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[eddy-cool]

[eddy-cool]

Just so you can see that I am not completely against rewarding high achievers:
I told the class to finish a task and to hand in their written assignments before they leave. As a reward I promised them toallow them to leave class early.
This had the desired effect: Everyone tried to finish their job within the period. It involved some teamwork and those whose performance was not up to requirement would see their marks drop. Several could leave before lunchtime, the rest could work in quiet.

BUt the administration stopped this as it was viewed a form of me dodging my teaching duties to the detriment of students who were thought to benefit most if theywould sit through the entire 45 minutes of classroom time.

I am sure material gifts to students might prompt other negative assessments from a relatively insensitive management!

[theincredibleegg]

It's generally (well, always) a bad idea to reward performance (stickers, candy, stars etc) of a student infront of the whole class. Thumbs up and compliments are fine, but stuff that stays on the board is discouraging for weak students. Keep rewards, stickers and smileys on spellings, tests homework sheets etc.

Punishment is always bad. Students should learn to look for good attention, instead of avoiding bad attention. If a student is throwing pencils, shouting (or whatever), reward the student for good behaviour that counters bad behaviour (you can't write and throw pencils at the same time).

Either way, i don't use rewards myself. There are so many other (and more effective) ways of dealing with classroom management: Model tasks clearly, keep things challenging (and not too difficult) and make sure that all students can follow.