5 Middle School Rewards and Incentives

Need an easy idea for middle school rewards and incentives? These simple ideas are affordable-ish! Many classrooms use tickets and then have students enter a raffle. I don’t like leaving rewards up to probability so I prefer to let them make “purchases” with their tickets instead! My ticket system involves a “Ticket Store” where students can choose what they’d like to purchase. I started doing this my second year of teaching and it has been going strong for four years! It takes very little effort on my end and my students love it.

What are the five middle school rewards and incentives?

Students may purchase candy, vinyl stickers, school supplies, positive emails home, and lunch with me!

How does the ticket reward system work?

Students work to earn raffle tickets to use to purchase various items from the “ticket store”. When they earn a ticket, I punch it with star-shaped holes and then I write their name on the back in pen.

Affiliate Link to Hole Punch

Affiliate Link to Tickets

Students keep their tickets safe in a Ziploc bag or pencil pouch. I also have a few students who like to store them in their phone cases!

How do students earn the rewards and incentives?

Students earn tickets that they can then use to purchase the rewards!

They can earn tickets by doing any of the following:

• • Going above and beyond to be helpful
    • Throwing away a friend’s trash or helping them with an assignment without being asked
  • Taking initiative (ex. picking up a random piece of paper and recycling it)
  • Persevering through a math problem
  • Asking a good question
  • Having a bright idea (ex: giving a helpful way to remember part of a math lesson)
  • Finding one of my math mistakes in class (means they’re paying attention!!)
  • I give them out sparingly, but lately, I have been giving them out for winning games in class too!

• I can’t catch everyone being good, so I also have students tell me when they think a peer has earned a ticket!

**If a student asks for a ticket, they don’t get one! (ex. “I just helped Robbie, I think I deserve a ticket!)

How often do you open the ticket store?

Once or twice per quarter, I set up shop at the front of the room on a “fun” Friday when they are doing independent work like playing Blooket or a Color by Number! I recently started putting it on the calendar so they’d know it was coming and be on their best behavior!

How many tickets can students earn per quarter?

I don’t track how many tickets they have so I don’t have an “official” way to track this! But I do try to make sure I am recognizing each student at least once or twice, otherwise, they will complain when I open the ticket store!

What if students try to buy tickets online?

That would be a lot of effort. LOL But I prevent that by hole punching each ticket with stars. Though, I have had a student try to use tickets from another teacher’s class that were a totally different color. Though, I think that was an innocent mistake!

Where do you buy the lunch from?

Anywhere affordable that is within 10 minutes of the school, in the past, students have chosen Chick-Fil-A and Mod Pizza. I have never had more than two students reach 15 tickets so it doesn’t cost me much!

Ready to open your own ticket store?

Here are links to everything that I use!

Tickets https://amzn.to/3JeLHCb 

Candy https://amzn.to/35IcwQQ  

Stickers on Amazon https://amzn.to/3t4tjGE  (Go through the pack and remove any inappropriate ones)

Hole Punch https://amzn.to/3IahcMw  

Prize Box (School Supplies and Fidget Toys)

https://bestyeareverco.com/collections/retro-collection/products/retro-spiral-college-ruled-1-subject-notebook-with-sticker-sheet  or 

Register for Donations here: https://www.adoptaclassroom.org/for-teachers-2020/