A few weeks ago I shared one of my favorite strategies when running my own classroom and guest teaching. So far, it’s had a 100% success rate through my journey of being a substitute teacher. I’ve had a lot of people reach out with additional questions or asking where to find the information so… I thought I would put it in a blog post.
Once my placement and job is finalized for next year, I think I’m going to be adding a more concrete and consistent “blogging” section focused around instructional and behavior strategies that can be applied across all school settings. I’ve been brainstorming a list and feel pretty excited about it 🙂 Wah! In the meantime, below is one of my favorite behavior strategies. Enjoy!
Purpose
Increase positive behaviors by having students work together towards exhibiting a defined set of behaviors and/or choices.
Set Up
Draw a scoreboard on the board (or use the visual I created) and an “incentive box
Decide the length you want to use the strategy. It could be for a certain time chunk, all day,
Decide on options for the incentive.
Create the Rules + Explain
“Today we are going to play a game called Teacher Vs. Students. I don’t know about you guys but I’m kind of feeling like I might win today….
Here’s the goal: I’m going to be looking for a certain set of behaviors/choice depending on what we’re working on. If I see those behaviors/choices, you guys get a point. If I see the opposite behaviors/choices, I get a point.
Before we set the “rules” it’s important to understand that I am the only one that can call out behavior/choices and I will only be doing it in the form of points for me or points for you. We don’t want to use names because we’re all at different places in our decision making.
With that being said, here is how YOU ALL will earn points: using a ruler for math problems only, staying in our seat, and voices off when the teacher is talking.
I WILL EARN POINTS if you are playing with your ruler, out of your seat, and talking when I’m talking. “
*then I have them practice the expected behaviors/choices*
And we begin 🙂
Tips + Tricks
•You can add or change the behaviors whenever you feel necessary. Just make sure they know what it looks like (or sounds like). If the tallies become distracting, you can add that as a behavior too.
•Incentive ideas: 10 minutes of choice time, extra recess, drawing time, story time, candy, prize box, bonus points, no homework… whatever works with your already existing classroom system. When guest teaching, it’s so much easier to give 10 minutes of choice time at the end of the day. 10 minutes is nothing compared to the instructional time we would lose without an incentive.
•I usually change the behavior expectations based on what content area we are working on. Depending on the class I’ll do half day time duration for incentive for entire day.
•You can do this with a small group of students. Sometimes when I sub and I take students to specialists– the students who exhibit challenging behavior and I will play this game on a sticky note. Usually the only thing they get is a sticky note to take home that says, “I beat my guest teacher with my great choices during garden today! Yay!”
•I don’t take points away or call out students…. But will add to the behaviors if they start calling classmates out. I try to keep this as team focused, trauma-informed, and positive as possible.
•Sometimes they ask what happens if they lose…. I usually just say we continue with the lesson plans and don’t have free time at the end. I’ve only had one group of students ever lose and that was my own a few years ago.
To download the full document –> click here!