Learning with Loyalty Cards

When I was perusing Pinterest a little while back, I came across an image of loyalty cards. A teacher in America had created learning loyalty cards which were aimed at encouraging students to be more responsible, take greater care with their spelling and become homework experts (http://www.thelearningeffect.com/2012/06/classroom-reward-cards.html). I thought this was a great idea and an ideal opportunity for me to help encourage and develop student ‘Skills’ in lessons. Teaching discrete ‘Skills’ lessons, it is easy to use the language of learning whereas I tended to not talk about ‘Skills’ in ICT and Business Studies lessons (because there is always so much to do in a lesson!). I therefore decided to create my own loyalty card. Fortunately I am lucky to have a name starting with McD and I exploit this at every available opportunity! I introduce the loyalty card at the start of a rotation when I am outlining my expectations. Students come in, get their loyalty cards out of their folders then during the lesson, I will sign their loyalty card when they are demonstrating one of the skills. When students have demonstrated 5 of the skills (could be the same skill) then they get a small prize.

Homework submission can be quite poor in some classes. On the reverse of the loyalty card is a ‘Homework Hero’ section. This has helped me to have good structured discussions with students. When they ask, “Miss, am I a homework hero?” I ask them to look at their loyalty card and if they say “but Miss, I’ve done 3 homeworks in a row?” I can explain that quality is essential. This has meant that students are taking greater care with their homework.

This has had a variety of benefits. Not only are students talking about the ‘skills’ they are developing (not in a Skills lesson!) but it gets them to want to demonstrate independence, teamwork, creativity – it is ace hearing “Miss McD, I worked out the problem with my programming on my own!… can you sign my card?” Student feedback has been positive too. When doing my ‘keep, grow, change’ feedback, students like the loyalty card and they want to impress.

Please find the link to my template here. loyalty crd v4