Silly Bands

Silly bands...one of the cheapest and most effective reward systems I use!  I teach kids from Kindergarten to Grade 12 and I am surprised to say that, as I expected, it works very well with the primary and junior grades, but it actually works with well with the older groups too!  I carry a box of them in my teacher bag, and when I enter a classroom, I put a few on my arm.  Kids notice them right away and start to ask questions.

“Where did you get those silly bands Miss?”

“Why do you have silly bands on your arms?”

“Can I have a silly band?”

Once I get a couple of questions, I tell the whole class that I am going to reward students with them throughout the day.  I might hand them out for students who participate well, stay on task,  are respectful.  If we have a better-than-your-average-day-with-a-substitute-teacher, I tend to hand them out to the whole class at the end of the day.

Silly bands can be very distracting, so I have two rules. 

1.   Keep it on your arm, in your pocket or in your backpack.  If you play with it, it will be taken away, without warning.

2.  You get a silly band that I randomly select.  You don’t get to choose (otherwise it would take way too long).  If you want to trade, do it during recess or lunch.

So where do I find all those silly bands you ask?  And how cheap is cheap?  I have bought them at the Dollarstore, but I recently found them at Toys R’ Us as well.  They had a GIANT clearance bin at the entrance and they were ten packages for $1!  That means that each silly band was only about a penny!  

Now that’s a deal when you see hundreds of students every week!

IMPORTANT!  Before you start handing out silly bands at school, make sure you check what the rules are about them! Some schools have banned them completely.  I would hate to hand out a silly band to a rewarding kid and have him or her get in trouble for just having it.

Do you use some kind of reward system with your students?