VSC Math Recognition

Here's how it works: Each day, groups can earn 1 token (gold, silver or bronze) depending on factors such as coming prepared, classroom behavior, participation, and working together with their group. The week starts on Friday and ends on Wednesday. Students can earn tokens on Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday is the day where students redeem 4 of their tokens for a prize. I give them out at the end of class and the students coordinate which member of their group will take them home and hold onto them.

The following are the prizes:

Each tier of prizes contains a mystery prize. The students will have to figure out what these prizes are. I modeled it after RPG/MMOs. I think leaving it up to the students to figure out what the mystery prizes are contains some kind of value that I can't quite put my finger on yet. Students have a choice to pick whatever prize they want. Each member of the group will get a prize, and each member gets the same prize.

Gold mystery prizes: Playing Nintendo Wii U during lunch period on Thursday (once a week). Nintendo has tons of kid-friendly games that even adults enjoy and they are all multiplayer. I won't purchase all of the games upfront. Students can earn more games over time (I'll buy them and add to our collection). These include fun competitive multiplayer games like Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario 3d World.

I told students about this blog earlier this week. Thankfully, they are very excited about it! The other gold mystery prize is a feature on the blog! Silver mystery prize is 10 minutes of free time (thinking of 15 but I want to start small first). The bronze mystery prize is a plush toy. If students earn 4 gold tokens for 4 weeks in a row, they'll be added to a Hall of Fame section of this blog that I'll create. These are all subject to change depending on the kinks that need to be ironed out (as with any system).

So far, students have been holding up their end of things, so I hope things will run smoothly on Thursday. One of my challenges will be the actual process of students redeeming these as I can't have so many students in front of my room! I'm thinking of distributing bronze prizes in the lunch room, and take the students who will play or spend lunch with me upstairs.