What is a good alternative to the card pulling management system in the elementary classroom?

Class credit chart where credits can be given to whole class. Table treasures, glass beads or marbles earned for good behaviour/work. Raffle tickets, draw atend of week, marble jar x amount small treat xx amount slightly bigger treat and when they reach top movie afternoon with popcorn. Have a noiseometer..see sparklebox.co.uk. Have clear expectations. Have a traffic light system red amber green all children start in green and can move throughout the day, orange warning, red letter home with reminder of class rules, but only if red by end of day all children have opportunity to stay green. If majority of children in green at end of day, credits, treat jar etc.. Try sparklebox or twinkl (without e) .co.uk and click on behaviour management for lots of resources. Good luck x

Cookies are good.

WTH is a card pulling management system?

I think it is a discipline system, @CWOTUS. You give a card to a student as a reminder that they are not behaving appropriately. Like a yellow card would be a warning before giving a red card. The red card would mean stop immediately. Other colors would mean they lose a privelege or go to the principal’s office.

I walked into my son’s third grade class just before Christmas one year. His teacher was sitting at her desk bawling her eyes out while the classroom was erupting in the last day of school before Christmas break chaos. I was beyond shocked. I yelled in a loud voice for everyone to get in their seats…NOW!

My son and his friends, who were the instigators in all things funny trouble, looked like the cat that had eaten the canary. It took me about ten seconds to straighten their butts out. I then proceeded to tell them to sit tight while I went and got the principal.

Those boys were good kids. They just knew the teacher was weak. Too weak for them anyway. They would have used those cards as airplanes or swords if they’d been given out for their unacceptable behavior. It would have been like giving an inmate something to use to make a shank.

As soon as I saw that bank of cards in my son’s assigned second grade classroom, I started agitating vigorously to get him reassigned. I knew it would either suffocate him or, worse, bring out all his rebelliousness. What a ghastly system.

Elementary school classrooms have been managed for more than a century without that kind of punitive structure. Don’t the old methods still work? It seems to me that my teachers controlled their classrooms with good organization, high engagement, positive motivation, mutual respect, and clear, unequivocal rules.

And kindness and a smile.