Tuesday, January 31, 2012
MA $CASH$
For the second half of the year I install a banking system with my students called MA CASH or "Mr. Aleckson Cash" for long. In essense it is monetary system of checks and balances. Students can literally earn MA CASH for doing anything. I tell the students that they can earn the cash by "doing what is right?" We talked about all those different types of behaviors and about what "the right thing" is. Students can also earn cash through participation (not everyday), weekly trivia, planner signatures, and their weekly jobs. The only time I take away their cash is on Friday's when the rent is due. I told the students that they are renting their desks, chairs, and lockers from the school. Therefore since they do not own those items there is the possibility of fines for lack of cleanliness or free rent for extreme organization and cleanliness. All their work culminates at the end of the year when I have a real auctioneer come into the classroom and talk about what an auction is and how it works. This is also a great math lesson, because we work on skip counting and cutting things in half. The auctioneer sells of all kinds of healthy things for the students; pop, gatorade, candy, chips, books, games, toys, posters, and anything I can buy at the dollar store. I usually have the auction during the last 2-3 days of school. Last year it worked out really well and the students had a blast. Every students gets a prize no matter how much cash they collected over the year. Let me know your thoughts about my system. Good? Bad? Ugly? Any improvements I could make?
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Woa, great project! It seems to really expose them to a little fuduciary and financial responsibility :). I think the mystery of not knowing when they will recieve the MA CASH is key; that way they will be keeping all of the "doing what is right" behaviors in mind during the day.
ReplyDeleteFor my students and the skills they are working on, I know that the chance to spend their cash at the end of the year would be a reinforcer that is too far in the future to be motivating (this may be the same for some of your students). However, if you are liberal and make a big deal out of earning "free-rent," that could be a good motivator.
For some students who struggle with organization skills or keeping in their heads how to "do what is right," :), I think a MA CASH deficit might snowball and trash the system; those students may not see the benefit of saving money for the end of the year.
Maybe you could incorporate a way to spend the MA CASH before the auction (on a weekly basis)? This way students could be reinforced before the auction and also learn a good lesson about saving their money...if they spend early, they won't have enough money to buy what they want at the auction.
Great Idea!
Wow! So fun! I wish my first graders knew how to use money that way. Let us know how it goes! Good Luck.
ReplyDeleteI used a system like this as a fifth grade student once upon a time! It was a grade-level wide system that paid for all different kinds of appropriate behaviors (above-and-beyond work, helping others unprompted, volunteering to take the "worst" job on a team or game, etc.), and charged for all different kinds of inappropriate behaviors (late work, talking in the halls, messy desks, etc.). We had monthly auctions, where there were options like "walk to Taco Bell for lunch" (which was just across the park), "lunch in the classroom for you and a friend", "one free missed assignment", in addition to all of the pencils, toys, treats, and games you mentioned. I remember it being a VERY motivating system, and I seem to remember that the teachers seemed to go out of their way to find "caught you being good!" moments for the kids who might otherwise fall into the struggles Ryan mentioned in his comment.
ReplyDeleteLet us know how it goes this year, Ted! This sounds really cool!
Thank you for the great ideas. Through the first 2 weeks students have been amped up about the cash and are really getting into. However, about 3-4 kids I can tell have very little motivation for this because they do not see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think that I might have a small auction sessions of school supplies in a month to keep the kids to be interested in collecting money. I also made a 100$ bill with my face on it and I know that is what motivates most of the kids....
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