Off To Market We Go!

I had spoken many times to my Grade 3/4 class about their behaviour and the need for them to listen to me when I speak. I had pulled aside a particularly disruptive group of young gentlemen and asked them to improve classroom behaviour on several occasions. Nothing really seemed to be working and so I thought of another way to get them to be a bit better. I told them they could earn å…ƒ yuan (Chinese currency) over a certain period of time and then we would have a market day where they could purchase a reward from me. I thought of this back in Term 2 and kept putting off Market Day - until yesterday. You can see in the picture at the top how I set up the stall. I sat at the front of the classroom and asked the kids to come to the front on small groups, say ‘Can I please have…’ in Chinese and then I would ’sell’ them the item. Just before the stall opened I gave each student some å…ƒ yuan (laminated photocopies of a template from a games book) and they had to choose an item they could afford.

All the items on the stall were purchased from a ‘2 å…ƒ yuan’ shop in Shanghai.

The actual lesson that involved the Market Stall worked very very well - they were as good as gold. The lead up to the Market was not so great and there are a few reasons for this.

Good Bits:

• Earning å…ƒ yuan did improve behaviour during a lesson where they knew there was some yuan up for grabs.
• The kids really loved shopping at the market stall
• The kids knew why I was doing it - they knew I wasn’t too happy with how they had been behaving

Not So Good Bits

• Kids asked me during or after almost every class whether they were going to earn å…ƒ yuan and this drove me a bit nutty
• If there were no å…ƒ yuan up for grabs that day, there was no improved behaviour

Things I Would Do Better Next Time

This being the first time I had done something like this, I was a bit skeptical and unsure if it would work properly. I think I could have done a much better job of it, and so here are some of my thoughts:

• I kept records of how many å…ƒ yuan each kid earned, but I kept the book at my desk which is not in the classroom. I really needed to have a book in the classroom so I could write in it straight away rather than making notes on bits of paper. This would have led to a more accurate å…ƒ yuan count I think. Some of the kids told me after the market that they actually had earned more å…ƒ yuan than they were given.
• I needed to have some sort of constant reminder for myself (and the kids) that we had this system going as I often forgot about it and was reminded by the kids after class and by then it was really too late to award any å…ƒ yuan.
• I needed to run it over a shorter period of time. As it was, it ran for two terms and I think this was too long for me (because I was often forgetting, annoyed at myself for forgetting, and did not enjoy being constantly asked for å…ƒ yuan) and it was too long to be really effective for the kids. Perhaps if I had some sort of constant display of what they could eventually purchase at the market they would have been more motivated to behave better more often.
• I really should have outlined much more clearly exactly what å…ƒ yuan could be awarded for and how much. I only awarded one at a time but could have had a system in place for awarding more for exceptional work or behaviour.

Overall I think it is a good idea and I will try it again, but with improvements in place. Mostly it is up to me to be better at remembering and keeping accurate records and setting firmer guidelines at the start.

If any of you have every done something similar or have a whizz bang idea for classroom management for a group of 8 and 9 year olds I’d love to hear about it!

For more non-ICT related lesson ideas, you might like to read these posts: Reading the Ri Bao and Teaching Down the Line and Lightening the Load.