Jinna gave me a bag of M&Ms to help the 4 year olds do their work. Sally will rarely even look my way when I say her name, but if I say M&M, she pays attention. I sit across from them with the bag of M&Ms, and I put one M&M out for each of them. If they are doing work, I slide the M&M closer to them, and make a big deal about it. If they're not doing work, I slide the M&M back towards the bag. It works well about half the time, which is a lot more than I get from not using this trick. I still feel weird about making 4 year olds do "work."
Another tactic is the countdown. If kids are out of their seats, or generally misbehaving, starting a countdown from 5 or 3 will make them respond almost every single time. It's pretty unbelievable.
Of course, the stickers are the real incentive. Every kid has a book of stickers which the teachers can add to if they are being good. Sometimes the stickers are recorded by a tally on the board - which is an even greater power because the teacher can remove the stickers if they are bad. Jason believes in using a group tactic - he makes the students discipline each other by denying stickers if even one student is out of line.
I caught two kids in my class forging stickers (stickers can also substituted with stars drawn with a marker). This revealed a huge flaw in the whole sticker system.
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