From the Inbox— Do you assess participation?

Dear Reader,

Let's talk participation.

For as long as I've been teaching, I've given out participation points in one way or another. I'm sure many of you have done the same.

When I first started, I used to calculate them into the students' grades, until I learned about standards-based grading.

In standards-based grading, adding participation into the academic grade is a big NO-NO!

So what's a teacher to do?

I did what all of us teachers do on the daily. I pivoted!

I still gave out an insane amount of participation points, but now, instead of using them to augment a student's grade, I used them for prizes similar to collecting ski-ball tickets from Chuckie Cheese!

So what do I give participation points for?

Basically, anything that I want my students to continue to do...

- greeting me in the target language

- speaking in the target language

- consistently reading during silent reading

- answering questions— right or wrong

- asking questions

- and the list goes on and on and on.

I hand out participation points like candy.

I used to hand out little slips of paper with culturally relevant currency on them. Regardless of the currency, each slip of paper was worth one point. However, last year, I switched to "Profe Points." My students rarely called them by the correct currency name and generally referred to them as "Profe Points," so if I couldn't beat them, I joined them.

I redesigned my slips of paper with my bitmoji saying, "¡Hola!" They were a hit.

Once I hand these slips of paper out, they become the student's responsibility.

Students save up their points for prizes and privileges they want OR they can add them to the raffle we have every two weeks.

The prizes and privileges change each year because I poll my students to see what they are willing to "purchase."

Here's an example from a few years ago: https://drive.google.com/file/d/113V-s7nbudxtepPz4256oCJZevqI1aO-/view.

For the raffle, I would go to Costco or on Amazon and buy candy, cookies, or small bags of snacks in bulk. Each class period, I would pull two participation points out of the jar and those students could choose whichever snack they wanted. I would then throw away the unselected participation points.

Most of my students work hard to earn as many points as possible to either buy what they want in the "Profe Store" or to use in the raffle.

Either way, it adds positivity in my classroom and rewards students for engaging in the class. Win-win in my book!

How do you all use participation points in your classrooms? I'd love to know! Please share in the comments!