Incentives for Good Kid Work

This comes from Smalldog.com. Their email info had this gem in it:
“I’ve been teaching 1st grade for 31 years… love technology and LOVE Apple! Last year, one of my students was autistic, and difficult to motivate. None of my usual rewards would work and get him to complete his work or improve his behavior. That is, until I offered to let him use my iPhone as a reward!

Once I realized THAT using the iPhone was an ultimate reward for him, I added some games to the iPhone. He also LOVED music and was quite the singer, so I added an entire playlist on it for him, too. (Silly me—I added the bowling game app on it and it quickly became one of his favorite games to use—until my iPhone was sent flying across the room when he accidentally ‘let go’ of it while bowling.) It was then I realized I cold no longer let him use the iPhone and I wrote a grant for an iPod touch. He never knew the difference!

He was allowed to earn the reward 2x/day, and for the last 6 months of the school year, he worked hard on his school work and behavior in order to use the touch. After I added a few 2-player games on the touch, I allowed him to choose a friend to play with him during his reward time with the touch and I started to notice his social interactions with classmates improved tremendously, too!”

It might be time to get out the grant writing stick and look for some Itouches.

: ) Pat