went the extra mile, tried to encourage classmates, worked extra diligently, did selfless acts of kindness and such. That system did not work at all, so I scrapped that this past semester and tried some new systems. For one thing, some students cheated or accused one another of cheating, and I could not monitor every punch card all day (which I'd also given the students responsibility for taking care of, anyhow). Sometimes they would go missing. They were an extra thing to clean up and do throughout class. They were just a pain and caused a lot of conflict.
This year I used a different ticket system in upper school where I bought a hug roll of Dollar Tree tickets, and if someone earned one I handed them a ticket, they'd write their name, and every Friday we did a drawing. I would gather them up in a large Ziplock bag, and kept all of them except those that were drawn for the weekly prize. The rules were that the same person couldn't be drawn two weeks in a row, and the idea was that tickets would accumulate so if you were doing an extra awesome job, you had a better chance at having your name drawn. The downsides were that I had to guard the tickets and bag better because there were accusations in one class that they were being taken and some people were adding tickets they didn't earn to the bag and whatnot. Another downside was I consistently seemed to draw the same few names, so then I switched to giving everyone a turn per week based on the next name drawn until everybody had gone, then restarted the cycle. That in turn kind of ruined the point of harder work earning one more prizes, though. So all of that said, I probably will not use this system next fall, it needs a lot of improvement, but it was way better than the previous punch cards I'd used and the students loved the weekly drawings. This worked especially well for my 7th grade class.
Then for lower school I did group prizes instead of individual prizes because I had a lot of students and really could not have kept up with individual ones although I hate doing whole group consequences/rewards that only some students deserve. I remember a mentor I had doing a paint palette system where each class the students as a whole did a great job, they got a paint spot added until the palette was full and they had a prize day. She was a brilliant art teacher, so I tried it and it worked great.
These systems also meant I didn't need to do nearly so many prize days, and to be honest, they got overwhelming and costly my first year so this worked way better. I get some prizes at Dollar Tree but since their prices went up, I mostly try to buy them in bulk on Amazon. I find some good toys for really cheap at a local discount store too (Debb's Dollar Discount). I get Squishies in bulk at Walmart. On prize day, I have a sign that lets students know which toys count for a prize, and which prizes they can get more than one of. For example, the plastic animals are really cheap and I tend to have plenty of those, so those are two or four as one prize whereas they could only choose one Popit because Popits are worth more. I let my high school small groups pick out prizes for memorizing monthly Bible verses and all students get a prize of choice on their birthdays.
Hopefully that made sense and this inspires some of the teachers out there looking to change up their prize systems or searching for prize ideas. I know some teachers are against doing prizes at all, and I completely understand and respect that, but I find them fun and one of my love languages is gift-giving, so they feel essential to me, personally. As far as what prizes I offer in my art class prize drawer, I have scented erasers, scented glue sticks, scented pens, gel pens, markers, scented markers, stickers, Popits, fidget toys of all sorts, Squishies, pretty paper clips, animals, play dough, silly banz, Popit pens and notebooks, bubbles, foam dice toys, pretty tape, keychains, bouncy balls, and basically just a lot of random stuff that are fun, practical, or both. Thanks for visiting!
-Lauryn
