Week 8 Review: Spin a Surprise (Classroom Management)
I always love looking at all the cute ideas for classroom management that teachers come up with, but as a secondary teacher I often have the problem that these brilliant ideas are too elementary based. The Spin and Surprise, however, could work into a secondary room well. I think Middle School students would especially enjoy this. So, without further ado, here is the adorable and brilliant idea that Charity came up with over at the Organized Classroom.
Charity came up with a rewards system that she calls "Spin a Surprise". Using a Clip & Spin Organizer (like the one pictured to the left, often found with Scrapbook supplies) that she got half price from Hobby Lobby's website she created a way for students to earn rewards that don't cost teachers a dime after initial set-up and that students love. (This organizer was still half price as of the writing of this page. Get your own HERE.) After setting up her organizer, she found pockets (such as library inserts or book pockets) to put the various rewards in. The ones Charity used were mini-sized, but after some reflection she decided regular-sized book pockets probably would have worked better. Also, if you can't find any pockets in the right size or colors you want she linked a page you can make your own. Check it out
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here. Once you have your pockets ready to go, you will need to make your prize pages. Write each prize on the insert cards that came with the library pockets or on a fun piece of paper. When you write the prize on the paper, make sure to leave room for the student's name at the bottom. Then you will want to laminate each insert. This is so that you can write the student's name on it in dry erase marker and then erase and reuse the insert.
Lastly, clip your pockets to the spinner and you are ready to go! How Charity uses this in her classroom is that when a student earns a reward, they GENTLY spin the spinner and get the prize closest to them when it is done spinning. If the closest prize is already taken, they move to the next closest pocket. The teacher then takes their prize, writes their name on it, and puts it on the board. Then, on Friday, the students all redeem their rewards on the same day and the prizes are "reset" for the upcoming week. This makes it easy to keep track of prizes earned and helps the teacher to keep from forgetting about a reward that a student has
earned. Like I said before, I think middle school students would be all over this. They might try to act like they are too cool to care, but in reality the chance to eat lunch in the classroom or sit at the teacher's desk for a period would make their day. I also think you could adapt it for a high school classroom. The prizes might have to be changed some, however, for the older students. You would have to work with administration on some of these, but ideas I had were a better parking spot for the day, free time, a redo on a homework assignment or test, and an erased grade from a bad assignment. Some of these you might make so that they hold on to them and turn them into you with the homework assignment they want to redo or bad assignment they want erased from the grade book. If you don't want them to carry it around, it could be left on the
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board until they are ready to use it and then they go retrieve it and turn it in with the chosen assignment. The possibilities are endless and with a little thought, you could adapt this for any subject and any age.