Library Aide Point System
I was more depressed about Classcraft being sold to HMH than anything that’s happened to me in a while because I have used that platform as my classroom management and reward tool for the entire 8 years that I’ve been a secondary librarian. My students loved the gaming aspect of it and understand the terms like “leveling up”, “experience points aka XP”, “avatar”, etc. so to see it being offered for purchase for the entire campus only, not individual, made me so very sad. I believe it had everything such as promoting teamwork, project-based learning which I used for inventory and weeding projects, gamification and positive/negative point system. Losing this resource threw me for a loop and I spent all summer racking my brain to see how I could recreate this for my library aides.
When school started I still didn’t have a firm idea on how to create my own reward system and roll it out for my 22 library aides and make it make sense for them with little to no work for me. As an Adobe Innovator we have a store that we can cash in points for swag and while I was talking with my mom, an educator of 30+ years, she said why not do the same thing for your library aides and it was a lightbulb moment. Students can earn different point amounts for the work they do and cash them in for prizes in our own store OR save up throughout the year to try and win 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place at the end of the year, which gets them a prize basket.
So how does it work? Students work during their library aide class. I have an alarm on my phone that goes off the last 4 minutes of class. This is to remind them to pick up any trash, gather their items so they don’t forget anything and track their points on the Google Form. The form offers the student to select their name, class period/time they worked, the date and choose 1 activity they did. Now they might have done more than just the one they chose, but I told them if it were me, I would choose the type of work that would be pay me the most. We discussed what each one entailed, what I’m looking for and that there are some on the list they don’t know how to do yet such as inventory, weeding, book covering, etc. I’ve already thought of three new entries since we began doing this so I did tell them they might see new ones from time to time.
Choice options for what work the students completed that class period or time of day.
I was spending time at the end of every day tallying up the students’ points so they could see the leaderboard in real time, but thanks to my good friend Rachael Fryman (@rachaelfryman), she took my responses Google Sheet and made it to automatically tally the students’ points for me, which is going to save me some time.
Leaderboard after 5 school days!
We started this process last Monday and I already have students who have earned 3000 points so far! I did tell them this was a learning process and they were my guinea pigs this year so all of this was subject to change if it wasn’t working, but I’m seeing amazing results so far without any incentive other than competition! At the end of the school year I have a Staycation where the library aides get to miss the entire day of school to be in the library doing fun things like: watch movies, make slime, play the VR headset, plus we get food delivered for breakfast and lunch. It’s also win the top winners of Classcraft would get their 1st, 2nd and 3rd place gift baskets for top individuals, top team, most gear, most pets and who wins the Library Aide Quizizz game. This year I will take out the gear and pets, but top individual and team will still be in the running. Therefore, students get to make the choice whether to save their points to try and get to the top by the end of the year OR they can cash them in for items/rewards from the gift shop:
1st 9 weeks options for point spending.
This will be their options for spending the 1st 9 weeks. It’s basically what students had at the beginning of Classcraft until they leveled up high enough to spend on bigger ticket items such as 20 minutes off work, snack, drink, bigger candy, breakfast, coffee, etc. These items will be offered later in the year as students earn more points and I start to see how much I think prizes should cost based on how much they have earned. I have so many students coming before school, when they finish work in other classes, after school so they can earn more points. I don’t want to speak too soon, but this has been so successful after week 1. I will continue to update this, as I also have a badging system I’m working on for how students earn grades in Library Aide. You may not have it as a class, but it could be beneficial to see how I’m going to structure their instructional videos, Quizizz they have to pass to earn the badge and show me their new skill they learned. This will take some time to get it up and running, but I’ll post as I have it and give an update on our points system. Let me know if you have any questions!
