Homework Incentive: Fruit Roll Up

This incentive is pretty simple. Every morning, Mr. Agajan opens with figuring out who did their homework. He puts one of four symbols immediately to the right of their name. All 22 of their names are listed among two columns on the whiteboard. All of these symbols pertain to whether they completed their homework. These are the symbols: Star sign for completed homework, M for completed and forgotten homework that needs to be brought in next morning for a possible star, A for Absent, or simply a blank circle for incomplete homework. If a student gets five stars for the week, on Friday, they get a fruit roll up. The next week, they start back from no stars and that incentive cycle starts over again.

The 3rd graders actually get pretty excited about that. So far, that excitement has not let down. Actually, they kind of bragged in my face a couple weeks in a row. I remember one day that Mr. Agajan put a star next to my name. Of course, he was kidding. I remember one of the students saying "Mr. Auto.... you can't get a fruit roll up. You only have one star." At the same time though, of course they are probably not doing the homework JUST because of the fruit roll up. I would guess that it definitely serves as a deal sweetener.

I looked up fruit roll ups on Amazon. It seems cost efficient. It's about $33 with free shipping for 140 rolls. That comes out to $6.36 a week that you would spend on giving 22 rolls to your class per week. That's in the best case scenario. That doesn't sound too bad.

Anyway, literally... food for thought.