We’ve noticed a drop in participation this week, so we’re thinking that some incentive might help with students’ motivation and engagement. Filling the “bean jar” at school has always been an exciting part of the year, resulting in a curly fry or ice cream party. At school, students earn beans through various desired behaviors, such as being ready for class on time or completing textbooks. For remote learning, we want to start giving students beans for the following desired behaviors:

• completing any assignment (excluding Geography and BrainPop English)
• posting “noticings” on poems and creative writing
• posting creative writing pieces, gardening pictures, and baking pictures
• and the usual handful of beans for finishing a textbook

We’ll tally the week’s beans and add them all to the jar at the end of the week, and send a picture of the jar home with the weekly update so students can see their progress. For this week, I added beans retroactively for all (non BrainPop) assignments since we’ve closed. That’s 127 beans, PLUS the handful that August earned for finishing Grammar 3. Additionally, we’ll let students know how many beans they contributed to the jar on their weekly progress reports. (Feel free to tie that to any at-home incentives if you would like to.)

The jar is a little more than half way full, and I think it’s possible to fill it by the end of the school year. Though we can’t have an in-person party, we’re thinking that we could send goodie bags to everyone’s homes and have some sort of Hangouts gathering to celebrate. We’re hoping this will breathe some life back into the community and motivate students to engage a little more.