I am very excited that the school year is off and running to a good start. I have new team members this year that I am looking forward to working with. I am also fortunate to have a student teacher working with me until December. So far my classes have been great, knock on wood.
In the midst of all of this craziness, I decided to modify my behavior management plan. I modeled it after something I found online here. Though not exactly the same, I was certainly inspired by this post.
Here are the main points:
- Tickets are handed out as positive reinforcement.
- Students are given a bathroom pass that allows them 5 trips for the quarter. If they need to use it more than 5 times, they must buy a pass for 5 tickets.
- Rewards of varying ticket prices are available for purchase including pens, pencils, lunch with the teacher etc.
- Each student received a set of passes that included one of each of the following
- Quiz Pass- automatic 100 on a quiz of your choice
- HW Pass- excuses one HW assignment
- Cheat Sheet- allows you to use notes on one test
- Drop Pass- will drop your lowest classwork score.
- Each of these can be used once at any appropriate time during the first quarter, all they need to do is staple it to the assignment
- Students are responsible to keep track of their own tickets and passes.
- About one week before the quarter ends, students can cash in the unused passes. Each one turned in will be worth one point added onto their final average. For example, if a student has an 87 average and turn in 3 passes they will end up with a 90.
- New passes will be issued for the next quarter.
So far the seventh and eighth graders are excited about this. It has been much easier to manage then what I was working with last year, knock on wood again.