Use this bulletin board to reinforce your class rules -- and reward students for following them -- at the start of the year.
You spend a lot of time at the start of the school year reviewing class rules and teaching and re-teaching classroom procedures. Use this bulletin board to reinforce those rules and procedures -- and to reward students for each day that the entire class follows them.
Introduce this bulletin board sometime during the first week or two of school, at a point when you feel students should be able to successfully follow classroom procedures. (If you teach students in upper elementary grades or above, you might do it on the second or third day of school; if you teach younger students, you might wait until the second full week of school.)
DIRECTIONS
Prepare in Advance. On a large sheet of mural paper paint a colorful, celebratory sign that reads
CONGRATULATIONS
For Following the Rules!
You Win a Special
Movie Day!!!!
The text of the sign should pretty much fill the page. Include illustrations of confetti, streamers, and other items that will add to the party theme.
When the mural is complete, cut it into ten jigsaw puzzle pieces and reward students with a piece of the puzzle each day the entire class follows the rules and procedures. Students watch the puzzle build over ten days of good behavior and effort. They are sure to work together and encourage their peers to follow the rules in order to complete the puzzle and earn a special reward.
You might…
Substitute some other reward for the movie day.
Be sure to arrange puzzle pieces so students will not know what the reward is until the last day. In other words, the last piece you hand out -- on the tenth day of following the rules -- should be the piece that has the part of the puzzle that includes the biggest part of the word "Movie."
When it's time for the special reward day, you might show a couple of video cartoons or a short movie, and serve popcorn and punch, or another treat.
This puzzle idea can be used any time of the year. Just replace "CONGRATULATIONS for Following the Rules" with a more appropriate headline. Maybe your goal is to get all students to hand in their homework or… Whatever your goal, change the headline to reflect it.
