How to Set-Up a Classroom Economy

Hey Friends!

It's Theresa, from True Life I'm a Teacher!

I wanted to share how I use (and have used for several years) a token economy in my classroom. I've taught at PBIS/PBS schools for 7 years, and a token economy is the perfect addition to what your school is already doing!

I've used this system in 1st, 2nd, and 4th grades, and absolutely LOVE it! Even better? My students love it, and that's really what matters.

While I don't use a clip chart, I have in the past, and a classroom economy can be used in conjunction with a clip chart.

Why Use a Token Economy?

• Reinforces positive behavior
• Targets specific behavior
• Targets behavior change
• Students work for delayed reinforcement
• Students receive immediate and delayed reinforcement
• Promotes fair exchanges, addition, subtraction, counting money, and economics

There are LOTS of different ways a token or classroom economy can work in your classroom. The best part is that it doesn't have to cost ANY money! I choose to spend a small amount of money on candy and gum, but not much.

Assign Values to Tasks

• Pay Day Monday - I pay my students on Mondays just for showing up. We talk a lot about how coming to school and learning the job of my students. So I pay them!
• Homework - I am NOT assigning homework this year, however, in the past I've paid my students for turning in their homework.
• Reading Log - I am also NOT assigning a reading log this year, but I also paid my students for completing their reading log each night.
• Take Home Folder - I pay my students daily for remembering to turn in their Take Home Folder each day.

Pay as You Go

• Hand out your classroom money as you catch students doing things they should. This is especially beneficial at the beginning of the year when you're trying to reinforce procedures, routines, and expectations.
• This can be continued throughout the year, or you can switch to the assigned values method once students know and regularly demonstrate classroom and school expectations.

Combination

• You can also use a combination of both methods. It really comes down to your students, their needs, and your preference.

How Much Do I Pay?

• Pay Day - $10 every Monday
• Homework - $5 every Friday
• Reading Log - $1/daily
• Take Home Folder - $1/daily
• Positive Behavior - $1 as needed

Deductions / "Fines"

• Depending on the age of your students, and your preferences, you may want to consider "fining" your students. However, in my experience, a classroom/token economy works much more effectively, if students are not penalized for misbehavior, BUT it also depends on each individual student.
• Some students respond well to understanding that there are penalties associated with certain behaviors. For example, students who are "blurters" may respond well to being fined $1 for each time they blurt. This is an intervention you can set up with individual students, or the whole class, if needed.
• Penalties aren't typically necessary because regardless of the method you choose, if a student isn't doing what they need to be doing (homework, expectations, etc...) they just wouldn't get the token for that task.
• For example, if a student doesn't turn in homework, they simply don't get paid for their homework...I do not also require them to "pay" me and amount.

So what do students DO with their money?

Fun Friday

• Every Friday is Fun Friday! It's the last 10-20 minutes of the day, and it's free time. Blocks, Legos, coloring, computers, board games, puzzles, pretty much whatever. That's the beauty of it. 
• Before students can purchase ANYTHING from the class store, they must pay for Fun Friday. It's not optional. I charge $5 for Fun Friday. Although, you could make it whatever you want depending on your class.
• You should charge a fair amount though. You WANT most or ALL of your students to be able to participate.
• Students who cannot afford Fun Friday, complete a reflection sheet, and have one-on-one conferences with me to talk about why they were unable to participate, and to set a goal for the following week!

Class Store:

• I open the class store every Friday during morning work. I call students back to my table a few a time. Students must purchase Fun Friday first, and may then purchase anything they'd like in the class store, that they have the money for. Does it take time? YES! However, the payoff is HUGE! The real life skills my students learn far outweigh the amount of time this takes each week.
• Students may also choose to save their money, to purchase a more expensive option from the class store. Some students spend every penny they have, others spend a little and save a little, others purchase only Fun Friday and save the remainder.
• These are the items I have available for "purchase" in my classroom. But the list is pretty endless. It just depends on what is allowed at your school, and what you want in your classroom. You can grab these "coupons" HERE.
• Shoes off in the classroom
• Computer time
• Choose the brain break
• Sit by a friend
• Fun Friday
• Choose a stuffed animal to have for the day
• New pencil (pencils with designs and mechanical pencils)
• Write with a pen for the day (student favorite)
• Chew gum
• Piece of candy
• Lunch bunch
• Treasure Box

• The ONLY things I spend money on are candy and gum! Everything else is just what I already have in the classroom, and are things that I'm willing to manage.

I use a small sheet like the one below for documentation. I use a check mark to show that they paid for Fun Friday, and then jot a quick note about what they purchased. On the back, I write down who has paid for Lunch Bunch, as I only have Lunch Bunch once per month.

The yellow tickets, are what my school uses in common areas, as well as at specials. These have a value of $5 in my classroom, and can be used just like our classroom cash.

How to Manage Your Classroom Library

I love books.  Seriously, LOVE books...and if they are children's books, then I am a bit nutty. I might be a hoarder.  When it comes to books, it is all possible!

Over the ten plus years that I taught, I amassed a pretty large collection of books for my classroom library. So let's chat about how I managed the madness!

Here are a few pictures of how I organized my classroom library over several different years.

I had a very loose classroom management system for my library. Each of my students had a book box.  I reused these year to year.  Each box had a number on it that correlated to the student's classroom number. I ordered mine from Really Good Stuff and I highly recommend them.  They had GREAT customer service.  However, if price is an issue, Wal-Mart is selling similar sets of 4 boxes for about $10.

The student stored their book boxes on a large shelf in my classroom.  One year I purchased a shelf because there was not one available in the school.  Another year, I was able to snag a district  provided books shelf and they fit wonderfully!

I always set my classroom up into 4-5 table groups. Then, each table was assigned a day.  Table 1 was Monday, Table 2 was Tuesday and so on.  On each table's day, they were able to do special things like sit around the room on the cushions and beanbags during workshop time, always were called to line up first, and were able to "shop for books."

Students "shopped for books" after they finished morning work or first thing in the morning. I did NOT allow students to take my books home or out of the classroom without special permission.   This rule alone prevented kids from losing my books.  I did send home books, but I sent home printable books, so I wasn't as concerned if they got lost.  Books also had to be kept in the book box when they were not in use. Students were not allowed to keep books from my library in their desk or on the corner of their desk.

I also explicitly taught students how to care for books.  This video that mimics Mo Willems' pigeon books is ADORABLE!

Wouldn't it be a great way to engage students before discussing how to are for books!?!?

For the most part, my classroom library pretty much ran itself.  I would do random checks to make sure students were reading appropriately leveled books AFTER I taught the lessons by The Sisters about book choice. I DID NOT choose to level my books because I feel student choice it VERY important and can hugely impact kids' reading abilities. Instead, I organized my books by topic,genre, or author.

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If you would like to read more about how I organized my library and want a step by step guide, check out this blog post!  I helped a friend organize her library and blogged all about our progress!

There are a million ways to manage your classroom library.  Some will be much more strict than I ever was, and that is okay, too! How do you manage your classroom library?

 If you would like more ideas from The Primary Peach, be sure to follow us on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook to catch all the freebies and ideas and more!

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Ten ideas for student participation during Open House

Hey Y'all! It's Erin from The Elementary Darling! Summer has been flying and I go back to work tomorrow! so today I am going to chat about what your new students can do during Open House.

I have enjoyed my summer full of Target trips, dollar store hunts, and family time but as the school year rolls around, I get equal parts excited and anxious. Back to school time is fun but also stressful and this year I am moving to a new school and a new grade level.  Many of you are doing the same or even just one of those things, and while it is an exciting time, it is also a stressful time.

To help with the stress of coming back to school and having Open House (or meet the teacher, or sneak a peek) I also started doing stations in my classroom. Yesterday, Theresa shared her station idea with you all. If you didn't read it, head here.  I did something similar and you can read about those stations here on my blog.

The only difference is that I found that my parents were doing the stations, and my students weren't always participating. OR one parent was taking the student to do the stations (LOVE) and the other was filling out the paperwork. {This is the ideal situation for my classroom.} My school was a Title One school and we had a ton of information and surveys for the parents to fill out.

***Insert big idea here*** I decided that I needed some things that students could do while the parents filled out all of the paperwork! You can make these a station OR you can just have them set out in the room and let the students do them. {Side note: if you teach Kinder babies you may want to make it a station, so their parents can help them.}

Here are 10 ideas for student participation during Open House!

1.) Organize Supplies
I love Theresa from True Life I'm a Teacher's idea of having the students take a scrapbook page to create a scrapbook. The students pick the color of their paper and they take it home to work on. I also love that she organizes her materials THAT NIGHT. This is a great activity for the kids to do! Everything is labeled and even if they can't read the words, you can put one of each item in the box and the students will know where to put the item.

2.) Selfie Wall
Almost every kid knows how to take a selfie. This selfie wall or photo booth is a great and easy way for the students to snap a picture with a saying. I just put second grade on mine, but you can do anything! I also had to use a selfie stick because no one was at school to take my picture so excuse the terrible pose :)

3.) Photo Booth
Another version of this is Chandra, from Teaching with Crayons and Curls, photo booth where she took a sparkly table cloth and the students used signs and got a picture. She did a  Party theme and it was precious!

4.) Meet the Teacher Chart
Kristin from School in the City created this cute chart to learn about the teacher. This would be cute for the kids to look at during open house. It is also easy to make for all grade levels!


5.) Estimation Station
The students grab a post it note and write how many skittles they think are in the jar with their name. I check them all when Open House is over and I put all of the post its on an anchor chart for our math focus board. The student who gets the closest answer wins the jar on the first day of school! It makes an awesome first math lesson and gets the students excited.

6.) Post it Note Anchor Chart
This is an easy and fun way for students to answer a question. They love choosing their post it note, and most grade levels can answer the question on their own. K-1 babies will need some help on this one, but even pictures are cute.  My first graders did pretty well with this, the year that I did it!

7.) Choose your back to school gift!
Sometimes I have my students' gifts on each desk as they walk in, but I think this year I am going to let them choose their own gift. They are either going to pick based on marker color or based on paper color, but who doesn't love a choice?!?! You can find these editable marker papers here in my TPT shop for FREE!

8.) Scavenger Hunt
I have seen so many different scavenger hunts for students. I love the ones with the pictures, especially for the K-1 babies. There are too many to choose from, so my suggestion is to get on TPT or Pinterest and find the perfect one for you and your classroom!

9.) Find your seat or choose your seat.
This may seem like an easy one, but many students, like us, are anxious. They may want to sit closer to the teacher, or the board and choosing his/her desk is an easy way for them to get excited for the year. My suggestion is to write the names on the name tags, have the students choose their name, and then place it on the desk they choose. If you need a more controlled environment, I understand! The students could just find their desk. Make sure to leave them something fun like ready confetti,  jitter glitter, or a present to make them feel comfortable.

10.) Meet the Teacher
Wait, they need to actually talk to you? YES! And this is the cheapest and easiest suggestion of them all! It is so important to take the time to talk to the student. Many times, the parents take over, and the kids just sit there. Have some "go to" questions to ask the students that are easy to answer.
*What did you love about First Grade? (their previous grade)
* What are you excited to learn about?
* Do you love science? We are going to do some fun science experiments!
*Did you get anything special to start the year off with?
*or my Favorite- Do you think your mom and dad are ready for you to Second Grade?

Just remember, these are suggestions. I don't think all of this is possible during one open house. It's like Target, just pick the one or two you need. {Who am I kidding, I need everything at Target.}

Good Luck!



Open House Made Easy

Hey Y'all!

I can't even believe we're talking back-to-school! Didn't summer JUST start???

Back to school means lots of things...school supplies, squeaky clean teacher planners, new clothes (maybe that's just wishful thinking), #targetruns, setting up classrooms and decorating, and open house. Or meet the teacher. Or Sneak-a-Peek. #couldwepleasejustallchooseonenameandstickwithit (for the purposes of this post, I'm going to call it Open House)

Open House is absolutely wonderful! I get to meet the sweet families that I will from that point forward forever call my own...I expand the number of children that I affectionately refer to as mine!

Here's the thing though, on the inside, I'm crawling with nerves, and feelings of awkwardness. For real, y'all.

Parents and their kids come to the door, we say hello, and then everyone awkwardly wonders what in the world is supposed to happen for the next few minutes. There's a billion things to make sure parents know about, forms to fill out, and on and on.

I needed something for parents to do, so that I wasn't trying to tell the same thing to 25 different families who all arrive at different times. #chaos

Several years ago, I decided to try something different. For purely selfish reasons, of course. I can't handle awkwardness.

So instead of having all the papers set up for each student on individual desks, I set up STATIONS. #cuethehallelujahchorus

Y'all, this is the single most brilliant thing I've ever done. Seriously.

So what are stations, you ask? What do the parents do? What do the KIDS do? What does the teacher do?

What are stations?
Stations are numbered areas throughout the room. Parents start by signing in, and then continue through the rest of the stations. Once they get to the last one, they know they've gotten and done everything they need to do, and are free to leave.

How do parents know what to do?
When parents first walk up to my classroom door, I introduce myself, we shake hands, and I do the same with their child/children. I greet every.single.person that comes in the family. Oh, and smile! After introductions, I give parents an "agenda" of sorts, and it pretty much does the rest. (You can find the checklist pictured below HERE.)

Why stations?
Prior to using stations, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I felt like parents were waiting to talk with me, while I was talking with a different family. I felt like parents didn't know what they were supposed to do, and everything just felt so awkward.

Stations, on the other hand:

• Provide clear, concise directions
• Provide a space for parents to fill out papers (and turn them in!)
• Speed things along...parents spend less time wondering what to do, and get them in and out (this makes it sound like I don't want them to stick around, but the truth is that parents have just as much to try to get ready for the first day of school as I do. Plus, there's often families who have more than one classroom to visit - stations get parents in and out in about 15-20 minutes)
• Allow me to mingle with families and students, and most importantly, allow me to greet families at the door

What do I have at each station?

I typically use 10 stations. You could use more or less...that's the great thing about stations, you get to make them fit YOUR needs.

Station 1 - Welcome and Sign in

• This is the only station (unless someone looks lost) that I point parents to...I hand them their agenda, and tell them to start here.

Station 2 - Transportation

• This is pretty much the most important station I have. I need to know how my students are getting home each day, and especially on the first day of school.
• While I also asked parents to turn in the student info sheet before they leave, this is the ONE thing I've got to have turned in!Station 3 - Student Info

• Student info is pretty much the same no matter where you go. Does the office have this info? Yes. But I like to have it on my form, all in one "student info" binder that I keep in my classroom.
  

Station 4 - Volunteer/Room Parent

• Sometimes parents want to know when they can help, and I always direct them here. Some years I have lots of parent volunteers, some years I have zero.
  

Station 5 - Supplies

• This is my favorite station (like, duh)! If parents brought supplies with them, I have them sort (this is a great job for the kids) the supplies into the containers. 
• If parents didn't bring supplies, I have supply lists specific to my classroom ready for parents to grab.
• ***Tip: Put one of what you want in each container to everyone knows exactly what goes where***
  
  

Station 6 - Instagram/Text Notifications

• Last year, I did a class Instagram, and gave parents information with how to follow the class, as well as had them sign a permission slip.
• In years prior, I used text notifications through Remind (formerly Remind 101), but now there are a lot of different apps you can use, like Bloomz that The Elementary Darling wrote about. 

Station 7 - Getting to Know Your Child

• I like to have parents describe their child to me. It's let me get to know the child from their perspective.

Station 8 - Meet the Teacher

• Parents pick up a sheet that tells them, and their child all about me. This is one station that I always hear a lot of comments from. 
  

Station 9 - Wish List

• I included a half sheet with items that are wish list items. Parents take one if they want, and send in supplies if they want. No pressure with a wish list. 

Station 10 - Scrapbook Page

• The scrapbook page station is where my students get their very first assignment for the new school year! I ask students to create a scrapbook page that tells all about them! I usually have it due the end of the first week of school, and students present them to the class.
• The scrapbook page doubles as our first class book that lives in the classroom library!
• I provide the scrapbook paper and allow students to choose their favorite color.
• I also have examples from previous years that are always pretty popular!
  
  
  
  

What do students do?

I tend to switch this up each year. Some years I have some sort of "All About Me" page for students to complete. Sometimes, I ask students to sort their school supplies at station 5. Other times, I just let them go with their parents.

Tomorrow, Erin from The Elementary Darling will be sharing 10 ideas for STUDENT participation during open house, and I can't wait to read all about it! Read about it HERE.

Are others using stations?

In a word...YES!

A few years ago, I got smart, and made stations that I could use year after year instead of having to retype them from scratch each year. Here's what other teachers are saying about them:

Wanting to try Open House Stations this year? I'd love to hear from you!

If you're interested in what I've shared (which is editable) you can find them HERE!

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