In my classroom I am always having to “switch up” my behavior plans and incentives. I love using my two big management strategies of individual pad pics and a classroom BINGO game. However, I always need to add in one other thing to help on a day to day basis. I recently tried something that worked so well. I do not forsee the need to “switch it up” for a long time. Read on to learn about it and grab it as a freebie for yourself!
Have you heard of having a secret student?
I have had secret students several ways.
I have had names on popsicle sticks that I put in my pocket all day. I reminded my friends that I have secret students when behavior reminders where needed. If my secret students were not following expectations, they would have to go back in the cup and new students were picked (obviously I did not say the names of the students that I put back in.)
I’ve also had a secret student sign on my whiteboard where I hid names under. This worked better because being able to see the sign was a good reminder for my class. Still, I never knew how to reward the secret student and was inconsistent with my prizes.
This is when it hit me, I needed to be more specific.
I thought of prizes that my kids love to earn in my classroom and put the titles of them on squares. I hung the squares on my whiteboard by putting a piece of tape at the top so that I could still lift them. I then put one students name under each flap using a random name picker app (stick pick) from my iPad.
I told my students I had put names under the flaps. We talked about how at the end of the day I would lift the flaps. I would only fully lift the flap to reveal the name if the friend under the flap had earned the prize.
We talked about what a consequence would be for looking under the flap. They decided that person could not be under a flap for one week. Needless to say, we have never had to enforce that!
I change the names under the flaps daily. I remind my students daily (especially at tricky times…) that there are names under the flaps that could be theirs. Most days we have everyone earn their prize!
The prizes I picked are simple for me to pass out in my class. The two kids who earn VIP get our VIP bucket, the pad pic gets to pick any pad pic, treasure box is self-explanatory, BINGO piece gets to pick a card for our class chart, and the last flap is pencil patrol so they get an extra card from our pencil challenge.
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Just click the picture below to download!
What type of classroom management do you use in your classroom? I would love to hear about it!
