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10 – 15 minutes, that’s how long you have someone’s undivided attention (if you’re lucky), chances are you may have even less.
For someone who spends their days teaching our future generation, this may seem like quite a disheartening fact. After all the work and all the effort, you put into prepping your classes to make them fun and exciting for the kids, it may all be too little too late.
Not only are teachers contending with the attention spans of the students, they’re also competing with their behaviours, sometimes it can feel like there is hardly no time left for teaching! But did you know that one of the main reasons students under perform or are disruptive in class is due to a lack of motivation?
So how can schools put systems in place to incentivise students to do better?
We’ve got got two words for you:
Classroom rewards.
We’re not talking constantly showering students with rewards, because let’s face it, a chocolate bar or lolly for every single milestone is a bit overkill.
We’re talking about a one-off reward, something that the kids can work towards in the long term, so that schools are able to foster consistently positive behaviour over an extended period of time.
A rewards system whereby children receive a ‘gold star’ each time they do something that is commendable is a great way to build children up throughout the year and/or term. It’s an inexpensive, fun way to positively reinforce good behaviour and it shows the kids how they’re tracking over the extended period of time, then once a term/semester or year the kids with the most gold stars are rewarded with a fun experience.
Teachers in Perth say that incentives like these, whether it’s free time or a fun school incursion, can help kids master their expectations of acceptable classroom behaviour and scholastic achievements.
A good way to look at it is, adults go to work to receive a pay check, that’s our positive reinforcement for going to work and it’s what motivates us to keep going back and doing our job well. Needless to say that kids who receive one-off rewards for their good work and behaviour will be motivated to continue on the same route.
A school in California showed a 25% increase in students’ academic achievements after just one year of implementing a school rewards program whereby students were able to pick an experience as their reward at the end of a semester.
Despite what some people may think about rewards programs in the classroom, the overall takeaway is that they are one of the most effective ways of promoting good behaviour and incentivising children to do better, academically.
Remember that rewards programs are more effective when there is a long term goal to be attained. If your school is interested in becoming a part of the Game Vault’s school rewards program, give us a shout and we’ll tell you all about how we can help you reward your students.
Contact us here at Game Vault.
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