Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Incentives in the classroom: treats When I was in elementary school, a lot of my teachers would pass out candy for participating in certain classroom activities. Answering questions correctly, or jeopardy games, or get an A on a test for instance. I remember my classmates and I were always very enticed by these types of incentives, is this system allowed and praised, or is it frowned upon? What are some alternative approaches besides verbally incentivizing students? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) In the classroom, students can be motivated by extrinsic things such as snacks and trinkets via a treasure box or currency reward system. Depending on what type of reward system you want to structure, you can provide tickets or classroom "dollars" for students to earn by modeling classroom rules or completing personal goals. I feel it is helpful to reward not only "good" behavior, but also for reaching milestones. Each month (or whatever frequency preferred) have the students make an academic goal chart they are comfortable posting in the classroom, so that they can visually track their progress. Each month students will work toward meeting their goals and can accumulate points or currency to spend on rewards such as pencils/pens/erasers, stickers, books, etc.. Teachers can even use this system to create class goals such as lunch outside with the teacher, movie day, pizza party, etc.