Change your card!

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Home : 2001 : July : 14

Change your card!
By Chris

During my internship in a second grade this spring, I used the cards system which was used in some form by the entire school.

Students had a pouch of four cards on a posterboard on the back of the classroom door. After
they had been disruptive, disrespectful, you name it- they had to change their card.
Blue= S+ great day! (no cards changed)
Green= S ok (changed card once- probably for talking )
Yellow= N (needs improvement) if on yellow, you miss 15 minutes of the half hour afternoon playtime.
Red= U (unacceptable) You miss all your playtime and get a note sent home. May even go to

principal...

We found that this system worked well with the majority of the students who were normally good, but occasionally got into trouble. Changing cards taught them to be accountable for their choices and actions.

One thing to consider though is, the amount of children in your class who are from inner city or lower income communities. PLEASE understand I am not judging these children unfairly, but we found that the children who came from these areas do not respond to "normal" types of behavior management systems. These kids were always changing cards and it meant NOTHING!! What we ended up doing as a school was writing individual behavior contracts for the children that were causing such immense distractions in the class.

Some children had to "have A+ behavior" during their reading class, and if the teacher said they did well, they earned a point towards snack time play, lunch with friends (as opposed to by yourself), or recess outside. This would continue throughout the day in time sections, that were decided by the teacher. The time spans were based on the amount of time the student could normally execute good self control before completely losing it! For some kids, it had to be every 15 minutes... if you don't earn your points, you don't have a lot of fun at school because YOU chose it...

I was so frustrated with these kids often, but I found that if they felt control over earning something, they were more likely to act appropriately. On the flip side, kids were more likely to act worse if they felt like they were getting in trouble and having things taken away. Kids like this love control. And I learned the hard way that there is a way to give them some ownership over their behavior which can help their attitude, and make the whole atmosphere of the classroom just a little bit brighter.