The World's Easiest Token System
A classroom behavior management plan that's simple for you and motivating for kids

 What’s so great about this system?  It DOES NOT require:
                                                   

-          you to keep track of each child’s behavior in order to penalize or reward.

-          the entire class to ‘behave’ in order to be rewarded

-          you to punish those who did behave due to the actions of those who didn’t

-          the same behavioral standards for everyone: all students have equal opportunities to

                  be rewarded for their own accomplishments

-          only behavioral improvements to be rewarded: those students who consistently follow

                  the rules will be rewarded more often, rather than being overlooked

-          any money to be spent on candy or prizes

-          the staging of elaborate rewards

-          a complicated class helper system, because tokens assign many job privileges

-          class time that should be spent on academics

-          a lot of maturity in students: even preschoolers can participate

 
Here’s how to get the system set up:

-           Find some chips, tokens, cubes, or whatever items you can access.  Even small laminated slips of paper will work.  10-20 per child should be enough.

-          Assign PIN#s, and write them on your tokens..  Each child in my class has a personal identification number (PIN#) used for labeling cubbies and so on.   If your students don’t have numbers for another purpose, assign them for this. (You could use the children’s names on the tokens, but then you will have to make new tokens each school year and whenever new kids transfer to your class.)  Keep each group of tokens sorted into separate containers of some kind, like a tackle box or craft supply organizer, to keep them separated by number.  This will take about a half an hour, but it is the only time you will ever have to invest in this system.

-          Find or make a box or bag to put the tokens in when they are awarded.  I use a sparkly purple and gold drawstring bag I found from a dollar store a few years ago.  You only need one for the whole class.

-          Find or make a box or bag to put the tokens in when they are awarded.  I use a sparkly purple and gold drawstring bag I found from a dollar store a few years ago.  You only need one for the whole class.

Here’s one way to introduce it to your class (first grade and above):

-          Explain to your class that each teacher has a method for rewarding good behavior in students.  Ask them to recall some of the ways other teachers they have had rewarded them (stickers, play money for a class store, paperclip chain to earn a pizza party, etc.).   Be prepared to limit the discussion, as rewards will be a very popular topic!

-          Discuss with the kids how they might have earned those rewards in previous classes.  They may mention when a compliment was given from another teacher, or when an especially good job was done on a project.  Encourage specific responses.  This is also a good way to set behavioral expectations for the year, and check prior knowledge. You may want to list their ideas, or write down just the ones that you will be rewarding them for.  Decide ahead of time whether you will also reward academics with this system or if it will be purely social/behavioral.

-          Explain that this year, in their new class, tokens will be awarded to the children who exhibit the behaviors listed or other praise-worthy actions.  Stress that tokens may not be awarded every single time, but that you will surprise them and they never know when they will have a token added to the bag.  This is an important point so that they do not wait to be rewarded each time they follow directions.  You might also want to mention that if a child asks for a token, s/he will not be given one, no matter how good of a job s/he did.  You are the only person who determines when tokens will be awarded. 

-          Show the token organizer and your special bag or container for the awarded tokens.  Make a big production out of it so the kids ooh and ahh.  Explain that when a token is awarded, you will take a token with the child’s PIN# on it and place it in the bag. 

-          Demonstrate how you will award tokens.  Tell a child that you liked the way she came in this morning, so you will take a token with her PIN# on it and put it in the bag.  Tell another child you noticed he walked quietly in the hallway, and make a big show of putting in a token for him.  Specifically praise each child in the class and add a token for each to the bag.  Tell the students that they will have opportunities to earn tokens every school day, all day long.

-          Demonstrate how you will pull tokens and give rewards.   Emphasize that tokens will be pulled whenever you have a special job in the classroom you need someone to complete, and how you might pull a token at any time throughout the day.   If you will also pull tokens at a set time or day, or to give specific rewards or prizes, explain that as well.  Begin pulling tokens for classroom privileges right away.  If you go to music class right after the discussion, you could pull a token to determine who will line up first, or who will carry the recorder money down to the music teacher.  Pull lots of tokens during the first few weeks of school so the children can learn how the system works and make connections between their behavior and privileges.

How to use and maintain your token system:

-          Whenever you see behaviors you would like to encourage, award tokens.

-          Pull tokens from the bag anytime you have a natural opportunity to reward students.  Whenever there is a situation in which you need to select a student for a privilege or special responsibility, pull a token.  This prevents you from having to recall who has ‘behaved’ recently, and whether you are calling on students equitably.  Since good behavior is what causes tokens to be added to the bag, the higher the incidence of good behavior, the more likely they are to be given extra responsibilities and privileges.  It also simplifies your helper system- you don’t have to assign every conceivable job to a student, because occasional tasks can be assigned using tokens.   

Examples of Tasks That Can Be Assigned Using Tokens

pass out art supplies

take a message to another teacher’s room

substitute for a classroom helper who is absent

work a problem on the board or overhead

participate in a role play

hold a book, poster, chart, or other prop while you teach

call the other students to line up

run irregular errands

choosing read-alouds

complete small tasks for other teachers

monitor behavior when you are briefly out of the room

help the Star of the Week

bring you something from another part of the room/school

carry things in the hall

sit in a special seat

read from texts to the class

share journal entries

serve as group leader for activities      

any other spontaneous task that you have to choose a student to complete

-          You can pull a set of number of tokens on a certain day or time, such as every Friday at dismissal, to distribute additional rewards.  If you give your students candy or prizes, this would be a good way to do it, but this system does not require any tangible rewards or expense on your part if you don’t want to use them.

-          Be sure that after you pull a token from the bag, you put it back into your tackle box or organizer, rather than back in the bag.

-          Empty out the bag every week, month, or quarter, depending on how many tokens you have and how often you want your class to have a fresh start.  Any grade level of kids should be able to sort the tokens by number back into the organizer for you during indoor recess or other down time.

How to incorporate the token system into your regular classroom job system

-                    Assign all routine jobs to specific students. It would be very distracting to have to pull a
token to determine (or randomly choose) who will turn the lights out each time you leave
the room and who will collect papers, and having to do those tasks yourself is even worse!  You want instruction to be uninterrupted, so any regular classroom task which you want to be performed automatically without your attention should be assigned. Use tokens only for privileges which do not have to be done automatically to keep the classroom flowing. 

-                      Assign a Star of the Week to complete when you are too busy to pull token, in the middle
of instruction, or out of the classroom.   Sometimes at recess or in the hall or at an assembly, a child needs to be chosen for a small task, such as taking a note to another teacher or retrieving something from the classroom.  Your Star of the Week, or VIP (whatever name you choose) can serve this role.  There may also be an unassigned task that pops up during a lesson, and rather than distract the class with tokens, just ask the Star to do it.  This seems fair to children and they do not question it.  Each child usually gets to be Star twice a year, and gets to hold his or her regular classroom job during the Star week.  )While you could have a Star Student for a day, I like assigning the Star job for an entire week so that I can remember who it is, which would be hard if it changed daily.)  The Star can also share favorite books and poems, bring in an item from home (like a show-and-tell), eat lunch with you, or any other special activity that draws attention to that child and builds self-esteem.

Alternatives and ways to extend the system:

-          You may want a Token Helper to put the tokens in the sorted container for you so you don’t have to worry about it, once routines are established.  The Token Helper could also be that responsible child who reminds you in the classroom to add a token that you awarded at recess or in the hall.

-          You can also have children put in their own tokens for especially great accomplishments. This can become distracting if done when a token is awarded during instructional time, so I would not recommend it as a regular routine.  However, it can be powerful to say in front of the whole class, “Wow, Jasmine, you saw that trash on the floor that did not belong to you, and you threw it away in order to be helpful.  Thank you for being so responsible.  Come put a token for yourself in the bag!”.

-          Students can nominate each other for tokens.  During your morning meeting or at dismissal, for example, you could ask for two volunteers to tell about how someone in the class was a good friend or role model, and have that child put a token in the bag for his or her classmates.  This has lots of benefits, from encouraging the children to look for appropriate behavior in their friends to applying a little positive peer pressure to follow the rules.

-          You may want to tell your specials teachers about this system so that they can note the names of any kids who they think have earned them. I told my students that if I heard another teacher or administrator compliment them, I would add tokens when we got back to the classroom.  My grade-level team always knows my behavior modification plans and they make sure to comment when they see exceptional behavior at recess or in the hall.

-          You can make tokens that say “Whole Class” to occasionally reward excellent group behavior.  Whenever a ‘whole class’ token is pulled, a special reward can be given instead of the purpose you pulled the token for. (If you pulled a token to see who would run an errand, for example, it would not be feasible for the whole class to do it, anyway.  Announce the whole class token, then pull another token to select who will run the errand),  The whole class token could mean:

*five minutes of free time at the end of the day

*extra recess or computer lab time

*extra singing or finger plays during the next morning meeting

*ten minutes of self-selected reading with friends of their choice

*time in class to begin homework, or

*any other reward that the whole class enjoys and that you are comfortable giving every time that you pull the ‘whole class’ token. Again, no tangible rewards are necessary, unless you prefer to give candy or toys