My First Post...and Brag Tags!

As I sit here on a Saturday afternoon writing my first post for my blog, I'm experiencing lots of feelings - excitement, anxiety. I just can't believe that I actually have a blog now. And a blog that looks so awesome. Thanks once again to Barbara at Ruby Slippers Design. I remember telling her how important this blog was to me. Perhaps it doesn't seem like much but I  have been so inspired by people like Barbara and the other awesome educators who teach by day and are bloggers by night. I am in awe as to how they juggle everything. A month ago, I told myself if they can do it, I can get on board and do it as well.

So here's my first post.

I heard about brag tags when Ashleigh made a mention of it on her FB page. I googled it right away and loved what I saw. My teaching partner FC and I were on the lookout for something new and exciting to use as part of our reward system. So when I told her about the brag tags, and showed her what it looked like, we ordered a pack right away.


Brag Tags from the Paw-some Pack with our names.

Our students get a 'raffle ticket' (the tickets are actually post -it notes. We have loads of them from their books packs at the beginning of the year!) for bringing home their take home readers, completing their tasks on time, neat work etc. Basically they get rewarded with a 'raffle ticket' for modelling good behaviour. These tickets are put in a bag and at the end of the week on Friday before the students go home, we pick the winners of the raffle tickets.

This reward system, although simple, has worked really well for us. Our students will do anything for a raffle ticket. We used to give Slushie tokens which the kids could get from the school canteen but we knew at some point in time the novelty of it would wear off and we would need something new.


We've taken to picking three winners now from our weekly raffle because the brag tags are in such a demand right now in the classroom.

Raffle tickets from last week

Brag Tag on the school bag of our raffle winner

 

I'd be interested to find out how other teachers use brag tags in their classrooms...Well that's my first post. If you are on this page, thank you for reading this and please leave a comment or two. It would be greatly appreciated.