What prizes and reward systems do you use with your older students?
This is a question I get asked pretty often, especially at the beginning of the year. I have had many different reward systems in my career, but as of now, I don’t actually have a reward system in place for my older speech therapy students.
In today’s episode of SLP Coffee Talk, I’m sharing the systems I have used in the past, why they didn’t work, and why I stopped using them altogether. While I don’t use reward systems, there are other ways I like to motivate my students that work amazingly well without being a distraction.
Speech can be fun and engaging without using prizes. Time is precious in the speech room, and we need to use it wisely. If we can motivate students in other ways while they’re there, we can build their confidence without giving them another sticker.
Sometimes just giving students that verbal praise that they might not get throughout the day otherwise is enough motivation. Showing them that you’re listening and that you care about how they’re doing is enough.
In This Episode You’ll Discover:
- The different types of reward systems I have used in speech
- What went wrong with these prizes
- Why I stopped offering rewards altogether
- The ways I keep my students motivated
- Why it’s still okay to occasionally offer rewards
For students who are used to getting prizes during speech sessions, it can be a bit of an adjustment to move over to this type of system. However, after a few days, they will stop asking for the prizes and adjust to simply having fun and learning in speech without rewards.
I encourage you to take a step back and instead of thinking about what reward systems you can use in your speech room, think about what systems you can have in place to always motivate them and show them that you care.
Send me a DM and let me know your thoughts! Are you ready to get rid of rewards? Make sure you grab my free visuals for speech therapy to help your students work on their critical thinking skills.
Joke of the Week:
Q: Why is glue bad at math?
A: Because it always gets stuck on the problems.
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