Incentives! Incentives!

This year the change I made was to reward my kids more!  I have always given incentives to the whole class, but I really wanted to make more individual or small group rewards.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, I divided my classes into six houses.  For the first semester, the reward was a trip to a Dallas Mavericks game!  The kids were so excited.  We had a great time at the game, and it was wonderful to see the kids have a good time outside of school.  Some of them never get a chance to do anything like this.

For the second semester, I am rewarding a small prize at the end of each six weeks, and a bigger prize at the end of the second semester.  Of course, we will cut the second semester time frame a little short, so they can get the reward in.

The winners of the 4th six weeks will be announced tomorrow.  So many of them are so anxious and cannot wait to find out.  Now, I just need a good prize!  :)

I also rewarded a group who had an outstanding video for their sing a long project (also in a previous post).  Two groups went above and beyond the criteria, so we had a contest between the two videos.  The kids voted in class and we combined that with facebook votes.

I took the winning group to Air U in Longview Texas.  It is an indoor trampoline park. The boys had an absolute blast!  We have a contest going on right now with the commercial project, and I cannot wait to see what they do with it!

Regardless of what rewards you offer, your students will work hard to earn them!  We all win when they work hard!

Happy Rewarding!

Jib Jab part 2

I signed up for Jib Jab over the summer.  It is $12 for the whole year, and you can make countless cards and videos.

At the beginning of the year, I put a few of the kids faces in the jib jab video, and they really liked it. I have used it since for personal videos, but I had not used it in a while for school.

After our sing-a-long, we had a contest to see which video was the best.  I featured the stars of the winning video in a jib jab video and posted it on our class facebook page (permission has been given by the parents).

The kids enjoy seeing their faces dance around.  I recommend jib jab to any teacher. It is a great motivator.
Here is the jib jab video I created.  Sing-a-long Stars

Side note:
The students who created the winning video will have their name on a trophy that will stay in my classroom.  I am also treating them to an afternoon at AirU (an indoor trampoline park).

Happy Jib Jabbing!