Because I teach at a year round school, my school year has already begun. This year, I wanted to keep my Classroom Economy, but make one change.
Last year, I had my students keep up with money earned and money lost in a little notebook. This proved to be a lot of work for me to be sure they were keeping up with it correctly. I also had a transaction sheet that the students filled out at the end of the day. Most students understood how to fill out this sheet, but you had a few who struggled. I ended up having to write down all the times they got money taken away so that I could check behind them to be sure they really fined themselves. Then on "payday" (which was every Friday), I had to spend a lot of time checking to be sure they'd added things up correctly.
Then, I bought mini white poker chips and mini red poker chips from Amazon. Although, I think regular size would work just as well. I was a little surprised at how mini these really were.
Whenever I have students exhibiting desirable behaviors or completing homework or assignment, I give them a white token. On the other hand, when students exhibit undesirable behaviors or don't complete their work, I give them a red token. They keep their tokens in the pouch that corresponds to their classroom number.
This relates to the Classroom Economy in that each white token is worth $10. Each red token is worth -$10. So, they earn money for having white tokens and lose money for having red. For example, if a student had 8 white tokens and 2 red tokens. I subtract the 2 red tokens from the 8 white and get 6. Then, I multiply 6 by $10, so that student earned $60 that day. I also factor in their "salary" for their classroom job.
The best part is that each individual student does not keep track of this. One of my classroom jobs is Accountant. The Accountant marks on a chart I made how many of each color tokens each student received each day. Then, they figure out how much money they earned each day. At the end of the week, the Accountant adds up their money earned with their weekly salary for their weekly total. This way only one student has to understand how to keep track and all I have to do is look at their total and quickly give them their money.
It is so much easier than what I was doing last year.
How do you keep track of students' behavior? Do you use classroom economy?
