Crafting

I was on pinterest (of course) and found this awesome tutorial for DIY Scratch off tickets. So I bought the supplies and decided I would use them for my classroom as a reward system. I really prefer to provide positive feedback and this was a great token for that.

Materials:

Business cards (or any size card you like)
Acrylic Paint (I bought silver and green)
Dish soap
Contact paper
Scissors

I put a template together of the rewards I wanted to use and printed them on business cards.

I also printed a disclaimer on the back of the card. I did this mainly because I have sneaky high school students so I wanted to cover my bases!

Now for the contact paper. The other tutorials suggest cutting a shape to go over what your scratch off area is. Husband suggested that I just lay the whole sheet of business card down on the contact paper, covering the whole thing. This worked out great for me. If you’re worried about wasting paper, certainly then cut small portions. But for me, I had no issue covering each sheet, so that the whole business card got covered. This also adds durability that will help keep them in shape during the semester.

Then it was time to add the scratch part. I mixed one part dishsoap, and two parts paint. Different tutorials made different suggestions, this worked fine for me. The silver acrlyic though is very light, and for me, it was going to take too much time letting it dry and re-coat it. So I only did like 4 in silver, the rest in the green.

I put them on cookie sheets and let them dry. They needed about an hour.

Now for the rewards I used. I put the disclaimer on the back letting them know the pass must be available and turned in when used (especially important for the tardy pass), and that I have the right to revoke it if discipline issues arise. I am giving the students raffle tickets throughout the week to reward them for good behavior. Good grades (A or higher) on tests, active participation, involved questions, attentive, etc behavior will all earn them raffle tickets. So the more tickets you have, the better chance you have of winning. One winning ticket pulled per class period a week.

Because I’m a high school class, finding rewards that aren’t food or money related that kids enjoy is a little tricky. So I opted for the following:

Late homework pass – 1 day late without penalty
Late classwork pass – 1 day late without penalty (In computer class we do a lot of in class daily assignments, it can be easy to get behind)
2 minute excused tardy – this is not to be combined with other tardy passes.
5 minute PAT (personal activity time). If they have another class’ homework, they can have 5 minutes to work on it, assuming they won’t be late finishing up my work.
“Is it right?” to be used on a test, allowed on one question that is worth one point, so eliminating short answer from that.
Move your seat (subject to my approval and can be revoked if abused)
Bonus classwork, test and exam points

I’m excited to see how these go. I had a lot of fun with husband making them. He did most of the painting, and it was a fun project for a Saturday afternoon!