Managing A Classroom Economy

Happy Summer! As a teacher, one of the things I look forward to during summertime (besides sleeping in and using the restroom whenever I feel like it) is dreaming up ways to better my classroom for next year. This year, in the midst of a pandemic, our school years got cut short, and our time to think about the future of our classrooms extended. My prediction is that more teachers will be thinking ahead to next year’s class a little sooner than normal, simply because they’ve had so much time at home.

So, to fill your classroom planning craving, I’d like to tell you about a classroom economy system that I used with great success last year. I’ve always worked in a PBIS school, so I’ve always simply let the tickets or points that the school provides be enough of a classroom economy. And that’s always been fine. But last year, after an idea from a teammate, I married our PBIS routines with money, and the results were magic!

But the best part about this entire system…it costs you as a teacher $0, and very little time. I love anything free, and I love it even more when it’s simple!

Take a look at how I managed behavior, classroom jobs, and enriched some math skills this past school year with this classroom economy! There are links throughout this post to products I sell in my store, but you can easily accomplish a very similar system without spending a dime!

THINGS YOU NEED IN A CLASSROOM ECONOMY:

Jobs! We’re mimicking a country’s economy here, and in the real-world economy, the money circulates because people have ways to earn it. It’s a great tie-in to your social studies standards, if you are in a grade that touches on economics. You can see my classroom end-of-day jobs system HERE. It’s the only way I can do classroom jobs and stay sane. :)
Income! Set a rate for how much your students will earn for doing their jobs, as well as other weekly tasks around the room. I let the kids earn .20 cents a week (of plastic coins from our math manipulatives kit) for doing their jobs. I also awarded .55 cents for successfully completing their reading notebooks for the week, regardless of what their weekly grade was, and would randomly give out amounts for clean desks, following directions quickly, etc.
NOTE: We did have PBIS coupons at almost every school I have worked at. I let these count as dollar bills.
Incentives! Why do the kids want to earn money? In a regular economy, the threat of losing your job and not making an income is a little more dire than in a classroom. So, I don’t try to simulate the act of taking jobs away or anything like that. Instead, the way I incentivize my students to work hard and take care of our room so they can earn money, is with prizes!
Now, because we are a PBIS school, I was always required to create a prize menu for students to shop from. So, this was already going to be a part of my routine. But this is the thing about the prizes…I do NOT want to have to spend money to maintain or replenish even one of them. The prizes must be free to me, and engaging for the kids.
I created a shopping menu of the prizes for the kids, and let them shop once a week. (Friday mornings before morning announcements.) They could redeem their prizes during the day on Friday, and then continue earning money to buy new prizes Monday-Thursday of the next week.

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR CLASSROOM ECONOMY:

Assign jobs. Do this however you please. I always let the kids vote on their top three at the beginning of every new quarter, and I would assign them based on their preferences. I would do this by simply displaying a typed up list on the smart board of all of the job options I had, with how many people could do each job in one quarter. The kids would jot down their top three choices on a sticky note, write their name, and return to me. From there, I would take a lunch period or a few minutes of planning to go through their preferences and assign jobs, aiming to give each kid one of their top three choices, and let them know at the end of the day who had what job.
PS: I know that some teachers like to do a full out job application, along with maybe an interview. I have tried this and found that it’s really fun and totally do-able the first week of school, but it’s not sustainable as you go along. That’s just me. I prefer simple, but you could easily make the application process very involved if you’d like!
Hang your incentive menu somewhere that’s easy for the kids to see it, and review it with them early in the school year so they know what they’re working for. The key to making this last the year is to do totally free prizes that you don’t have to think about replacing or shopping for on your time off. (AKA: I can’t stand treasure boxes.) I’ve done this…and it’s not something I was ever able to keep up with. Maybe you’re different, and you have a lot more expendable income and time than I do, and I say you do you! But if you’re here, reading a blog by The Simple Classroom, you likely want simple. And I aim to please. :)
Come up with a list of easy to maintain rewards, and assign prices to them. Price the ones you may not want to do weekly (ahem…lunch with teacher, anyone??) at a higher price, as needed.
Free Reward Ideas:
-Sit at the teacher’s desk for the day.
-Take your shoes off in class.
-Wear a hat to school.
-Use the teacher’s smelly markers/pens/mechanical pencils to complete work.
-Bring a stuffed animal from home to keep at your desk for a day.
-Show and Tell
-Read to the class
-Swap one center time with learning games on the computer
-Lunch with the Teacher
-Homework Pass (not fancy. I would literally jot “homework pass” on a sticky note and initial and date it, and they would stick it on the homework that they were skipping when they turned it in!)
Let me tell you: the frequent purchases were lunch with teacher every Friday. Sitting at my desk for the day (there was waiting list!), and using smelly markers. Homework passes got bought up pretty frequently, too. And show and tell was a favorite for a few kids over and over. :) I gave the kids 10 options, but they truly just liked to buy the same 4 or 5 every week. Kids are so much more low-maintenance than we give them credit for. Sometimes they can find a lot of fun in something really simple, like being able to take your markers from your desk and use them in their reading notebooks.
Pay your kids! I used the money as my behavior management system, as well as doing weekly pay for reoccurring tasks, as I mentioned above. If the class was rowdy, but there were a couple of kids standing perfectly in line, anticipating my next move, a simple: “Kate and Marcus, you’ve just earned 0.32 cents for waiting quietly and patiently.” would totally silence the room.
The kids had ziplock bags with their names on them to store their money in their desks. I had the coins sorted in the back of the room, and they were responsible for counting out their own money and keeping it.
Like any behavior incentive routine, you want to be heavy-handed with the rewarding and praise at the beginning of the year, so the kids trust that you see them, and you do care when they are doing the right thing. As time goes on, you replace the frequent praise for a more intermittent system, so they never know when it’s coming.
Set a consistent time for students to shop, and assign days when prizes can be redeemed. My class paid me for their prizes of choice every Friday. Not every kid has to shop every week. Some weeks they want to save up for something bigger.
Most of my prizes were redeemed immediately after paying for them. Others, like homework passes, or show and tell, were paid for on Friday mornings, and could be used at a later time. I also set a day (usually Fridays) for all of the kids who had paid for lunch with teacher to eat with me in the classroom and watch a video.
The one logistical issue that I ran into last year was keeping up with who was redeeming different prizes, at different times. So, along with the menu, I put a small basket of coupons out for students to fill in.

You can purchase my classroom economy listing to get a set up checklist, mini-lesson for introducing the process, editable prize menus, labels, and shopping coupons for your own classroom!

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