Five Positive Behavior Incentives You Can Use With Your Whole Class

Giving your students an opportunity to work together to earn behavior incentives for following your routines makes classroom management much easier. Full disclosure: that sentence is full of fancy words that really mean “bribe.” So what? The world is a rough place. Who doesn’t deserve a nice bribe now and then? So here are five things you can do to bribe entice your students to follow the routines from this article and this post that you’ve so carefully taught them. I’ve placed some affiliate links throughout the post. You won’t pay a penny more for any product you buy through my links, but I may make a small commission.

Marble Jar

This behavior incentive is so old that I used it 27 years ago during my first year of teaching. All you need is a cool looking jar like this one and some marbles like these. Start with the empty jar in a prominent place. Every time you catch your class following routines well or working together cooperatively put a marble in the jar. When it gets filled, reward your class with some extra recess or other prize. You can also draw a ticket from my Student Behavior Incentives product on Teachers Pay Teachers. 

Behavior Incentives: Use Legos^TM

If you’re a Lego nerd like me, or if your kids have stockpiled enough of these colorful foot killers to keep all the podiatrists in the state in business, this behavior incentive is for you. Every time your kids work well together, add a brick to a predetermined design. If you work with young students, you can build the letter of the alphabet you’re teaching at that time. Older kids may require a sentence. If you’re kind of mean, you could make them hold out until you build a life-sized Baby Yoda or something. Either way, this one is fun. Here’s a knock-off set of bricks you could purchase with my affiliate link. You could also visit thrift stores, yard sales, or your childhood closet to get just enough to make something cool.

Giant Puzzle

This is one way you could use a bulletin board—turn it into a puzzle! Whenever you see your kids complete a routine well, add a piece to the puzzle. When you complete it, have a dance party!

Add Letters to Make a Phrase

Before Covid, our school encouraged student attendance by putting posters outside classroom doors with self-adhesive dots. Every time all children were present, the teacher put a letter on the poster. The object was to earn all the letters in the word “atTENdance.” When all ten letters were in place, students got a dance party. This was effective until contact tracing made it impossible.

Class Punch Cards as Behavior Incentives

This one is pretty easy to put together. Create a grid with behaviors you’d like your class to exhibit. Whenever the kids have success, punch a hole in that grid. Students can see their success in real time! Bonus! I’ve already made some punch cards for you with my Behavior Incentive product. It also has an editable file so you can create the punch cards of your choice if you don’t want to use mine.

What Do You Do When Kids Earn Prizes?

You could put a set of my behavior incentives coupons in a jar. At the end of the day, choose a student to draw a coupon. Whatever is on the coupon is the reward for the next day. Celebrate your class’s success with a “whoop whoop,” and send them home on a happy note. Make these behavior incentives fun, and you will see positive results!

Before You Go

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