Behavior Management

I have seen all kinds of creative ideas for classroom behavior and management, but ultimately I think the teacher has to decide what works best for them and their classroom.  For me, I always feel like around the holidays, things get the CRAZIEST!!  That's when I like to throw in a bit more motivation to be good.  Since Easter is about a month away, I decided to use the same idea that I came up with last year for my class.  I filled an Easter bucket with Easter eggs and as I see good behavior, I tell a child to come pick an egg.  Not only do they get to keep what's inside the egg, but also the egg itself (which for some of my kids is as good as the prize! LOL)  So what's inside the eggs?  All kinds of fun surprises.  Pretty much anything that will fit inside.  There are stretchy lizards, bouncy balls, tops, mini highlighters, sticky frogs, erasers, and an occasional token, which is part of our school wide behavior program.  Last year I also included eggs filled with candy, but I decided this year that since that get enough candy here and there, to leave that out.   

 Like I said, I like to change things up depending on the holiday.  For Halloween, I have a pumpkin patch.  Basically I stick die punched pumpkins on the side of my cabinet and tell a child to go pick a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch if I catch them being good.  On the other side of the pumpkin is written what the child has earned.  You could change the prizes for your kids based on the age and appropriateness of your classroom.  For me, I chose to write things such as:  1 piece of candy, 1 ticket (part of my weekly management system), 1 token, pick from the prize box, etc.  The kids go wild for this stuff and do just about anything to get noticed and get picked for behaving well.  Works like a charm.

So how about you?  What magic tricks do you use to keep your students working hard, even during the craziness that the holidays sometimes bring?