Double the Reward Payed Off!

I left my last blog entry on a bit of a cliff hanger.  I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to change the reward to incorporate electronics, more sticks or candy.  I made a split decision Monday when I was handing out homework.  I actually completely forgot that I was going to increase or change the reward for completed homework until my first table of students had left with (or without) homework.  It was then, that I stopped to announce that I would now be giving out TWO sticks (not just one) for each complete assignment.  As I reflect back on that day I think it would have been great to have set up a camera to capture the side conversations that I couldn’t hear or the facial expressions that are now (and were then) lost on me.  While I lost out on documenting those things, I did manage to see all four students from my first table return for another assignment that they previously had not taken!  I thought I would see a big jump in the number of students who took homework this week.  That was not the case.  However, I DID notice some other things when comparing my data on who took homework from last week to this week.  Overall, for the number of students who took spelling I had a number increase of one from week 2 (14 students) to week 3 (15 students) and the number of students who took reading homework did not change, it stayed at 5 students.  Upon looking closer at which students actually took the homework, I noticed that there were 9 students from week two (last week) who did not take any homework (see chart below).

 
This week (week 3), there were only 2, yes TWO students that did not take any homework (and one of them was absent all week)!  The chart for week 3 can be seen below.

 

After looking over who had taken homework, I found it interesting to see that I had a change in who turned in homework as well!  Below you will find week 2 and 3 data sheets on the students who completed homework.

 

 

 



I had 5 students who did not turn in homework from week 1 or week 2 who DID turn in homework with the stick increase. I also had 2 students who had not completed homework from week 2, but did for this week! The sheet above (week 3) is not complete with who has turned in assignments because tomorrow is Friday and I have more data to collect, but I wanted to show you guys what I was talking about.

After looking over my data, I would say that the number of students both taking and completing homework has increased with the increase in reward!  It is really great to see students who previously NEVER even took homework RETURN it!  (And I love that I actually have the data to back up this conclusion!)  This has been a very encouraging week for me!