response to intervention selecting rewards that motivate: tips for teachers

Response to Intervention

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Selecting Rewards That Motivate:

Tips for Teachers


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NYC Schools Pilots Pay for Student Performance

Source: Medina, J. (2008, March 15). Next question: Can students be paid to excel? The New York Times, pp. A1, A19.

•200 schools participating in pilot

•Reward system designed by Harvard economist Roland Fryer

•Program is funded through private grants

•Students are paid for high performance on NY State tests

•Teachers also receive ‘bonus’ pay for improved student performance. NOTE: Most schools elect to share ‘bonus’ monies across all staff.



Big Ideas: The Four Stages of Learning Can Be Summed Up in the ‘Instructional Hierarchy’

(Haring et al., 1978)

Student learning can be thought of as a multi-stage process. The universal stages of learning include:

• Acquisition: The student is just acquiring the skill.• Fluency: The student can perform the skill but

must make that skill ‘automatic’.• Generalization: The student must perform the skill

across situations or settings.• Adaptation: The student confronts novel task

demands that require that the student adapt a current skill to meet new requirements.

Source: Haring, N.G., Lovitt, T.C., Eaton, M.D., & Hansen, C.L. (1978). The fourth R: Research in the classroom. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co.



Tying Reward Schedule to Student’s Stage of the Instructional Hierarchy (Daly, Martens, Barnett, Witt, & Olson, 2007)

• During acquisition of a skill and early stages of fluency-building, provide reinforcement (e.g., praise, exchangeable tokens) contingent upon on-task behavior (time-based reinforcement). This approach avoids ‘penalizing’ students for slow performance.

• During later stages of fluency-building, change to reinforcement based on rate of performance (accuracy-based contingency). This approach explicitly reinforces high response rates.

• As fluency increases, maintain high rates of performance through intermittent reinforcement, lottery, etc.

Source: Daly, E. J., Martens, B. K., Barnett, D., Witt, J. C., & Olson, S. C. (2007). Varying intervention delivery in response to intervention: Confronting and resolving challenges with measurement, instruction, and intensity. School Psychology Review, 36, 562-581.



Activity: Take a Reinforcer Survey

• Pair off.• Read through the 8 items on the

mini-reinforcer survey appearing on the next slide.

• Each person should select their TOP 2-3 reward choices.

• Note similarities or differences in the types of rewards that each of you chose.



Activity: Reinforcer Survey: Pick Top 2-3 Choices

• The student will select the pizza toppings for a class pizza party.

• The student will have the teacher call the student's parent or guardian to give positive feedback about him or her.

• The student will be dismissed to go to a favorite activity such as recess 2 minutes early.

• The student will post drawings or other artwork in a public place such as on a hall bulletin board.

• The student will select friends to sit with to complete a cooperative learning activity.

• The student will tell a joke or riddle to the class.

• The student will draw a prize from the class 'prize box'.

• The student will have first choice in selecting work materials (e.g., scissors, crayons, paper).

• The student will be able to take one turn in an ongoing board game with a staff member (e.g., chess). The staff member will then take their turn at a convenient time.

• The student will select a friend as a "study buddy" to work with on an in-class assignment.



Selecting a Reward: 3-Part Test

• Do teacher, administration, and parent find the reward acceptable?

• Is the reward available (conveniently and at an affordable cost) in schools?

• Does the child find the reward motivating?



Creating ‘Reward Deck’: Steps

1. Teacher selects acceptable, feasible rewards from larger list

2. Teacher lists choices on index cards—creating a master ‘deck’

3. Teacher selects subset of rewards from deck to match individual student cases



Creating ‘Reward Deck’: Steps(Cont.)

4. Teacher reviews pre-screened reward choices with child, who rates their appeal. (A reward menu is assembled from child’s choices.)

5. Periodically, the teacher ‘refreshes’ the child’s reward menu by repeating steps 1-4.

response to intervention selecting rewards that motivate: tips for teachers

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