Get good behaviour without rewards

Is competing to win a garden gnome toothpick holder really going to improve behaviour? When the trickiest children get all the rewards, you might need a more elegant solution, says Paul Dix...

The parents are muttering again. The children have been in open revolt for some time. As Easter approaches, the wall chart shows that the token-based economy of the classroom has its winners and losers. Despite your best efforts to evenly distribute points /stickers/ smileys, the children out in the lead are not those who work hardest. In fact, the top 10 is dominated with the trickiest children who are being showered with rewards every time they take a five-minute break from their busy schedule to glance at their work. They are joined by the most attention-seeking children who are academically gifted, yet seem to need constant reassurance. The hardest working children who do everything that is asked of them without fuss are being forgotten. If you don’t take some action, the mutters from parents will develop into ‘chat’, which is a short hop from a baying mob.

How do you respond?

A – Bite the bullet

Scrap the current system entirely and apologise to the children, especially those who have amassed the most points. Replace the points system with positive notes and phone calls.

B – Up the anti

Stick with the token-based economy and increase the value of rewards. You link the points with prizes and try harder to balance out the winners and losers. 

C – Sparkly boxes and lovely chats

Leave the wall chart alone for a while and divert attention from it. You make a thoroughly tempting, sparkly lucky-dip box as a class reward – to be given when children meet a specific learning expectation.

If you chose…

A – Bite the bullet

Scrapping the points system doesn’t go down well with children or parents and you begin to worry that you have caused a schism in daily routines. However, you hold firm to your purpose and, by the end of the first week, the class seems to be coming down from their sticker addiction. Your praise and personal feedback begin to take on more significance.

When the first three children receive their notes and one child has a phone call, the pupils see the benefits of home contact. You ask the children to talk to the class about what Mum said when she got the note; the glow of pride is unmistakable.

For the children who find it difficult to sustain great conduct for more than a day at a time, you decide to cut up a positive note and reward it gradually over weeks, not days.

Both children and parents can sense a new fairness about recognising great behaviour. There is still some nostalgia for sparkly stickers, but you hope this will fade over time.

Talking behaviour
1. How could you change your system without causing an uproar with the parents?
2. What do you do with children whose parents simply ignore positive notes?
3. Why is the positive phone call home so effective?

B – Up the anti

As you explain that points are now linked to actual prizes, you can see eyes light up. However, the children’s dreams of a new Xbox/ iPad/ holiday in Florida are soon dashed as you reveal a winners’ gallery gathered from the 49p shop. Unperturbed, the children enter the game with renewed enthusiasm and the garden gnome toothpick holder is quickly identified as the most desirable bit of tat.

Unfortunately the girls have become over excited and pester you constantly, trying to earn more points. They show you their work every five minutes and dance around asking if there are more jobs to do.

The trickier customers know they have a far easier way of earning points and proceed to kick off. They know there will be trouble, but the rewards will come once this has blown over. For now, the game is to cause just enough pandemonium to get everyone’s attention, but not enough to get sent home.

As you fend off the points-seeking monsters, you realise you have simply refueled a bad strategy. Instead of creating a mechanism to encourage personal discipline, you have stimulated more greed, jealousy and selfishness. When a fight breaks between the girls breaks out over a Mutant Ninja toothbrush (circa 1993), you know things have gone too far.

Talking behaviour
1.  Does offering material rewards ever result in long-term improvements in motivation?
2.  How do you ensure any system you choose doesn’t favour those with most ‘pester power’?
3.  How will the parents know when to celebrate achievements at home?

C. Sparkly boxes and lovely chats

Only a few of the most eager children realise you have stopped giving out points. Covering the chart with a signed poster from their favourite author was a cunning move. Of course the children were already distracted from the chart by the appearance of a very lovely and highly tempting sparkly box. With the children in their working groups, you explain the children can be awarded a ‘dip’ if they either help another group get unstuck, or ask an astonishingly good question. After some initial attempts to curry personal favour, the children realise they are not going to be awarded individually. Some are disappointed with this but understand there is a new focus: interdependence over independence. Collaborative work begins to blossom, albeit slight falsely at first. 

Each day you change the focus. Sometimes you use it to recognise group achievement, sometimes the collaborative skills of the whole class. Some children ask if they can put forfeit questions in the box, or draw homework task from it. You start to see the potential for both group recognition and giving children some autonomy over how the box will be used. The points and stickers are beaten hands down by the dipping and delving into the box. You just need to work out how to sustain the curiosity and teamwork when the newness of a sparkly strategy starts, as they all do, to fade.

Talking behaviour
1. How do you make sure that everyone gets a chance to delve?
2. Are there opportunities for each group to nominate another at the end of the lesson?
3. What might an appropriate, and non-disruptive, forfeit be?

Which approach did you choose?

A – Responsive Rita

The sudden withdrawal of a reward system that everyone has relied on for feedback is risky. Demotivating the best scholars and the most tricky customers at the same time can have unintended consequences. It might have been better to phase-out the wall chart and writing to parents explaining why. Nevertheless, the cold turkey seems to have worked and the positive notes and phone calls have seeded a new culture of recognition, rather than reward. 

B – Two wrongs Theresa

Bribes packaged as rewards are still bribes. Children want recognition, pride, purpose and to make real progress. If their motivation for learning is dependent on a game with prizes, how will they cope when the game is taken away? Children need to be taught self-discipline, not advanced carrot dangling. The teacher’s job is to recognise behaviour that is over and above minimum standards and report this to parents effectively. 

C – Balanced Bertha

Balancing individual praise and class rewards means that it is not ‘every man for himself’ in your lessons. Your class rewards encourage reliance on others, not simply a reliance on being better at playing the rewards game. The excitement of the sparkly box won’t last forever, but you have reshaped the system to encourage the behaviour children need for future success.

About the author

Paul Dix is lead trainer at Pivotal Education, which offers online and live behaviour training. Contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) about how Pivotal can support your school. Join the conversation on Twitter @PivotalPaul