Classroom Economy

One thing that I wanted to implement this upcoming year was a classroom economy.  My last experience with a real classroom economy was during my senior internship and I loved the effectiveness of it.  So upon hours of research and looking at what other teachers do in their classroom, I think I have created something great that will work for us.  I wanted it to be as life like as I could make it without it being too much work for me throughout the year.

First up is our classroom job chart.  This past year I was REALLY bad about switching jobs on a regular basis and hopefully this will help with that.  By doing it this way every student will have a job and get a weekly salary based on their job.  Some jobs require more time than others which is why the salaries are different.  The students will keep their jobs for twelve weeks (the length of our trimesters) and be able to switch for the second and third trimesters. 

At the beginning of the year they will fill out an application for a job and check off three jobs that they feel comfortable doing for twelve weeks.  We will have gone over each job at this point, so there shouldn't be any surprises when they are required to do something during the year.  If at the end of the twelve weeks they realize that they do not want one of their checked off job choices (or just plain don't remember what they chose), they can always change their picks before the second or third term jobs are selected.  I got my Classroom Job Application from Mrs. Sanchez's site but tweaked it a little to meet our classroom needs.

Throughout the year there will be ways to earn money and lose money.  Just like in real life they will have to pay rent (desk), insurance (chair), and bills (electric, internet, and trash) every month.  They will also have to pay "fines" for not having homework or their materials ready or being disrespectful.  They can earn money through their salary, behavior color week, good behavior, etc.

Every week our economists will check that students correctly inputted their debits and credits in their checkbook register.  At the end of every trimester we will have an auction where students can spend their hard earned money on things like extras of books I have, magazines, dollar store items, candy, homework passes, sit with a friend at lunch pass, mystery envelopes, etc.  The last auction always has bigger and better items for those that have been saving all year.

The kids really seem to respond when it comes to the money that they earned.  They worked hard for it and they work hard to keep it.  The first few weeks will be a lot of modeling but I'm hoping that after the first month this classroom economy should be soley run by the students themselves!

Sabra